Standard (legal) Operating Procedure

Standard Operating Procedure – Errol Morris

Oscar-winning Director Errol Morris (Fog of War) turns his forensic camera on the evidence, the participants and the events in the scandal that was Abu Ghraib the American military prison in Iraq. The abuse, humiliation, torture and probably at least one murder of prisoners over a series of nights in the Autumn of 2003 were photographed by the participants themselves thus providing the indisputable evidence that was to condemn them, the American military, and the Bush Administration around the world. It is the deepest irony that long after the 100s of thousands of Iraqi men women and children blown to eternity by largely American and British forces in Iraq are forgotton, it will be these pathetic, but iconic images infamous, hateful, and repulsive though they be, that will be remembered longer than the intentional carnage inflicted upon a people ‘for their own good’. Indeed more than one of these hapless victims of a system with a potential for corruption, fully realised on this occasion, suggests convincingly that these salacious, sexually explicit pictures are merely the tip of a much darker, deeper iceberg of real torture and murder.

Morris’s film wisely concentrates on the people and the pictures. He may attract criticism by those shamed by the publicity his film will attract to these squalid events because, using the photographs as a visual base and testimony of those who were there, he has applied his considerable film-maker’s skills to re-enact the events and re-create the terrifying and horrifying atmosphere of what the hell of Abu Ghraib must have been. Many of these scenes and some of these people make one’s flesh creep. Others convey most effectively, the sense of how thin our veneer of civilized values and beliefs is when exposed to mortal danger, unlimited power over other human beings, immoral and cowardly pressure from an implacable hierachical structure to achieve results, and an absence of effective discipline or accountability of command.

Abu Ghraib happened because no one wanted to know – the military, the Bush Administration, or even us; for in a democracy we each have a responsibility to question, challenge, and hold our own politicians to account for what they do and support in our name. The American public elected GW Bush a second time knowing much of what he was doing in their name; and we re-elected Mr Blair knowing he had deceived us into a war certainly illegal, unquestionably bloody and still possibly disastrous. Ignorance is no defence in law or democratic accountability. And the Nixonian corrupt principle of preserved deniability, now commonplace in politics both sides of the Atlantic, won’t keep politicians hands clean either. We are all combatants now.

Both in the Oscar-winning Fog of War and S.O.P. Morris allows his subjects to tell the story. In FOW Robert Macnamara revealed tellingly the imperfections and contradictions of exercising power at the very top: in S.O.P.Morris allows the people at the bottom of the food chain of influence and power reveal tellingly to us what it’s like to be the last in the line to do the things no one else wants to do – and how that corrodes their moral sense.

Of the 30 years or so of jail sentences handed down in the Abu Ghraib debacle no one above the level of Sergeant has been imprisoned or charged with a criminal offence. Reserve Brigadier General Janis Karpinski was relieved of her responsibility for the Iraq prison system and demoted but is the only participant still in the military. Her own account puts in question the morality, the honour and the effectiveness of the military chain of command of which she was part. She looks and sounds what she claims to be – a scapegoat.

An unnerving ambivalence builds up as we watch these reluctant and not-so-reluctantly infamous individuals both condemn themselves and shame the system within which they were trapped. Best ‘known’ of all Lynndie England: then a tiny, androgenous figure, cigarette in hand leading a naked grown man on a leash, or pointing, with a lip-curling grin at a line of Iraqis forced to masturbate in a line. Now with feminine, well groomed hair and a street cred line in feisty aphorisms and evocative cynical self and life-mockery, her self-defense of immaturity carries some weight – she was 20 years-old in a war zone and dominated by an experienced violent and aggressive man, Corporal Charles Grainer who was a prime mover in events and ironically their being photographed. He fathered England’s son and then married another participant.

Most telling of all perhaps is Javal Davis: likeable, articulate, open and refreshingly free of self-pity. Davis is convincing when he chillingly observes that if we are shocked by what we see of what was photographed, just imagine the kind of things that were done in secret with no record.

Specialist Sabrina Harman took many of the photographs, she claims in order to ensure that there was a record so that events could not be denied. To support this contention there is a series of letters she wrote at the time to her female partner confirming this intention. The military court dismissed this and gave her 6 months.

Two professionals carry by far the greatest conviction: Bren Pack CID Special Agent charged with assessing the photographic evidence prior to prosecution; and Tim Dugan a professional, contract interrogator. Both have experience of war zones and the different reality they represent. Both have some instinct therefore not to excuse but to understand the effects of an environment that we who have never experienced it cannot. But both are bewildered, shocked, exasperated at the pointless, valueless in intelligence terms, incomprehensible stupidity and inhuman behaviour that these people relished and shared.

Two facts lingered in my deeply troubled mind as I left the cinema: interrogator Tim Dugan’s words echo those of Janis Karpinski – for all its hatefulness and justified infamy, not one single item of useful intelligence came out of this debacle. The other was the chilling revelation of how much of the shameful and shaming behaviour we see was not only legal but designated as ‘Standard Operating Procedure’ – this includes the practice pictured at the head of this review, of hooding a man and standing him for extended periods on a box with wires attached to his hands.

Senior Military staff, Bush, Rumsfeld et al and yes Tony Bush, should be required to watch this film in public and then be required to comment upon it afterwards. The least their overweening hubris and arrogance requires is a tiny portion of the kind of humiliation that was handed out behind closed doors on their watch.

And Errol Morris and his cameras should be given unfettered access to Guantanmo Bay prison immediately. That’s something they can do in my name.

Filed under: 4 stars, Documentary, Errol Morris, Philosophical