Standard Operating Procedure

There's been a spate of documentary films about Iraq and the U.S. military involvement there, but Standard Operating Procedure focuses on a sliver of the controversy: the photographs that surfaced detailing the abuse of prisoners by military police at Abu Ghraib. The topic of torture of detainees by the military has been covered elsewhere, most notably Taxi to the Dark Side, which won an Oscar. Erroll Morris, though, the director of this film, isn't really tackling the big picture, instead he's interested in what those photos, now famous, tell us.

Morris, one of the premiere documentarians working today, changed the style of non-fiction film with The Thin Blue Line, and Standard Operating Procedure is similar, with a mixture of talking head interviews, re-enactments, and a trippy melange of images and music that showcase the photos in question. The interview subjects are almost entirely those involved, with Morris getting Lynndie England and Sabrina Harman, two of the women who were immortalized in some of the more ignominious photos (apparently they were paid for the interviews, which caused something of a controversy, though it is standard practice).

Some of those interviewed were convicted of crimes, and are not exactly contrite. They seem to be unaware of what it all means. A civilian interrogator (wonder how you get that job) is one of the voices of reason throughout the film. He says that at first he thought it was all the fault of "schmuck M.P.s who acted like idiots," but he changed his mind and realized they were "kids getting shammed." From this vantage point, they're both. The prosecutor in the case talks about how in his career it's stupid mistakes by criminals that usually do them in. In this instance, it was that they took pictures of the whole thing.

The interviews are the most fascinating part of the film. One M.P., who's father and grandfather both received bronze stars, rues how his involvement dragged his family's name through the mud. England is the most interesting, a woman who basically admits to her actions with the excuse that she was in love with the ringleader, Chuck Graner (who is serving ten years and was not interviewed). Graner ended up marrying another woman who was also in the unit, so what we have is a second-rate love triangle which fueled an international incident. Harman, explaining why she is showing a "thumbs up" sign next to the corpse of a detainee, says that she did that because she never knows what to do with her hands in photos. You believe her, while shaking your head at her cluelessness.

The deeper questions raised here involve the top brass. All of those convicted say they were acting on orders, but no one with a rank higher than staff sergeant was charged with any crime. In fact, it would have been difficult for some of them to walk away from the crimes without directly violating orders. As Harman says, if she had it to do over she would have had to never have joined the army.

Then there is the definition of "standard operating procedure." Beatings of prisoners, or sexual humiliation (they would stack the prisoners in pyramids, naked, or make them masturbate) were considered crimes. But handcuffing them to bed frames with underwear on their head was S.O.P. Perhaps the most iconic photograph--a man standing on a box, wearing a hood and a blanket, with wires attached to his fingers--was not a crime, because the wires were not really connected to anything electric. But he didn't know that.

When the military paints what could be very bad guys in a sympathetic light, something is wrong.