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Standard Operating Procedure by Philip Gourevitch
Is it possible for a photograph to change the world? Photographs taken by soldiers in Abu Ghraib prison changed the war in Iraq and changed Americas image of itself. Yet, a central mystery remains. Did the notorious Abu Ghraib photographs constitute evidence of systematic abuse by the American military, or were they documenting the aberrant behavior of a few bad apples? We set out to examine the context of these photographs. Why were they taken? What was happening outside the frame? We talked directly to the soldiers who took the photographs and who were in the photographs. Who are these people? What were they thinking? Over two years of investigation, we amassed a million and a half words of interview transcript, thousands of pages of unredacted reports, and hundreds of photographs. The story of Abu Ghraib is still shrouded in moral ambiguity, but it is clear what happened there. The Abu Ghraib photographs serve as both an expose and a coverup. An expose, because the photographs offer us a glimpse of the horror of Abu Ghraib; and a coverup because they convinced journalists and readers they had seen everything, that there was no need to look further. In recent news reports, we have learned about the destruction of the Abu Zubaydah interrogation tapes. A coverup. It has been front page news. But the coverup at Abu Ghraib involved thousands of prisoners and hundreds of soldiers. We are still learning about the extent of it. Many journalists have asked about the smoking gun of Abu Ghraib. It is the wrong question. As Philip Gourevitch has commented, Abu Ghraib is the smoking gun. The underlying question that we still have not resolved, four years after the how could American values become so compromised that Abu Ghraiband the subsequent coverupcould happen?
Hardcover
First published April 1, 2008
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About the author
Philip Gourevitch
48 books686 followersGourevitch was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to painter Jacqueline Gourevitch and philosophy professor Victor Gourevitch, a translator of Jean Jacques Rousseau. He and his brother Marc, a physician, spent most of their childhood in Middletown, Connecticut, where their father taught at Wesleyan University from 1967 to 1995. Gourevitch graduated from Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford, Connecticut.
Gourevitch knew that he wanted to be a writer by the time he went to college. He attended Cornell University. He took a break for three years in order to concentrate fully on writing. He eventually graduated in 1986. In 1992 he received a Masters of Fine Arts in fiction from the Writing Program at Columbia University. Gourevitch went on to publish some short fiction in literary magazines, before turning to non-fiction.
Gourevitch knew that he wanted to be a writer by the time he went to college. He attended Cornell University. He took a break for three years in order to concentrate fully on writing. He eventually graduated in 1986. In 1992 he received a Masters of Fine Arts in fiction from the Writing Program at Columbia University. Gourevitch went on to publish some short fiction in literary magazines, before turning to non-fiction.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 84 reviews
October 13, 2018
If this book doesn't infuriate the reader, then I don't know what will. There are many angles one can find outrage in, from the simple mistreatment of people to bad leadership and poor decision-making all down the line (who allows cameras in a corrections facility?) to the gross brutality and dereliction of duty, but the book tries to show that pictures flashed in the media only tell part of a story and have to be investigated and seen in context. Were the MPs guilty of many injustices? They sure were, but it makes one wonder about the higher ups and intelligence people who just walked away without punishment for even greater sins. We sent an unprepared army into the wrong war, tapped and employed troops for tasks they were never trained for, misinterpreted facts on the ground and then offered slapdash solutions that only resulted in American and Iraqi deaths, etc., etc., etc. Yes, I think Graner and the others deserved to be punished for activities they themselves knew in their hearts were wrong, but they were sent into a really crappy situation. I think the real heros are the men and women you don't hear about, especially in the tough arena of handling prisoners, who did their jobs with professionalism and compassion. You never really hear about them. And it only takes a few to stain an entire company, army, nation. Too many people were out of line, and they know it. Most of these poor prisoners were innocent (and the real bad guys didn't care for them either) and of no intelligence value, and although you can forgive some mistakes in the field and in the heat of battle, many of the problems stemmed from a lack of caring and simple laziness and poor preparation, and that has to be laid at the feet of the generals and Bush's handlers, if not Bush himself. So many people just turned blind eyes to misbehavior from the smallest infractions of professionalism to serious violations. I thank my lucky stars I didn't have to serve in that mess (though have seen similar types of behavior in domestic corrections situations, personally, and I paid a price for not going along with the miscreants). I also know that in extraordinary situations, behind closed doors and with the baddest folk, some corners are going to be cut, but they should be conducted with the utmost professionalism, by people trained and prepared, and with maximum supervision and some sort of ultimate oversight. These are dangerous times and we face an implacable enemy. But as Americans, we have a responsibility to do things the right way, to show the world how things can be done better---not impose our worldview on others. Ok, ok. . .I am getting tired of standing on this soap box. Basically. . .we did wrong, some got caught, but the real guilty figures walked away unscathed while the little guy took the greatest fall. . .at least we live in a free country where this kind of stuff does come to light and our media and academics can investigate and question and reveal. . .
June 9, 2016
Abu Ghraib, the Iraqi prison, once the `torture prison' of Saddam Hussein, then the scene of notorious US abuse, violation and unlawful killing is a tough subject for a book. But Gourevitch does a fine job of navigating his - and our - way through the tortuous maze of inhumanity, inefficiency, and a frightening kind of empathy with victims and victors alike.
After a brief background this is told from the point of view, with extensive quotes, from the soldiers themselves, some of whom are now in prison for the things that they did on behalf of the US military. But this is not a simple story, and Gourevitch does an admirable job of showing how this could happen without ever excusing it.
The soldiers themselves, often reservists, junior, untrained and way out of their depth are as much victims of the system as the Iraqi prisoners, many of them picked up in indiscriminate security sweeps and simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. The soldiers themselves were many of them are young, not highly-educated, sometimes having never left their home-town in their lives, but the ease with which they were swept into a brutal, inhumane and frankly illegal system is a salutary one. The frightening thing is how easily this could be any of us whatever we might like to think.
The very coolness of the narrative and dispassionate prose is part of this story: no impassioned diatribes against the US or military systems, but the very analytical detachment is itself an indictment of what was allowed to happen.
And the photos themselves? This book doesn't reproduce them. Most people picking up this book I guess will be doing so on the back of the photos and other media exposures, but while I applaud the author's decision not to encourage the continued voyeuristic exploitation inherent in photographing such atrocities in such a mundane and almost touristic way, I kind of regret it too. They're already out there, and the book does enable you to see them in a slightly different light.
As other reviewers have said this is an important story, brilliantly and unsensationally told. What that cost the author emotionally I can only guess - but the result is a book which really is critical reading for all of us.
After a brief background this is told from the point of view, with extensive quotes, from the soldiers themselves, some of whom are now in prison for the things that they did on behalf of the US military. But this is not a simple story, and Gourevitch does an admirable job of showing how this could happen without ever excusing it.
The soldiers themselves, often reservists, junior, untrained and way out of their depth are as much victims of the system as the Iraqi prisoners, many of them picked up in indiscriminate security sweeps and simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. The soldiers themselves were many of them are young, not highly-educated, sometimes having never left their home-town in their lives, but the ease with which they were swept into a brutal, inhumane and frankly illegal system is a salutary one. The frightening thing is how easily this could be any of us whatever we might like to think.
The very coolness of the narrative and dispassionate prose is part of this story: no impassioned diatribes against the US or military systems, but the very analytical detachment is itself an indictment of what was allowed to happen.
And the photos themselves? This book doesn't reproduce them. Most people picking up this book I guess will be doing so on the back of the photos and other media exposures, but while I applaud the author's decision not to encourage the continued voyeuristic exploitation inherent in photographing such atrocities in such a mundane and almost touristic way, I kind of regret it too. They're already out there, and the book does enable you to see them in a slightly different light.
As other reviewers have said this is an important story, brilliantly and unsensationally told. What that cost the author emotionally I can only guess - but the result is a book which really is critical reading for all of us.
September 13, 2018
I wanted Pete to read this great book all about how they put the screws to those suckers in Abu Dhabi or wherever the fuck, figured it’s about time we crank this investigation up a couple notches. Only it took a long time to find him cause it was his day off or something. I told the boys to drag him out of bed if they have to, and don’t be too nice about it either. Guess they dragged him out of the crapper instead, turns out the guy spent all night pukin’ his lousy head off, didn’t even finish reading those emails. That’s why I never eat that White House slop. CARRY-OUT ONLY! I told Pete if he’s in this with me he’s in it all the way, made myself crystal fuckin’ clear. Told him he could learn a lot from the folks in this book. Rummy’s guys sure knew how to get the job done, real pros, you wouldn’t believe some of the shit those freaks thought up. I sent Pete out to get some wires and stuff and we’re gonna take it for a spin around here. Can’t wait to see the look on Kellyanne’s gruesome mug when I pull out that hood!
June 12, 2008
Saw the documentary, then read the book, and the book provided context that Errol Morris' film did not. Morris is mainly critical of the low-ranking soldiers who performed these tortures, and Gourevitch places most of the blame on higher-ups, military intelligence. If you think you're going to gain some insight into why this torture happened, you're not, really.
I am struck by how little the players involved seem to understand why they did what they did. And how at the end of the day, there was really no hero in this story - no one who was willing to call it wrong. I'm glad I read this, but I'm also glad I've finished reading it. Hopeless. Sad. Et cetera.
I am struck by how little the players involved seem to understand why they did what they did. And how at the end of the day, there was really no hero in this story - no one who was willing to call it wrong. I'm glad I read this, but I'm also glad I've finished reading it. Hopeless. Sad. Et cetera.
November 10, 2008
STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE
By Philip Gourevitch and Errol Morris
While the general public in this country is somewhat knowledgeable of the prolonged agonies of the ongoing Iraq War, few of us are as acutely aware of the dark cloud of atrocities accompanying that war. Information about the 'progress' and purpose of that war are parceled out by the somewhat restricted media, the more serious and sad aspects of what is actually happening are scrutinized before the media releases that information, leaving us with a generalized anxiety about conditions and prognostications of the conflict that has so little support from the public at present. Too often this 'protective shield' from the facts allows a certain degree of near complacency, and it takes the intermittent release of data such as the unveiling of the atrocities and prisoner abuse at the hands of American soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison that surfaced through blogs and magazines and newspapers to startle the public and remind us of the grim aspects that war can drive countries and individuals to perform. Yes, similar startle reaction accompanied the My Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War and the books and films that followed that event alerted the public of the realities that can happen in wartime. But it takes an important book such as STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE written by Philip Gourevitch with invaluable insights and interviews from co-author Errol Morris who created the film STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE to bring to our careful scrutiny just what is happening and what is possible under the guise of 'protection' in time of war.
Gourevitch wisely divides this book into three sections - 'Before', 'During' and 'After; - which allows the reader to absorb the events leading up to the creation of the Abu Ghraib prison, introducing the people involved in transforming this dank and pungent edifice housing Saddam Hussein's own grim prison and execution house into a 'redesigned' American prison. We meet the contractors, the military personnel from the officers down to the soldiers assigned to guard the detainee prisoners, to the prisoners themselves, and it is this thorough approach to reportage that engenders confidence in the writing and makes every riveting page of this immensely important and terrifying account sear the reader's eye. Photographs, such as those that flooded the blogsites and media for a brief moment a few years ago, can create a visceral impression, but Gourevitch's choice to exclude the visuals from his evaluation of Abu Ghraib and the inhumane atrocities perpetrated by our own soldiers on the prisoners makes his book even more disturbing.
The use of letters home by the soldiers witnessing and taking part in the torture and 'interrogation techniques', letters and interviews supplied by Errol Morris from his research for his documentary film, allow us to hear about the situation first hand. Gourevitch is careful not to press his thumb on the scales that weigh the balance of 'indicated' and 'not indicated' actions and his doing so makes the reading all the more vivid. He allows us to observe how the situation arose, what actually happened there, and the repercussions and cover-up of the full story once the activities within the walls of that now infamous prison leaked out. This is a book that should be read by all citizens of this country (and of all countries who engage in war) to remind us all just how distorted and tested the state of humanity can become when the umbrella of 'war' alters human behavior that at times only retrospection (such as this book supplies) unveils. STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE is an important document and a fascinating, if grim, read. Highly Recommended.
Grady Harp,
By Philip Gourevitch and Errol Morris
While the general public in this country is somewhat knowledgeable of the prolonged agonies of the ongoing Iraq War, few of us are as acutely aware of the dark cloud of atrocities accompanying that war. Information about the 'progress' and purpose of that war are parceled out by the somewhat restricted media, the more serious and sad aspects of what is actually happening are scrutinized before the media releases that information, leaving us with a generalized anxiety about conditions and prognostications of the conflict that has so little support from the public at present. Too often this 'protective shield' from the facts allows a certain degree of near complacency, and it takes the intermittent release of data such as the unveiling of the atrocities and prisoner abuse at the hands of American soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison that surfaced through blogs and magazines and newspapers to startle the public and remind us of the grim aspects that war can drive countries and individuals to perform. Yes, similar startle reaction accompanied the My Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War and the books and films that followed that event alerted the public of the realities that can happen in wartime. But it takes an important book such as STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE written by Philip Gourevitch with invaluable insights and interviews from co-author Errol Morris who created the film STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE to bring to our careful scrutiny just what is happening and what is possible under the guise of 'protection' in time of war.
Gourevitch wisely divides this book into three sections - 'Before', 'During' and 'After; - which allows the reader to absorb the events leading up to the creation of the Abu Ghraib prison, introducing the people involved in transforming this dank and pungent edifice housing Saddam Hussein's own grim prison and execution house into a 'redesigned' American prison. We meet the contractors, the military personnel from the officers down to the soldiers assigned to guard the detainee prisoners, to the prisoners themselves, and it is this thorough approach to reportage that engenders confidence in the writing and makes every riveting page of this immensely important and terrifying account sear the reader's eye. Photographs, such as those that flooded the blogsites and media for a brief moment a few years ago, can create a visceral impression, but Gourevitch's choice to exclude the visuals from his evaluation of Abu Ghraib and the inhumane atrocities perpetrated by our own soldiers on the prisoners makes his book even more disturbing.
The use of letters home by the soldiers witnessing and taking part in the torture and 'interrogation techniques', letters and interviews supplied by Errol Morris from his research for his documentary film, allow us to hear about the situation first hand. Gourevitch is careful not to press his thumb on the scales that weigh the balance of 'indicated' and 'not indicated' actions and his doing so makes the reading all the more vivid. He allows us to observe how the situation arose, what actually happened there, and the repercussions and cover-up of the full story once the activities within the walls of that now infamous prison leaked out. This is a book that should be read by all citizens of this country (and of all countries who engage in war) to remind us all just how distorted and tested the state of humanity can become when the umbrella of 'war' alters human behavior that at times only retrospection (such as this book supplies) unveils. STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE is an important document and a fascinating, if grim, read. Highly Recommended.
Grady Harp,
October 6, 2018
This was poorly done, and serves best as a sample of the low quality of journalism in USA. (The relatively high ratings serve as an example of low standard people expect.). The author's sources are limited to a small number of enlisted personnel who were relatively free to talk because they their prosecutions, if not their sentences, had been completed. No commissioned officers were interviewed, and no prisoners or their family members or other community members were interviewed either. It is understandable the officers involved would not talk; they knew they were factually guilty of negligence at the very minimum, and actually far more. It is understandable that, as USAns, it would have been dangerous for the authors and the interpreters they would have needed to interview the victims and other locals. But, why did the authors not interview subject matter experts: people who understood the cultures and subcultures of Iraq, and the same for the U.S. military? What about people who understood basic principles of good policing, interrogation, running a prison and running a POW facility, US military law, international law, Iraq law, US law, the ethics of medical practice, the history of the the U.S. and Iraq at war since the early 1980s, or IS military training doctrine? The authors apparently did not even read secondary sources on these subjects. (I do note one MI contractor did discuss interrogation with some knowledge, he even mentioned Scharff of the Luftwaffe although not Moran of the Marines. And one of the featured guards had experience as a prison guard, but not necessarily as a good one.)
The authors were minimally judgmental. But, it is only after 200 pages we find any dissenting viewpoint from the perpetrators ' viewpoint that what they did was to save lives. Tim Dugan said they were wrong about interrogation. What was never stated was that saving the life of one U.S. killer likely resulted in roughly 100 more dead Iraqi civilians.
The incidents described here should raise many tough and disturbing questions. The authors only hint at a few, and answer none.
The authors were minimally judgmental. But, it is only after 200 pages we find any dissenting viewpoint from the perpetrators ' viewpoint that what they did was to save lives. Tim Dugan said they were wrong about interrogation. What was never stated was that saving the life of one U.S. killer likely resulted in roughly 100 more dead Iraqi civilians.
The incidents described here should raise many tough and disturbing questions. The authors only hint at a few, and answer none.
March 8, 2012
A quote from the final chapter that argues that Abu Ghraib was but a microcosm of the ineptitude of the war itself :
"But above all, it was the posing soldiers, mugging for their buddies' cameras while dominating the prisoners in trophy stances, that gave the photographs the sense of unruly and unmediated reality. The staging was part of the reality they documented. And the grins, the thumbs-up, the arms crossed over puffed-out chests-all this unseemly swagger and self-regard was the height of amateurism. These soldier-photographers stood, at once, inside and outside the events they recorded, watching themselves take part in the spectacle, and their decision not to conceal but to reveal what they were doing indicated that they were not just amateur photographers, but amateur torturers...the amateurism was not merely a formal dimension of the Abu Ghraib pictures, It was part of their content, part of what we saw in them, and it corresponded to an aspect of the Iraq War that troubled and baffled nearly everyone: the reckless and slapdash ineptitude with which it had been prosecuted...what had been billed as a war of ideas and ideals had been exposed as a war of poses and posturing..."
And for all who continue to maintain, that we didn't and don't torture? Read the book! Read what the soldiers themselves admitted to doing in the interviews with the authors...and if you STILL think its not torture, ask yourself this question: Would you want it done to your son or daughter?
"But above all, it was the posing soldiers, mugging for their buddies' cameras while dominating the prisoners in trophy stances, that gave the photographs the sense of unruly and unmediated reality. The staging was part of the reality they documented. And the grins, the thumbs-up, the arms crossed over puffed-out chests-all this unseemly swagger and self-regard was the height of amateurism. These soldier-photographers stood, at once, inside and outside the events they recorded, watching themselves take part in the spectacle, and their decision not to conceal but to reveal what they were doing indicated that they were not just amateur photographers, but amateur torturers...the amateurism was not merely a formal dimension of the Abu Ghraib pictures, It was part of their content, part of what we saw in them, and it corresponded to an aspect of the Iraq War that troubled and baffled nearly everyone: the reckless and slapdash ineptitude with which it had been prosecuted...what had been billed as a war of ideas and ideals had been exposed as a war of poses and posturing..."
And for all who continue to maintain, that we didn't and don't torture? Read the book! Read what the soldiers themselves admitted to doing in the interviews with the authors...and if you STILL think its not torture, ask yourself this question: Would you want it done to your son or daughter?
March 13, 2016
This book make me cried. From line to line when they described the torture and how the prisoner response to it, I couldn't wait to flip next page and be done with it. I read this book with the purpose of trying to listen two sides of horrible story that occurs in Abu Ghraib. I was wrong. I found 2 sides of it but whether the American soldier side make a convincing argument why they did those things, it troubled me. You can't blame the weather, lack of bureaucracy,unclear chain of command and getting bombed every there to humiliate those prisoners. The humanity and rationality seems lost in those who stayed in abu Ghraib. You came to their country and expect no retaliation from their country? of course, there will be a retaliation. The whole fight violence with violence is sickening. The reason I settled for 4 stars because the honesty those officers had in their interview. They are just an officer trying to do their job and got into wrong direction of the blind faith to the higher command (though it against their morality). This is a good book with a content that I couldn't stomach due to excessive violence acts.
October 24, 2014
Amazing. Gourevitch wrote the book based on Errol Morris' movie. Just like in Fog of War, I found myself sympathizing with perpetrators of war crimes. I remember being upset with the people in the Abu Ghraib photos for doing that. This book shed light on the systemic issues that led to those pictures, and reports from the photographers about why they were doing it. And does so without making excuses for anyone.
Read
January 1, 2017a certain remove that comes from being written from secondary sources.
July 23, 2021
I will start by saying that this is a very informative book and gives some much needed context to the history, structure, and functioning of the American prison at Abu Ghraib.
While it is certainly an interesting read, the author's editorializing and apologetic stance towards the implicated soldiers can be frustrating. The story of the acts committed at Abu Ghraib is one that all Americans should know. The harrowing photos of abused Iraqis winged by smiling American faces should be burned into our collective memory and never forgotten. The government who pushed for unethical treatment and torture should never be allowed to rehabilitate its image as long as its victims and their children still live with its consequences. Gourevitch seems to believe that the "big picture" stops at military brass skating responsibility for these atrocities and that these poor soldiers were "just following orders." In reality, the big picture is that war crimes were committed by US forces as a part of a larger, unjust war started by lying politicians which ended with hundreds of thousands dead and new insurgent armies terrorizing the region. Abu Ghraib is a perfect representation of the cocky, inhumane, and impersonal way which the US blasted through Iraq. Now, there are some caveats. Were the soldiers in a bad place? Yes. Were they coerced by nameless individuals who committed worse acts? Yes. Should all others responsible who escaped detection be tried and punished? Of course. However, even the most left-leaning abolitionist perspectives on corrections would not allow these soldiers, who took pictures smiling and using Iraqi prisoners to relieve stress, to act with impunity. The maximum sentence handed down was 10 years. A kid in America who steals a car might find himself in prison for longer, even if no physical harm was done to the victim. For these reasons I could not stand the constant justifications of the soldiers turned criminal offenders interviewed and of Gourevitch himself.
Perhaps I misunderstood this message. Perhaps Gourevitch is simply stating that the story of Abu Ghraib does not end with these people and their incarceration. If this is the case he is absolutely right. I personally believe that Everyone implicated in this case, from the lowest soldier to Donald Rumsfeld (rest in piss) and George W. Bush should be investigated and put on trial (if only). But I cannot help but have a sour taste in my mouth as Gourevitch goes on and on about military families, orders and hierarchy, juxtaposed against the words of abusive military police turned prison guards who admit to abusing their prisoners and often times refuse to state that their actions were wrong. This is not always the case, some show remorse, but the vast majority only regret their actions because it made them social pariahs. If Gourevitch truly believes that these individuals are just victims of a system, then he ignores their words in favor of an argument that oddly takes the side of war criminals.
While it is certainly an interesting read, the author's editorializing and apologetic stance towards the implicated soldiers can be frustrating. The story of the acts committed at Abu Ghraib is one that all Americans should know. The harrowing photos of abused Iraqis winged by smiling American faces should be burned into our collective memory and never forgotten. The government who pushed for unethical treatment and torture should never be allowed to rehabilitate its image as long as its victims and their children still live with its consequences. Gourevitch seems to believe that the "big picture" stops at military brass skating responsibility for these atrocities and that these poor soldiers were "just following orders." In reality, the big picture is that war crimes were committed by US forces as a part of a larger, unjust war started by lying politicians which ended with hundreds of thousands dead and new insurgent armies terrorizing the region. Abu Ghraib is a perfect representation of the cocky, inhumane, and impersonal way which the US blasted through Iraq. Now, there are some caveats. Were the soldiers in a bad place? Yes. Were they coerced by nameless individuals who committed worse acts? Yes. Should all others responsible who escaped detection be tried and punished? Of course. However, even the most left-leaning abolitionist perspectives on corrections would not allow these soldiers, who took pictures smiling and using Iraqi prisoners to relieve stress, to act with impunity. The maximum sentence handed down was 10 years. A kid in America who steals a car might find himself in prison for longer, even if no physical harm was done to the victim. For these reasons I could not stand the constant justifications of the soldiers turned criminal offenders interviewed and of Gourevitch himself.
Perhaps I misunderstood this message. Perhaps Gourevitch is simply stating that the story of Abu Ghraib does not end with these people and their incarceration. If this is the case he is absolutely right. I personally believe that Everyone implicated in this case, from the lowest soldier to Donald Rumsfeld (rest in piss) and George W. Bush should be investigated and put on trial (if only). But I cannot help but have a sour taste in my mouth as Gourevitch goes on and on about military families, orders and hierarchy, juxtaposed against the words of abusive military police turned prison guards who admit to abusing their prisoners and often times refuse to state that their actions were wrong. This is not always the case, some show remorse, but the vast majority only regret their actions because it made them social pariahs. If Gourevitch truly believes that these individuals are just victims of a system, then he ignores their words in favor of an argument that oddly takes the side of war criminals.
July 23, 2023
4.8/5: gives all the information you need
To state the obvious: this book is horrifying.
Anyway, this is going to sound very weird as a compliment to a writing style, but this is written like a government audit. Gourevitch writes like a man who knows, down to the letter, the criteria/condition/cause/effect that led to the torture at Abu Ghraib prison, and gives you every piece of info you need to know. His showing of the root cause behind it all (basically no SOPs, and a really awful work environment) gives you an understanding that it wasn't just (...emphasis on "just") awful people doing awful things in a vacuum. Descriptions of the frathouse of horrors Abu Ghraib became are straightforward but descriptive. There's no need for the author to go "wow, this was bad," because the reader can see how bad it is already.
And Morris has a flair of just getting people to talk, digging themselves a big old hole, which weaves into the narrative perfectly here. For the 7 main MPs convicted in this case, the authors give you uninterrupted paragraphs of their understanding of SOPs, their jobs, their backgrounds, their photos, and the awful things they did. Usually this style doesn't work and feels lazy, but in this almost documentary-style book, it's perfect, making you feel like they're trying to convince just you. There's a rant in here from an interrogator that is beautifully said, with no interruptions. It basically feels like "Ordinary Men," another phenomenal book, but straight from the source.
And, like all good narratives, it doesn't yell at you "LET ME EXPLAIN THIS EVEN MORE," a real pet peeve of mine especially found in contemporary political writings (or even fiction ones). It's all show, no tell. You get how you feel about each person based on context, reading between the lines, checking for unreliable narrators yourself. It's very freeing. One part in particular, where the convicted describe the whistle-blower, is a small horrifying angle in itself, showing a sort of "snitches get stitches" rule that explains why whistle-blowers don't whistleblow more, all being written in a way where it's not beaten over your head with over-explanation. Great writing style.
To state the obvious: this book is horrifying.
Anyway, this is going to sound very weird as a compliment to a writing style, but this is written like a government audit. Gourevitch writes like a man who knows, down to the letter, the criteria/condition/cause/effect that led to the torture at Abu Ghraib prison, and gives you every piece of info you need to know. His showing of the root cause behind it all (basically no SOPs, and a really awful work environment) gives you an understanding that it wasn't just (...emphasis on "just") awful people doing awful things in a vacuum. Descriptions of the frathouse of horrors Abu Ghraib became are straightforward but descriptive. There's no need for the author to go "wow, this was bad," because the reader can see how bad it is already.
And Morris has a flair of just getting people to talk, digging themselves a big old hole, which weaves into the narrative perfectly here. For the 7 main MPs convicted in this case, the authors give you uninterrupted paragraphs of their understanding of SOPs, their jobs, their backgrounds, their photos, and the awful things they did. Usually this style doesn't work and feels lazy, but in this almost documentary-style book, it's perfect, making you feel like they're trying to convince just you. There's a rant in here from an interrogator that is beautifully said, with no interruptions. It basically feels like "Ordinary Men," another phenomenal book, but straight from the source.
And, like all good narratives, it doesn't yell at you "LET ME EXPLAIN THIS EVEN MORE," a real pet peeve of mine especially found in contemporary political writings (or even fiction ones). It's all show, no tell. You get how you feel about each person based on context, reading between the lines, checking for unreliable narrators yourself. It's very freeing. One part in particular, where the convicted describe the whistle-blower, is a small horrifying angle in itself, showing a sort of "snitches get stitches" rule that explains why whistle-blowers don't whistleblow more, all being written in a way where it's not beaten over your head with over-explanation. Great writing style.
December 1, 2021
Hard to rate a book that is hard to read because of its tough true topic. This book tells about Abu Ghraib prison and the brutalities the prisoner's endured at the hands of American military guards. Many of the guards claim they were merely following "Standard Operating Procedure". I appreciate that there is a chain of command to be followed and that war and its aftermath is not pretty; however, the atrocities are disturbing. They reminded me of crimes committed by the Nazis during WWII or those which happened in the Russian Gulags. Shocking reminders of humanity's depravity. Eye opening book for sure--and it increases this reader's sense of powerlessness.
Sartre's quotation, which opens the final part of the book, resonates with me:
"Happy are those who died withiout having to ask themselves, "If they tear out my fingernails, will I talk?"
But even happier are others, barely out of childhood, who have not had to ask themselves the OTHER question: "If my friends, fellow soldiers, and leaders tear out an enemy's fingernails in my presence, what will I do?"
Sartre's quotation, which opens the final part of the book, resonates with me:
"Happy are those who died withiout having to ask themselves, "If they tear out my fingernails, will I talk?"
But even happier are others, barely out of childhood, who have not had to ask themselves the OTHER question: "If my friends, fellow soldiers, and leaders tear out an enemy's fingernails in my presence, what will I do?"
July 24, 2022
Some of the worst human atrocities arise from lack of oversight, whether intentional or accidental. Abu Ghraib was clearly just such an atrocity. This doesn’t offer a lot of analysis or philosophical reasoning outside of quotations from interviewed personnel, but in the gritty details you get a true understanding of the horrible acts committed in the name of American ideals, and the blind eye the military and political command structure turned as it handed down orders to commit them.
December 6, 2024
Completely glorifies the role of the MPs and doesn't consider the fact that their motivations were driven by the stigma against islam. The dehumanisation of muslims and the greater middle east was a huge factor as to why their lives were seen as so disposable and why they were abused in such a demonic and barbaric way
May 10, 2019
Incredibly insightful book
March 7, 2020
This is the extremely rare case in which the movie (a documentary) was better.
April 19, 2022
Insightful, but not quite what I was expecting.
April 16, 2024
This is an authoritative account of all the abuse at Abu Ghraib. It injects just enough philosophy about the whole scandal to be poignant. A solid read.
June 24, 2025
It feels strange to give this five stars, but it’s a harrowing, in depth account with commentary about why some of the images were so compelling. Very well researched
October 6, 2025
Wonderfully depictive. Fast paced and interesting.
July 15, 2013
A devastating book, both in its depiction of genuinely rancid individual behavior in an awful time and place and the ways in which those in charge promoted said behavior in a myriad of ways (from the tone created by George W. Bush's Iraqi War rhetoric, which filtered its way to every level of the military, to ghost-like military interrogators who freely moved in and out of Abu Ghraib and who made it known they wanted the prisoners softened up to the seemingly endless run of mid-level soldiers who knew what was going on and gave implicit permission by not only not complaining, but by not even reacting to (pick one) naked men on leashes, pyramids of naked humanity, men beaten, intimidated by dogs, forced to crawl through filth, men who soiled themselves, men who bled and died). What's most impressive is the subtlety of Gourevitch's approach here, he gets a lot of mileage out of the distance between the behavior of the people involved in taking the infamous photographs and what they say now of the incidents. He never overtly addresses this dichotomy but it hangs over much of the book and it's a complex brew of rationalization, hubris, self-justification of truly odious, inhuman behavior, and genuine sadness and regret over what they'd done. The book paints the whole "one bad apple" notion as impossibly simplistic and self-righteous, not just by laying out the case for explicit and implicit orders from above, but by laying bare the involved soldiers' fears and confusions, their inability to figure out where the morality line resides. How do young men and women trained to do exactly what they're told figure out when some imaginary line is crossed and even if they do, how do they do something about it in the face of a military bureaucracy that is wink winking its way past the torture?
And though judicious in his overt analysis of the situation, Gourevitch writes some startlingly good passages. He carefully lays out the case for why Bush/Cheney and gang invaded Iraq in the first place and not because of phantom WMDs, but because of a belief in the inherent superiority of our cultural mindset. We are the remaining superpower, America stands for all things right and true, for the collective freedom of man - for democracy and doing the right thing - and we were going to bring these values to a morally compromised backwater. And by doing so, Gourevitch makes the case for Abu Ghraib as THE central metaphor for the whole awful enterprise, a place where every instinct, both personal and collective, turns out to be not just wrong, but morally, criminally so. Near the end of the book he writes about a prisoner known as AQ (an Iraqi believed, wrongly it turned out - this comes up again and again, how often the tortured turned out to be regular Iraqis picked up in large sweeps -- to be Al Queda) being terrorized by dogs, "It does not seem possible to amplify the drama of this moment, but the look on AQ's face does just that. He has the horrified, drawn-back, and quivering expression of a thoroughly blasted soul." Gourevitch ends this paragraph with this, "The pictures of AQ on that night before New Year's Eve are the last known photographs of our prisoners on the MI block at Abu Ghraib, which seems fitting, because these pictures don't leave much to the viewer's imagination, except the obvious question: if you fight terror with terror, how can you tell which is which."
And then there's this, which is to my mind the central passage of the entire book: "So the amateurism was not merely a formal dimension of the Abu Ghraib pictures. It was part of their content, part of what we saw in them, and it corresponded to an aspect of the Iraq war that troubled and baffled nearly everyone: the reckless and slapdash ineptitude with which it had been prosecuted. It was an amateur-run war, a murky and incoherent war. It was not clear why it was waged; too many reasons were given, none had help up, and the stories we invented to explain it to ourselves hardly seemed to matter, since once it was started the war had become its own engine - not a means to an end but an end in itself. What had been billed as a war of ideas and ideas had been exposed as a war of poses and posturing. It was our image versus the enemy's, a standard, in this case, by which it was easy to stoop appallingly low before being caught out. The Abu Ghraib photographs caught us out."
Thus does Abu Ghraib come to seem the ultimate representation of the Bush/Cheney approach to the war, an approach based on an abstraction and a belief that they were doing 'the right thing.'
This is an important book and one that I think will over time come to be one of THE central books of this war. Gourevitch's interpretations of what the photographs show and what they don't (the easy ways in which photos can deceive us) pushes it into a literary realm that few books like this approach and comes to make the whole idea of objective truth seem a part of the problem.
And though judicious in his overt analysis of the situation, Gourevitch writes some startlingly good passages. He carefully lays out the case for why Bush/Cheney and gang invaded Iraq in the first place and not because of phantom WMDs, but because of a belief in the inherent superiority of our cultural mindset. We are the remaining superpower, America stands for all things right and true, for the collective freedom of man - for democracy and doing the right thing - and we were going to bring these values to a morally compromised backwater. And by doing so, Gourevitch makes the case for Abu Ghraib as THE central metaphor for the whole awful enterprise, a place where every instinct, both personal and collective, turns out to be not just wrong, but morally, criminally so. Near the end of the book he writes about a prisoner known as AQ (an Iraqi believed, wrongly it turned out - this comes up again and again, how often the tortured turned out to be regular Iraqis picked up in large sweeps -- to be Al Queda) being terrorized by dogs, "It does not seem possible to amplify the drama of this moment, but the look on AQ's face does just that. He has the horrified, drawn-back, and quivering expression of a thoroughly blasted soul." Gourevitch ends this paragraph with this, "The pictures of AQ on that night before New Year's Eve are the last known photographs of our prisoners on the MI block at Abu Ghraib, which seems fitting, because these pictures don't leave much to the viewer's imagination, except the obvious question: if you fight terror with terror, how can you tell which is which."
And then there's this, which is to my mind the central passage of the entire book: "So the amateurism was not merely a formal dimension of the Abu Ghraib pictures. It was part of their content, part of what we saw in them, and it corresponded to an aspect of the Iraq war that troubled and baffled nearly everyone: the reckless and slapdash ineptitude with which it had been prosecuted. It was an amateur-run war, a murky and incoherent war. It was not clear why it was waged; too many reasons were given, none had help up, and the stories we invented to explain it to ourselves hardly seemed to matter, since once it was started the war had become its own engine - not a means to an end but an end in itself. What had been billed as a war of ideas and ideas had been exposed as a war of poses and posturing. It was our image versus the enemy's, a standard, in this case, by which it was easy to stoop appallingly low before being caught out. The Abu Ghraib photographs caught us out."
Thus does Abu Ghraib come to seem the ultimate representation of the Bush/Cheney approach to the war, an approach based on an abstraction and a belief that they were doing 'the right thing.'
This is an important book and one that I think will over time come to be one of THE central books of this war. Gourevitch's interpretations of what the photographs show and what they don't (the easy ways in which photos can deceive us) pushes it into a literary realm that few books like this approach and comes to make the whole idea of objective truth seem a part of the problem.
Read
June 22, 2009Read the STOP SMILING interview excerpt with filmmaker Errol Morris
THE ELEVEN-MINUTE PSYCHIATRIST
By James Hughes
(This interview originally appeared in STOP SMILING The Documentary Issue)
What follows is a brief excerpt from our extensive cover story interview with Errol Morris, the groundbreaking filmmaker behind such works as Gates of Heaven (1980), The Thin Blue Line (1988) and the Oscar-winner The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara (2004). The full interview with Morris appears in Issue 25: The Documentary Issue.
Stop Smiling: Is it difficult for you to choose your next project?
Errol Morris: When I was in graduate school studying philosophy, a friend of mine said, “There's really only one philosophical question: what to do next.” I have these endless ideas about what to do. I came out of the Academy Award, which is now a number of years back, wanting to make features and wanting to apply myself to that whole process. But it can take years to get these projects off the ground. You keep telling yourself, Well, I'm not going to fall into the traditional Hollywood trap. Easier said than done. One project that I still very much want to make involves the theft of Einstein's brain, and my hope is that that is going to come together this year. Plus there are documentaries I'm interested in. I'm also interested in writing more articles and editorials now. I seem like this guy who's constantly sticking his toe in the water. I promised myself — of course I'm a rat-faced liar, and mostly to myself, I might add — but I promised myself that I wouldn't make another documentary. To ensure that, I promised myself that I would stop interviewing people. It's like a 12-step program of withdrawing from this kind of work. But, for whatever reason, I have this need or compulsion to interview people. So I started again. I got these interviews that, unfortunately, really interested me, and suggest they should be put together in a film. Horror of horrors.
SS: What always brings you back to documentaries?
EM: Part of what I love about documentary is this idea that you can reinvent the form every time you make one. And you can create visuals that are really strange. They're not reenactments, per se. They're not show-and-tell. They're, properly speaking, impressionistic. They're dreamscapes that you're creating to go with interview material. Even today, people somehow — although I think this is much less so than just 10 or 15 years ago — people think of documentary as being one thing. For a long time, people thought of the medium as a species of the news, of journalism, with its own kind of rules and requirements. We look at them differently because — unlike fiction films — they make a claim, namely that they are about reality. And as such we can ask questions about claims that they make. For example, are they true or false?
Recently I've shifted from using film to using the Sony 24P high-definition camera. It's quite interesting as well. My limitations used to be that 400 feet of 16mm film and 1000 feet of 35mm is roughly 11 minutes. So I would be an 11-minute psychiatrist. While people were talking, I always knew when the film magazine was running out. I knew when those 11 minutes were, instinctively. Then you have to take the magazine off, you have to reslate. There are constant breaks in the material, but that's how all my films were made, up to The Fog of War. With these new cameras, you can be shooting forever. They're like VCRs: you eject the cassette and put another cassette in. That takes a matter of seconds. Or what I often do is have two decks running, and I seamlessly shift decks. Cassettes are 80 minutes long, and you can shoot without stopping for hours and hours. This really started with “First Person,” where I started doing marathon interviews. The best example of that is Rick Rosner [a male stripper with a genius IQ who became a disgruntled contestant on “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”:]. I was talking to Rosner for I don't even know how many hours. It was one of the strangest interviews I've ever done. I think we ended up with probably 12 or 13 hours of material. I started hallucinating by the end of the interview, and I thought Rosner might've been hallucinating as well. It's my principle that when the going gets fucked up, the fucked-up getting going. It's become my new MO. “Would you mind if I interviewed you for 27 hours?” Although I'm usually more guarded about revealing this information from the outset.
Read the complete interview excerpt...
THE ELEVEN-MINUTE PSYCHIATRIST
By James Hughes
(This interview originally appeared in STOP SMILING The Documentary Issue)
What follows is a brief excerpt from our extensive cover story interview with Errol Morris, the groundbreaking filmmaker behind such works as Gates of Heaven (1980), The Thin Blue Line (1988) and the Oscar-winner The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara (2004). The full interview with Morris appears in Issue 25: The Documentary Issue.
Stop Smiling: Is it difficult for you to choose your next project?
Errol Morris: When I was in graduate school studying philosophy, a friend of mine said, “There's really only one philosophical question: what to do next.” I have these endless ideas about what to do. I came out of the Academy Award, which is now a number of years back, wanting to make features and wanting to apply myself to that whole process. But it can take years to get these projects off the ground. You keep telling yourself, Well, I'm not going to fall into the traditional Hollywood trap. Easier said than done. One project that I still very much want to make involves the theft of Einstein's brain, and my hope is that that is going to come together this year. Plus there are documentaries I'm interested in. I'm also interested in writing more articles and editorials now. I seem like this guy who's constantly sticking his toe in the water. I promised myself — of course I'm a rat-faced liar, and mostly to myself, I might add — but I promised myself that I wouldn't make another documentary. To ensure that, I promised myself that I would stop interviewing people. It's like a 12-step program of withdrawing from this kind of work. But, for whatever reason, I have this need or compulsion to interview people. So I started again. I got these interviews that, unfortunately, really interested me, and suggest they should be put together in a film. Horror of horrors.
SS: What always brings you back to documentaries?
EM: Part of what I love about documentary is this idea that you can reinvent the form every time you make one. And you can create visuals that are really strange. They're not reenactments, per se. They're not show-and-tell. They're, properly speaking, impressionistic. They're dreamscapes that you're creating to go with interview material. Even today, people somehow — although I think this is much less so than just 10 or 15 years ago — people think of documentary as being one thing. For a long time, people thought of the medium as a species of the news, of journalism, with its own kind of rules and requirements. We look at them differently because — unlike fiction films — they make a claim, namely that they are about reality. And as such we can ask questions about claims that they make. For example, are they true or false?
Recently I've shifted from using film to using the Sony 24P high-definition camera. It's quite interesting as well. My limitations used to be that 400 feet of 16mm film and 1000 feet of 35mm is roughly 11 minutes. So I would be an 11-minute psychiatrist. While people were talking, I always knew when the film magazine was running out. I knew when those 11 minutes were, instinctively. Then you have to take the magazine off, you have to reslate. There are constant breaks in the material, but that's how all my films were made, up to The Fog of War. With these new cameras, you can be shooting forever. They're like VCRs: you eject the cassette and put another cassette in. That takes a matter of seconds. Or what I often do is have two decks running, and I seamlessly shift decks. Cassettes are 80 minutes long, and you can shoot without stopping for hours and hours. This really started with “First Person,” where I started doing marathon interviews. The best example of that is Rick Rosner [a male stripper with a genius IQ who became a disgruntled contestant on “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”:]. I was talking to Rosner for I don't even know how many hours. It was one of the strangest interviews I've ever done. I think we ended up with probably 12 or 13 hours of material. I started hallucinating by the end of the interview, and I thought Rosner might've been hallucinating as well. It's my principle that when the going gets fucked up, the fucked-up getting going. It's become my new MO. “Would you mind if I interviewed you for 27 hours?” Although I'm usually more guarded about revealing this information from the outset.
Read the complete interview excerpt...
March 15, 2017
Meticulously researched, this account of Abu Graib prison in Iraq is a must read to understand much of the current disquiet in the Middle East. It should be compulsory reading for every politician and aspiring politician.
April 21, 2012
Proviso: I haven’t seen Errol Morris’ film. I hear it’s great though.
I come to this book knowing little - too little - about the Abu Ghraib abuses. As far as information goes, it was a discrete, easy-to-process bit of piecemeal: please file under ‘hypocritical American policies’ and ‘ha-I-told-you-so’s. Another in a long, time-worn opprobrious national malfeasances. My Lai. Iran-Contra. Gitmo. Abu Ghraib. No one thought much about it - myself included - because it never seemed to demand understanding. That issues of such magnitude always bear that easy specious sheen of simplicity is too obvious a thought in hindsight.
The soldiers’ action weren’t singular (haphazard use of plurality here, I admit) acts of thoughtless cruelty. They aren’t hannibal incarnate. If they were, the acts would have ceased much sooner, and the culprits apprehended. That the dark curtain was lifted off this insidious act so late - so awkwardly - in production should’ve been the first indication.That such blatant violations of human rights should masquerade as standard procedure as long as it did (6 months, a year?) should have raised enough red flags to drive a Basque bull mad. But instead we - the media, the happily serendipitous army, we the public - turned it into a personal-interest story. Those fucking soldiers, eh. SOP brilliants dissects why: the photos. So revelatory; too revelatory: yet, not revelatory enough. They show, suggest, but only ever speak for moments. Not crucially the in betweens. They were visceral, but only in displaying the garnishes atop a most gruesome dish.
The central revelation in SOP isn’t so much surprising as it is sanguinely logical. You feel the conclusion looming as you go through the book; it’s an ominous weight that exerts itself upon every page. The humanity of the ‘perps’ resonates; they make the choices anyone would likely make. Their mistakes, in-so-far as it is 100% of personal impulse, are not so egregious as to deserve . People snapping, going absolute bat-shit crazy, is a possibility even at the most quotidian, banal of times; at Abu Ghraib, substitute for probability.
You feel for the soldiers even as you can’t excuse their actions; their fault, it seems, is to be human just as you are. You sympathize because you would have done the same. You too would have your mental foundations shaken by unremitting - literal and figurative - mortar fire; your instincts for ethics would too be infected by the irresistible contagion of nihilism. You know you could’ve been an Abu Ghraib torturer too, and that scares you. Lynndie England, Sabrina and Javal Davis and the rest of the indicted MPs: the cursed crew on 04’s Flying Dutchman, caught on the wrong place at the wrong time.
But enough about the content of the book; is the book itself, as a work of non-fiction, any good? I think the mark of good non-fiction is the introduction of fresh insight on the subject. I think Gourevitch managed this quite brilliantly. There were the macroscopic scoops: the way the army and its entire command structure - civilian big wigs included - gave implicit consent for the goings on at Abu Ghraib, only to hang the insiginificants below out to dry when the ineluctable expose came and went; then, the microscopic : the tenebrous monotony, the callousing of morality, the inevitable psychosis and self-rationalizations. My only qualm is the comparative lack of insight into the upper echelons: what exactly were their thought processes throughout the saga; why did they do what they did (or the lack thereof).
SOP isn’t an even-handed appraisal of the Abu Ghraib atrocities, but there are pretensions of otherwise. Its concern is the struggle of the soldiers at the ground level; everything/one else are peripherals - some are important peripherals, but peripherals nonetheless. But what it does, it does exceedingly well.
I come to this book knowing little - too little - about the Abu Ghraib abuses. As far as information goes, it was a discrete, easy-to-process bit of piecemeal: please file under ‘hypocritical American policies’ and ‘ha-I-told-you-so’s. Another in a long, time-worn opprobrious national malfeasances. My Lai. Iran-Contra. Gitmo. Abu Ghraib. No one thought much about it - myself included - because it never seemed to demand understanding. That issues of such magnitude always bear that easy specious sheen of simplicity is too obvious a thought in hindsight.
The soldiers’ action weren’t singular (haphazard use of plurality here, I admit) acts of thoughtless cruelty. They aren’t hannibal incarnate. If they were, the acts would have ceased much sooner, and the culprits apprehended. That the dark curtain was lifted off this insidious act so late - so awkwardly - in production should’ve been the first indication.That such blatant violations of human rights should masquerade as standard procedure as long as it did (6 months, a year?) should have raised enough red flags to drive a Basque bull mad. But instead we - the media, the happily serendipitous army, we the public - turned it into a personal-interest story. Those fucking soldiers, eh. SOP brilliants dissects why: the photos. So revelatory; too revelatory: yet, not revelatory enough. They show, suggest, but only ever speak for moments. Not crucially the in betweens. They were visceral, but only in displaying the garnishes atop a most gruesome dish.
The central revelation in SOP isn’t so much surprising as it is sanguinely logical. You feel the conclusion looming as you go through the book; it’s an ominous weight that exerts itself upon every page. The humanity of the ‘perps’ resonates; they make the choices anyone would likely make. Their mistakes, in-so-far as it is 100% of personal impulse, are not so egregious as to deserve . People snapping, going absolute bat-shit crazy, is a possibility even at the most quotidian, banal of times; at Abu Ghraib, substitute for probability.
You feel for the soldiers even as you can’t excuse their actions; their fault, it seems, is to be human just as you are. You sympathize because you would have done the same. You too would have your mental foundations shaken by unremitting - literal and figurative - mortar fire; your instincts for ethics would too be infected by the irresistible contagion of nihilism. You know you could’ve been an Abu Ghraib torturer too, and that scares you. Lynndie England, Sabrina and Javal Davis and the rest of the indicted MPs: the cursed crew on 04’s Flying Dutchman, caught on the wrong place at the wrong time.
But enough about the content of the book; is the book itself, as a work of non-fiction, any good? I think the mark of good non-fiction is the introduction of fresh insight on the subject. I think Gourevitch managed this quite brilliantly. There were the macroscopic scoops: the way the army and its entire command structure - civilian big wigs included - gave implicit consent for the goings on at Abu Ghraib, only to hang the insiginificants below out to dry when the ineluctable expose came and went; then, the microscopic : the tenebrous monotony, the callousing of morality, the inevitable psychosis and self-rationalizations. My only qualm is the comparative lack of insight into the upper echelons: what exactly were their thought processes throughout the saga; why did they do what they did (or the lack thereof).
SOP isn’t an even-handed appraisal of the Abu Ghraib atrocities, but there are pretensions of otherwise. Its concern is the struggle of the soldiers at the ground level; everything/one else are peripherals - some are important peripherals, but peripherals nonetheless. But what it does, it does exceedingly well.
July 8, 2012
I was tempted to set this book down quite a few times. This is not a vacation novel. This is not the book I wanted to be reading under the Eiffel Tower.
But once I got to Part II, "During," I couldn't not finish. The Ballad of Abu Ghraib is not a page-turner. I didn't really want to know what happened next. Watching an utter catastrophe unfold is hard, and for the first time in a while, closing this book didn't feel in some way cathartic or redemptive. I know that I will understand the situation better if I re-read it, but I have no idea when I'll have the emotional energy to do that again.
This is not a very persuasive review. Let me be clear: everyone should read this book, or at least dig into Abu Ghraib on their own. Philip Gourevitch unpacks how Abu Ghraib (and the Iraq War/War on Terror in general) was doomed to sloppy, costly, irreversible failure. Worse still: the agents that orchestrated that disaster were able to completely evade responsibility because the public saw photographs of violence and immediately attributed the entirety of the blame to the soldiers.
The first section, "Before," tells the story of how Abu Ghraib was transformed from Saddam Hussein's Iraqi death camp to an American-run Iraqi prison. It's a little disorienting, and I had difficulty keeping track of which military official or bureaucracy was in control of what part of the process, though that might be intentional. Regardless, the real story begins when Military Intelligence steps in and decides to use part of the prison, Tier 1, to interrogate "high-profile" prisoners (several of these prisoners end up being completely innocent--a cab driver near the area of a bombing, for example).
Soldiers from a military police unit received orders to run Abu Ghraib when they believed to be at the end of their tour. They received no training on guarding a prison, interacting with prisoners-of-war, or upholding the mandates of the Geneva Convention. Military leaders did not write or enforce any comprehensive standard operating procedure for the prison. Aside from the high-profile prisoners in Tier 1, Abu Ghraib was the receptacle for hundreds upon hundreds of Iraqis rounded up in mass arrests, as well as the wives and children of prisoners, who were used as collateral. Meanwhile, the prison was the target of daily mortar attacks that killed dozens of prisoners a week.
The soldiers who were charged were drastically undertrained and ordered by officials as high up as the Secretary of Defense to aid in intelligence gathering by any means necessary. Admittedly, I sometimes questioned Gourevitch's characterization of the military police unit: how sympathetic can we be to adults who knowingly tortured and abused prisoners, some of whom were completely innocent? Ultimately, though, those questions are pointless. The lesson that we should learn from Abu Ghraib is summarized succinctly in the "After" section: "The Iraq war... troubled and baffled nearly everyone: the reckless and slapdash ineptitude with which it had been prosecuted. It was an amateur-run war, a murky and incoherent war."
tl;dr a war that relies on disorganized vigilante justice is counter-productive and dangerous. Most of the Bush administration should be tried for war crimes.
But once I got to Part II, "During," I couldn't not finish. The Ballad of Abu Ghraib is not a page-turner. I didn't really want to know what happened next. Watching an utter catastrophe unfold is hard, and for the first time in a while, closing this book didn't feel in some way cathartic or redemptive. I know that I will understand the situation better if I re-read it, but I have no idea when I'll have the emotional energy to do that again.
This is not a very persuasive review. Let me be clear: everyone should read this book, or at least dig into Abu Ghraib on their own. Philip Gourevitch unpacks how Abu Ghraib (and the Iraq War/War on Terror in general) was doomed to sloppy, costly, irreversible failure. Worse still: the agents that orchestrated that disaster were able to completely evade responsibility because the public saw photographs of violence and immediately attributed the entirety of the blame to the soldiers.
The first section, "Before," tells the story of how Abu Ghraib was transformed from Saddam Hussein's Iraqi death camp to an American-run Iraqi prison. It's a little disorienting, and I had difficulty keeping track of which military official or bureaucracy was in control of what part of the process, though that might be intentional. Regardless, the real story begins when Military Intelligence steps in and decides to use part of the prison, Tier 1, to interrogate "high-profile" prisoners (several of these prisoners end up being completely innocent--a cab driver near the area of a bombing, for example).
Soldiers from a military police unit received orders to run Abu Ghraib when they believed to be at the end of their tour. They received no training on guarding a prison, interacting with prisoners-of-war, or upholding the mandates of the Geneva Convention. Military leaders did not write or enforce any comprehensive standard operating procedure for the prison. Aside from the high-profile prisoners in Tier 1, Abu Ghraib was the receptacle for hundreds upon hundreds of Iraqis rounded up in mass arrests, as well as the wives and children of prisoners, who were used as collateral. Meanwhile, the prison was the target of daily mortar attacks that killed dozens of prisoners a week.
The soldiers who were charged were drastically undertrained and ordered by officials as high up as the Secretary of Defense to aid in intelligence gathering by any means necessary. Admittedly, I sometimes questioned Gourevitch's characterization of the military police unit: how sympathetic can we be to adults who knowingly tortured and abused prisoners, some of whom were completely innocent? Ultimately, though, those questions are pointless. The lesson that we should learn from Abu Ghraib is summarized succinctly in the "After" section: "The Iraq war... troubled and baffled nearly everyone: the reckless and slapdash ineptitude with which it had been prosecuted. It was an amateur-run war, a murky and incoherent war."
tl;dr a war that relies on disorganized vigilante justice is counter-productive and dangerous. Most of the Bush administration should be tried for war crimes.
May 29, 2009
This is a book without heroes. It is not simply a rehash of the great Errol Morris documentary of the same name. Gourevitch used the documents and hours of interviews gathered by Morris to create something along the same lines as the movie but entirely unique. As in the film, he tells the story of Abu Ghraib from the viewpoint of the soldiers involved. Morris, in the movie, avoids editorializing. He instead allows the soldiers to speak for themselves while not hiding the horrors of what they did. If there's a fault in the book, it's that Gourevitch editorializes a little too much. This is understandable, however, when one knows the details of what happened at Abu Ghraib.
Events there were much worse than what you might have seen on the news, and it is easy to understand how, with overcrowding, little oversight, and no guidelines from higher-ups, things got so out of hand. The soldiers of the 372nd MP battalion had not received any training as prison guards before being assigned to Abu Ghraib, and the Bush administration argued all along that Iraqi POWs were not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions. Furthermore, MI and CIA interrogators encouraged the MPs to "soften up" the detainees.
A recurring, and perversely amusing, theme in the book is how pretty much every one of the detainees in those photographs was eventually released after being found innocent of the supposed crimes that had led the Americans to arrest them in the first place. In fact, of the thousands of people interned in Abu Ghraib at the time, only a few were ever found guilty of any crime. The military would frequently run sweeps where they would arrest everyone in a neighborhood, men, women, and children, if they could not find the person they were looking for.
The worst part of this tragic and disturbing story is how little the government seems to have learned from it. The initial instinct was to cover it up, until the media got hold of the photos. No one above sergeant was punished, even though higher ranking officers undoubtedly knew what was going on and had encouraged destruction of photographic evidence. This is a story most people would like to forget, but it's a story worth knowing.
Events there were much worse than what you might have seen on the news, and it is easy to understand how, with overcrowding, little oversight, and no guidelines from higher-ups, things got so out of hand. The soldiers of the 372nd MP battalion had not received any training as prison guards before being assigned to Abu Ghraib, and the Bush administration argued all along that Iraqi POWs were not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions. Furthermore, MI and CIA interrogators encouraged the MPs to "soften up" the detainees.
A recurring, and perversely amusing, theme in the book is how pretty much every one of the detainees in those photographs was eventually released after being found innocent of the supposed crimes that had led the Americans to arrest them in the first place. In fact, of the thousands of people interned in Abu Ghraib at the time, only a few were ever found guilty of any crime. The military would frequently run sweeps where they would arrest everyone in a neighborhood, men, women, and children, if they could not find the person they were looking for.
The worst part of this tragic and disturbing story is how little the government seems to have learned from it. The initial instinct was to cover it up, until the media got hold of the photos. No one above sergeant was punished, even though higher ranking officers undoubtedly knew what was going on and had encouraged destruction of photographic evidence. This is a story most people would like to forget, but it's a story worth knowing.
February 17, 2017
So the author chose not to include the photographs themselves in the text, and explains his rationale at the very end. It's honestly understandable, but it also means that when the photographs are discussed -which is often - Gourevitch describes them, focusing on the details he finds most notable. This ultimately takes away from some of what these photographs mean and what the book has to say about them; they reflect us, both as viewers and as Americans, and to read Gourevitch's descriptions of them is to see only a reflection of him.
The book is otherwise extremely thorough, and we never should have been in Iraq, and war either leads inevitably to horrific human rights abuses or we just have no interest in figuring out how to do it without those abuses.
Fuck George W. Bush, that man was a bloodthirsty monster.
The book is otherwise extremely thorough, and we never should have been in Iraq, and war either leads inevitably to horrific human rights abuses or we just have no interest in figuring out how to do it without those abuses.
Fuck George W. Bush, that man was a bloodthirsty monster.
July 28, 2019
Weaved into the media narrative of Abu Ghraib is the idea that the same conditions that create depravity also create opportunities for depravity's undoing: the lack of oversight in the prison meant that bored and angry soldiers could act as deplorably as they pleased, but also meant they were allowed the lassitude to take photographs of those acts, thus, eventually, correcting the conditions. The snake eats its tale; chaos self-stabilizes into balance. And at the end of the narrative we have villains to point at as our benchmark for evil: Graner, England, Harman, Sivits, Davis, Frederick - don't be like those dumb, ugly, beggarly, war-hungry, robots.
And maybe they were evil, or at least didn't care about being good. It takes effort to be good, you don't just shoot out into the world as a finished moral animal, understanding what ethical priorities you want to live by and acting accordingly. It's something you have to think about and work towards every day. And even then in extreme conditions you might lose sight of all that you've worked on internally and commit war crimes. I know I'm capable of doing what they did; I'm certain of it.
But does chaos really self-correct? The people of higher rank over our enlisted Abu Ghraib villains, like Pappas and Karpinski, never went to jail, never even got a bad conduct discharge. They weren't in the photos. So they, the overclass in the military system of the American underclass, the college-educated people charged with oversight, get off with mild reprimands. And the real civilian overclass feels not even a whisper of consequence.
It's an exercise in helplessness, reading these accounts. Makes you want to reach back in time and stop what can't be stopped, which is the quite insuperable disease of human filth, which crawls, mucoid, over the world always, and only comes to light in minute flashes when someone - someone disastrously, piteously, hideously naive - looks into the camera with a thumbs-up and a grin.
And maybe they were evil, or at least didn't care about being good. It takes effort to be good, you don't just shoot out into the world as a finished moral animal, understanding what ethical priorities you want to live by and acting accordingly. It's something you have to think about and work towards every day. And even then in extreme conditions you might lose sight of all that you've worked on internally and commit war crimes. I know I'm capable of doing what they did; I'm certain of it.
But does chaos really self-correct? The people of higher rank over our enlisted Abu Ghraib villains, like Pappas and Karpinski, never went to jail, never even got a bad conduct discharge. They weren't in the photos. So they, the overclass in the military system of the American underclass, the college-educated people charged with oversight, get off with mild reprimands. And the real civilian overclass feels not even a whisper of consequence.
It's an exercise in helplessness, reading these accounts. Makes you want to reach back in time and stop what can't be stopped, which is the quite insuperable disease of human filth, which crawls, mucoid, over the world always, and only comes to light in minute flashes when someone - someone disastrously, piteously, hideously naive - looks into the camera with a thumbs-up and a grin.
August 30, 2013
Most people will recall the disturbing photographs seen on the news of American soldiers abusing inmates of Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. Standard Operating Procedure is an account of how such treatment of prisoners came about, as the US army found itself torturing mostly innocent civilians picked up on general sweeps of problem areas, who they still believed they were 'liberating' from such treatment - without perceiving the bitter irony of the situation.
The authors do not editorialise overly, although I felt a non-jingoistic yet intrinsically pro-American bias inevitably sneaks in occasionally. No one 'bad apple' is condemned outright & nor are they let off the hook with hints that they were following direct orders from the Pentagon. Instead, the authors capture a sense of there being no one cause but a combination including character flaws, woefully poor training, the White Houses' desire to sneak around the Geneva Convention & the absence of a clearly defined Standard Operating Procedure - regulations designed to strictly outline the acceptable (and legal) treatment of prisoners.
As one of the writers also made a documentary on this subject (due out on DVD in the UK in January 2009), the narrative is mainly structured around interviews of the soldiers involved. As events progress, these demonstrate the logical progressions they took which resulted in them committing the atrocities starkly illustrated in those famous photographs. They all explain themselves but do not get off the hook as the apportioning of blame is left to the readers' subjective opinions. Instead, the authors convey a sense that the prison guards "were at once the instruments of a great injustice & the victims of a great injustice."
Like a car crash, Standard Operating Procedure is darkly compelling.
The authors do not editorialise overly, although I felt a non-jingoistic yet intrinsically pro-American bias inevitably sneaks in occasionally. No one 'bad apple' is condemned outright & nor are they let off the hook with hints that they were following direct orders from the Pentagon. Instead, the authors capture a sense of there being no one cause but a combination including character flaws, woefully poor training, the White Houses' desire to sneak around the Geneva Convention & the absence of a clearly defined Standard Operating Procedure - regulations designed to strictly outline the acceptable (and legal) treatment of prisoners.
As one of the writers also made a documentary on this subject (due out on DVD in the UK in January 2009), the narrative is mainly structured around interviews of the soldiers involved. As events progress, these demonstrate the logical progressions they took which resulted in them committing the atrocities starkly illustrated in those famous photographs. They all explain themselves but do not get off the hook as the apportioning of blame is left to the readers' subjective opinions. Instead, the authors convey a sense that the prison guards "were at once the instruments of a great injustice & the victims of a great injustice."
Like a car crash, Standard Operating Procedure is darkly compelling.
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