Standard Operating Procedure

Standard Operating Procedure examines the genesis of the now famous photographs of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib in Iraq. The soldiers directly linked to the photographs - those who took them and those who appeared in them - have since been punished for their crimes, many with gaol terms.

It is clear that the low-rank soldiers who were crucified in the media distracted the world from the fact that the abuse at Abu Ghraib was systemic. In the absence of proper training, advice, supervision, sufficient staff etc. abuse was policy. I find it shocking that inexperienced soldiers were expected to manage prisoners who were potentially valuable sources of intelligence without any training at all. I work in a library and you don't shelve books without training - let alone deal with a mentally ill prisoner intent on hurting himself and you, whose welfare is in your hands. In the military - where chain of command is central to its functioning - it would be very difficult to tell your superiors that you didn't agree with something that they had ordered, or approved of, or in the very least of which they were aware.

I found author Philip Gourevitch so adept at his task that about half way through the book I had to remind myself that these soldiers - pawns as they were - did actively engage in abuse. Certainly the story behind the photographs, with all context missing from the telling, has been distorted. The fact remains however that they perpetrated brutality, or condoned it by being silent witnesses.



Philip Gourevitch and Julian Burnside QC speaking at the Melbourne Writer's Festival 2008, courtesy of Slow TV [Part 1 of 2]

Of particular resonance I found - in general - the expression of blind faith that Americans have in their country. It is a patriotic earnestness that has no equivalent in Australia.

Tim Dugan, a civilian interrogator who worked at Abu Ghraib, articulates this delusion:

"At Abu Ghraib, there was no professionalism. There was no honor. There was no standards. There was no discipline...they're just sending our kids into a meat grinder...

"I'm a history and political science major. I studied all about the history of the world. And we're f**ked up, but this country is the best goddam thing going on on the planet., and I know that for a fact. The whole thing makes us different and makes people come over to our side is that we're not torturing, lying, thieving bastards like everybody else in the world.

"Don't get me wrong, I'm not naive enough to think that the Army was pure. But it was a pure ideal. I know our founding fathers were human...But they put down on some papers some incredibly high moral standards, values and ideas. Right afterwards got corrupted, slavery in the South, all kinds if things. But that's the sh*t we need to try to live up to." (p.212-3)

It is as if the American consciousness was programmed at the Declaration of Independence and all the stuff since, all the violations of rights and sovereignty and so on, are just abberations.