Abu Ghraib

The Ballad of Abu Ghraib
$16.00

This book came out last year in hardcover under a different title (Standard Operating Procedure) and it got rave reviews from the best critics in the U.S.A. and internationally. The Ballad of Abu Ghraib is the paperback, it's exactly the same book, but Amazon hasn't transferred all the review quotes to this page. Check them out:

"A tightly knit and damning narrative... one of the most devastating of the many books on Iraq."
--New York Times Book Review

"[A] gut wrenching morality check"
--NPR's Talk of the Nation

"Gourevitch...brings to this study of the Abu Ghraib scandal the same graceful balancing of reportage and insight that marked his extraordinary book on the Rwandan genocide, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families... the shocks arrive through language alone."
--Time Out NY

"Admirable... remarkable power"
--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"Philip Gourevitch's exemplary book will take its toll for years."
--The New York Observer

"Fascinating."
--The Economist

"Gourevitch's eye for telling detail evokes the best of The New Yorker tradition--Capote's In Cold Blood, Hersey's Hiroshima... Standard Operating Procedure is essential reading for our time."
--The Tennessean

"Remarkable."
--The Denver Post

"A compelling story... [Gourevitch] is a master of looking more closely, which means both more sympathetically and more critically... Gourevitch's account takes us outside the frame, giving us the chance to understand the dynamic of the unit in which violence and romance were S.O.P... The book shows how lawlessness became the law."
--The Los Angeles Times

"This book has to be read."
--Newsweek

Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror
$24.95
This book offers a chilling rendition of the events that occured at Abu Gharib. It fairly reviews the events through official reports, which are quite chilling! A must read!!

Standard Operating Procedure
$19.94
With all due respect to the reviewer who was so bitterly disappointed with the limited scope of this movie -- it doesn't identify any of the higher-ups who clearly enabled the abuses at Abu Ghraib -- this troubling documentary still reminds us of the ways a blighted tree bears rotten fruit.

I also wonder if that reviewer saw the DVD of S.O.P. Director Errol Morris' commentary here addresses many of the issues the reviewer raises, and indeed asks questions that any thoughtful American needs to consider.

These include: why were the photographs of abuses taken? According to letters home written by one of Rumsfeld's infamous "bad apples" at the time of the abuses, this soldier took the photos to document what was happening. To hide her intent, she would smile and give thumbs-up in the shots in which she appeared. Yet she also took the post-mortem photos of the prisoner killed by intelligence officers during interrogation -- none of whom have yet been held accountable for this murder of a prisoner not even proven guilty.

Another question Morris raises: did any of the harsh interrogation techniques yield valuable information? Apparently not -- Saddam himself was captured by soldiers on foot, unaided by prisoner confessions. The director also points out something that he claims is well known among the intelligence community: that the most effective Nazi interrogator -- the one who got useful information -- was the one who treated his interrogation subjects well. So much for Cheney's claim that harsh interrogation "works".

And finally: did the photographs help or hinder the investigation of abuses? On the one hand, they yielded irrefutable proof that prisoner mistreatment had occurred, defying the Geneva conventions and "basic human decency". At the same time, the only people who have yet been brought to justice were the whistle-blowers themselves -- the "bad apples" shown in the photos. This film makes it clear that the policies of prisoner mistreatment and degradation were already in place when the apples first came to the prison. In other words, the photos gave the higher-ups a visual scapegoat: see, those bad apples did this; they should be punished.

Meanwhile, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and all the "military intelligence" personnel go on to open self-laudatory libraries and make money giving speeches and writing memoirs.

Let us hope that the Obama Administration will root out the higher-ups who degraded the prisoners and disgraced America in the process. Until justice is done, every American is complicit in these shameful acts.

Yes, I cried tears of shame as I listened to Morris' sad commentary. I would like to think my response is not unique...

Ghosts of Abu Ghraib
$19.98
This would-that-it-were-incredible film starts and nearly ends with an early 1960s study entitled "Obedience" in which psychologists concluded that people will, if given adequate direction from perceived authority, perform in ways contrary to their ethics. (All right, it's a run on...Forgive me.)

After the Iraq debacle began, presidential counsel Alberto Gonzales redefined torture so as to UNdefine it, thereby justifying anything this country did. Then Iraqi prisoners were taken into Abu Ghraib.

Interesting, but the troops interviewed for the film reflected on how badly prisoners there at Abu Ghraib were treated by Saddam's regime, how many, for example, had been brutally executed there. Interesting, huh?

The MPs were eventually taken from the Abu Ghraib and military intelligence was given a more active role. Unfortunately, the interrogators weren't getting any information. God forbid, did it occur to them that the prisoners didn't have any information to give? Apparently not.

So the army felt it would make more sense to get a very Rumsfeld kinda guy, Gen. Geoffrey Miller, from Gitmo which was/is notorious for their getting information despite "techniques" used. (Note that just yesterday the Red Cross's report was released which indicated that what the US is doing in Gitmo IS torture, and it IS a war crime.)

This is apparently when "mistreatment" of prisoners occurred. They were sexually humiliated, electrocuted, all sorts of techniques of torture you have to see the film to believe that those purporting to represent "democracy" would practice. Oh, and one was allegedly killed, and Lyndie England, one of the noncoms convicted in the Abu Ghraib incident, had a thumbs-up picture taken of her with the body of a prisoner which they claimed had died of a heart attack. (She acknowledged that there was blood on the body that wouldn't have been there if that's how he died...)

To make a long story short, Ms. England--who was among those interviewed for the film--was taking pictures of the goings on. She just seems to have a thing for cameras. Eventually, her paramour, I think his name is Graber, gave the pictures to Spec. Darby who reported them.

Toward the end of the film, the troops interviewed admitted that, if the pictures hadn't been released, nothing would have happened to counter this criminal behavior.

Of course, the bureaucracy tried to run from any responsibilty for the actions. But the question came up: how could those who were relatively uneducated, the noncoms allegedly responsible for the acts, know the practices that had been developed by the Brazilian military, and taught to US troops?

Those actually punished for torture and humiliation were the noncoms; Don Rumsfeld claimed no responsibility, Dubya proclaimed "disgust," and others in the hierarchy claimed just a few bad apples had done that on which the film focuses.

Oh, and all of those who'd been tortured at Abu Ghraib were released with no charges.

There's so much more that one could say about this fine film. We should hang our collective heads in shame at being responsible for this, while claiming to spread "democracy." But one can be HURT by seeing what was done in Abu Ghraib. I'm still trying to settle down after having seen the film.

Then why only 4 stars? Well, there was barely a mention of the private contractor/interrogators that some other books and films have covered. I think that's still an important element of this "war" of which we much we aware. Aside from that, I strongly recommend this film. It exposes not only the ghastly acts for which our country's credibility is in grave jeopardy, but provides some solid questions as to who was actually responsible for the events that took place.