Standard Operating Procedure
by Philip Gourevitch, Errol Morris
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Book Summary Information
Author: Errol Morris, Philip GourevitchEdition: Hardcover
Published: 2008-04-03
ISBN: 1594201323
Number of pages: 304
Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The
Book Reviews of Standard Operating Procedure
Book Review: gut wrenching look at Abu Ghraib..
Summary: 5 Stars
A straight forward look at Abu Ghraib. This book is intense, hard-hitting and to be quite honest very difficult to read. It is very thought provoking and really makes one wonder, what has become of us and what has this war on terror led us to? It is a war that we must win at all costs and this book makes us look at the costs. And it is difficult to accept that this is where we've come. One section of the book talks about how George Washington treated Hessian prisoners of war so well in the American Revolution that many eventually moved to America after the war. We have come a long way. It is thankfully a fast read of a book, it is gut-wrenching to read and to really find out what was going on at Abu Ghraib. The book starts with a very brief background of Abu Ghraib(BEFORE) and some of the horrors that took place there under Saddam Hussein and quickly moves to how and why America used Abu Ghraib. Then the bulk of the book (DURING) details the timeline and events that led to the pictures that are seared in our minds. A brief wrapup (AFTER) concludes the book. Note while there are no pictures or graphs or maps of any kind in the book I found it to be more intense because of this. A simple explanation will trigger the picture in your mind. I never spent a whole lot of time examining the now infamous pictures but the images were so clearly invoked in my mind when reading passages of what was going on. The author so clearly states the power of an image and while that image can not tell the whole story it certainly reveals a story of it's own. SOP tells the whole story and if you think this is all because of a couple renegade, out-of-control soldiers then you need to read this book.
Frankly, by the time I was finished I didn't know who to blame or point a finger at. I just felt alot of sadness and despair and disgust.
Summary of Standard Operating Procedure
An utterly original literary and intellectual collaboration by two of our keenest moral and political observers has produced a nonfiction Heart of Darkness for our time: the first full reckoning of what actually happened at Abu Ghraib prison, based on hundreds of hours of exclusive interviews with the Americans involved.Standard Operating Procedure reveals the stories of the American soldiers who took and appeared in the iconic photographs of the Iraq war-the haunting digital snapshots from Abu Ghraib prison that shocked the world-and simultaneously illuminates and alters forever our understanding of those images and the events they depict. Drawing on more than two hundred hours of Errol Morris's startlingly frank and intimate interviews with Americans who served at Abu Ghraib and with some of their Iraqi prisoners, as well as on his own research, Philip Gourevitch has written a relentlessly surprising account of Iraq's occupation from the inside out-rendering vivid portraits of guards and prisoners ensnared in an appalling breakdown of command authority and moral order.
What did we think we saw in the infamous photographs, and what were we, in fact, looking at? What did the people in the photographs think they were doing, and why did they take them? What was "standard operating procedure" and what was "being creative" when it came to making prisoners uncomfortable? Who was giving orders, and who was following them? Where does the line lie between humiliation and torture, and why and how does that matter? Was the true Abu Ghraib "scandal" a result of an expos? or a cover-up?
In exploring these questions, Gourevitch and Morris have crafted a nonfiction morality play that stands to endure as essential reading long after the current war in Iraq passes from the headlines. By taking us deep into the voices and characters of the men and women who lived the horror of Abu Ghraib, the authors force us, whatever our politics, to reexamine the pat explanations in which we have been offered-or sought-refuge, and to see afresh this watershed episode. Instead of a "few bad apples," we are confronted with disturbingly ordinary young American men and women who have been dropped into something out of Dante's Inferno.
Standard Operating Procedure is a book that makes you think and makes you see-an essential contribution from two of our finest nonfiction artists working at the peak of their powers.
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