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Standard Operating Procedure
by: Philip Gourevitch, Errol Morris

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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 956.704437
EAN: 9781594201325
ISBN: 1594201323
Label: Penguin Press HC, The
Manufacturer: Penguin Press HC, The
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 304
Publication Date: April 03, 2008
Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The
Sales Rank: 59618
Studio: Penguin Press HC, The

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Editorial Review:

Product Description:
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.

The Ballad of Abu Ghraib 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 exposŽ 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.

The Ballad of Abu Ghraib 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.

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- An Important Book To Read and Digest
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 ... Read More

Rating:

- Charlie Foxtrot: Staring "Leash Girl" & "Sh_tboy"
Wow, where do I start ? Let see, maybe the camera rule should be more strictly enforced, I mean talk about feeding the fire. Lets see: sell my soul to the devil, who is the devil ? "Your going to screw up your life anyway, so why not let us do it for you (we'll do a much better job of it)". When a fire burns, it can hurt, it can maim, it can kill, but when it goes out , it's gone, it's finished, it's over. I gave the book 4 stars because it should have been at least 100 pages longer. HUMAN LIVES ARE LIKE MONEY, WHEN YOUR RICH, YOU CAN WASTE AS MANY AS YOU LIKE (or save) . Of course, I am referring to this in the broadest, far reaching of objective terms. A nightmarish horror of a book that brings it on home. Also check out: The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II and Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya.

Rating:

- gut wrenching look at Abu Ghraib..
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 ... Read More

Rating:

- What the Photographs Don't Show
As much as the Bush administration would like to have the main photo image of the war in Iraq be the pulling down of Saddam's statue during the initial invasion, the most famous photograph of the war is quite different. It is of a skinny figure, hooded, standing on a box, arms raised and fingers attached to electrical cables. It and the other shocking images from the prison at Abu Ghraib revealed a callous disregard for the rights of prisoners and for basic human rights, and an acceptance of torture as a means for the soldiers in charge of prisoners to soften them up for questioning. The pictures tell a shocking story, but not the whole story; this is the point of _Standard Operating Procedure_ (The Penguin Press) by Philip Gourevitch and Errol Morris. The book was written by Gourevitch, but it comes from conversations with Morris, who had conducted interviews, evaluated pictures, and studied records for his documentary ... Read More

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