Wall of Paul

If you wanted to summarize the sins of the George W. Bush administration in one succinct phrase, “moral bankruptcy” would have to be the front-runner. By now, that particular disorder has virtually crippled the American spirit. The fact that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, and their endless string of yes-men have managed their crimes against humanity, even in the rare instances when those crimes have been revealed, suggests that most of us have either been systematically scared into lockstep by the terror-public relations complex, or were too stupid from the get-go to really care what’s been done to our country. And that’s exactly how the White House wants it.

In his infuriating, only partially successful documentary, “Standard Operating Procedure,” Errol Morris makes a convincing argument that people are liable to accept virtually any horror if they’ve been told it’s the cost that has to be paid to maintain our “freedom”...and that goes double for stressed-out, not especially deep-thinking soldiers.

Morris examines the horrendous photographs that were taken by theoretically valiant members of our military while they “softened up” prisoners at Abu Ghraib, the key detention center in Iraq. Through talking-head interviews with the very personnel who appear in those photos, Morris tells us a great deal more about what went on behind the walls of Abu Ghraib than, say, Anderson Cooper ever did. But if you’re familiar with Morris’ best work, and are waiting for him to climb the chain of command, you’ll be deeply disappointed.

Surely, you remember the Abu Ghraib photos: Muslim men being degraded, psychologically tortured, sexually humiliated, and dehumanized for the enjoyment of a handful of general-issue assholes who seemed to have found their true calling in a no-holds-barred war zone.

Morris argues that the complete truth isn’t always held within the frame of a photograph, no matter how graphic the photo may be, and he’s right about that. The problem with “Standard Operating Procedure,” though, regardless of how much it reveals about the twisted culture of Abu Ghraib, is that Morris never really investigates who was responsible for allowing these acts to happen.

No one above the rank of staff sergeant served any time for the offenses, and only a damned fool (or a Fox News commentator, if there’s a difference) would think that a bunch of grunts could manage such obscenely theatrical feats without the higher-ups knowing about it.

Morris, rather than picking apart the evidence with the same detective work that freed an innocent man from death row (as he did with his groundbreaking 1988 documentary, “The Thin Blue Line”), simply settles for being appalled by the obvious scapegoating of a bunch of over-zealous numskulls.

The “bad apples” are bad, all right, although every single one of them implies there was nothing they could have done to free themselves from their “duty.” They were just taking orders, you see, even if no one ever really received an order.

That’s the central riddle of the picture, the conundrum that Morris never answers. The recruits who participated felt they were preparing the prisoners to be transferred to secret interrogators, who then got down to the real dirty business. But exactly who decided these young men and women needed to divest themselves of simple compassion in order to be American soldiers? It’s no fun getting shot at. But shouldn’t moral courage count for something?

As you might expect, the soldiers don’t come across as snarling monsters. One or two of them seem relatively appalled by what went down at the prison, and some of them seem dumbfounded that special ops could perform hideous acts behind closed doors with no official supervision. We know now, of course, that lack of supervision is the entire point— the less anyone knows, the less chance there is that our brutishness will be revealed. But, even then, a couple of these subjects can give you the willies.

Morris seems to think that Specialist Sabrina Harman, rather than being a criminal, is some sort of unsung heroine for taking the photos that exposed the operation. Harman, for her part, insists she was sickened by what she saw, and recorded the events to assure that people found out what was happening.

But in the photos featuring Harman, she’s repeatedly smiling like an embarrassed schoolgirl while delivering a wholly unlikely “thumbs-up” to the camera. She strikes this exact pose while lingering over a prisoner who’s been beaten to death by his interrogators, and is lying on a cell floor, packed in ice.

It seems far more likely that Harman was trying to cover her own ass while enjoying activities that, back in the real world, would sever her ties with everyone she knows. Unless, of course, they, too, don’t give a damn about guilty Iraqis.