Customer Reviews: Read 19 more reviews...
 Important book about the banality of evil November 4, 2008
Jolene Tan (London)
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
It's easy to think we know all there is to know about Abu Ghraib. We've seen the pictures, which reek of brutal frat party cruelty, and seem to straightforwardly expose a group of racist, ignorant, hypermilitarised soldiers. Surely the rest is just needless detail?
By reconstructing the sequence of events depicted in the photographs, Morris and Gourevitch reveal that the reality is simultaneously more, and less, horrifying than this. The episodes presented to us in the jumble of pictures are differentiated, for one; some are as we would expect, but others emerge as distinctly practical responses to the everyday horror of the job these soldiers were given.
Rather than individual acts of darkness, we are led to see the bigger picture: the conditions that make posing with a corpse almost defensible, and hauling a man around on a leash essentially sensible. The animating values that give rise to those conditions. And the way the snapshots misdirected attention: yes, those criminally charged, none of whom had a rank above that of sergeant, had committed misconduct of some kind by any ordinary standard; but what of the underlying reality that Abu Ghraib was not run by any ordinary standard? Indeed perhaps by any standard? With the blessing, it seems, of the entire chain of command?
This is a very important book.
Uncomfortably engrossing portrait of an ethically murky world November 26, 2008
Sam Woodward (Swansea, UK)
Most people will recall the disturbing photographs seen on the news of American soldiers abusing inmates of Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. Standard Operating Procedure is an account of how such treatment of prisoners came about, as the US army found itself torturing mostly innocent civilians picked up on general sweeps of problem areas, who they still believed they were 'liberating' from such treatment - without perceiving the bitter irony of the situation.
The authors do not editorialise overly, although I felt a non-jingoistic yet intrinsically pro-American bias inevitably sneaks in occasionally. No one 'bad apple' is condemned outright & nor are they let off the hook with hints that they were following direct orders from the Pentagon. Instead, the authors capture a sense of there being no one cause but a combination including character flaws, woefully poor training, the White Houses' desire to sneak around the Geneva Convention & the absence of a clearly defined Standard Operating Procedure - regulations designed to strictly outline the acceptable (and legal) treatment of prisoners.
As one of the writers also made a documentary on this subject (due out on DVD in the UK in January 2009), the narrative is mainly structured around interviews of the soldiers involved. As events progress, these demonstrate the logical progressions they took which resulted in them committing the atrocities starkly illustrated in those famous photographs. They all explain themselves but do not get off the hook as the apportioning of blame is left to the readers' subjective opinions. Instead, the authors convey a sense that the prison guards "were at once the instruments of a great injustice & the victims of a great injustice."
Like a car crash, Standard Operating Procedure is darkly compelling.
Excellent Insight ( Standard Operating Procedure ) December 2, 2008
P. J. AUSTIN (UK)
Standard Operating Procedure is in my opinion a excellent insight to the real truth that went on , i really makes you think , i ex army and i can see from some of there points of view in this book the comments made and why some did this and some did that ,and why the higher the command ,tried to pretend it was not happening ,or did they ?
I have read many books on life in different war zones around the world and the insights to the soldiers on the front line , but i must add this is a very enjoyable book not in the sense funny or in anyway dehumanizing anything but, i think its a real eye opener to what went on and some of the reasons why they did as they did etc.
Very good book of this type ,but if your not into this type of book ,best not read ,you need a wide view of opinion and a i hope a understanding of being a human or not depending on your point of view in life. Regards Pete .
PS I have not mentioned the book at all as so many others have done so very well indeed i have just given you my opinion on this book and why i feel it deserves 5 stars .
Heart of darkness December 3, 2008
Roman Clodia (London)
Abu Ghraib, the Iraqi prison, once the `torture prison' of Saddam Hussein, then the scene of notorious US abuse, violation and unlawful killing is a tough subject for a book. But Gourevitch does a fine job of navigating his - and our - way through the tortuous maze of inhumanity, inefficiency, and a frightening kind of empathy with victims and victors alike.
After a brief background this is told from the point of view, with extensive quotes, from the soldiers themselves, some of whom are now in prison for the things that they did on behalf of the US military. But this is not a simple story, and Gourevitch does an admirable job of showing how this could happen without ever excusing it.
The soldiers themselves, often reservists, junior, untrained and way out of their depth are as much victims of the system as the Iraqi prisoners, many of them picked up in indiscriminate security sweeps and simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. The soldiers themselves were many of them are young, not highly-educated, sometimes having never left their home-town in their lives, but the ease with which they were swept into a brutal, inhumane and frankly illegal system is a salutary one. The frightening thing is how easily this could be any of us whatever we might like to think.
The very coolness of the narrative and dispassionate prose is part of this story: no impassioned diatribes against the US or military systems, but the very analytical detachment is itself an indictment of what was allowed to happen.
And the photos themselves? This book doesn't reproduce them. Most people picking up this book I guess will be doing so on the back of the photos and other media exposures, but while I applaud the author's decision not to encourage the continued voyeuristic exploitation inherent in photographing such atrocities in such a mundane and almost touristic way, I kind of regret it too. They're already out there, and the book does enable you to see them in a slightly different light.
As other reviewers have said this is an important story, brilliantly and unsensationally told. What that cost the author emotionally I can only guess - but the result is a book which really is critical reading for all of us.
A disturbing but absolutely compelling read December 5, 2008
A. J. Sudworth (UK)
A subtitle of this book could be 'how not to win hearts and minds'. It is very well written and adopts quite a simple style interspersed with a wealth of quotes. What it does do is paint a terrible picture of the prison at Abu Ghraib where inmates were systematically abused by people in the Army who treated them as sub human and did not really seem to have any appreciation of them as human beings.
There is a some attempt to show the soldiers involved as victims, at least 'of the system' but in many ways they condemn themselves out of their own mouths
What is also shocking is that no person about the rank of Sergent did prison time as a result of this but its quite clear that the occupation forces in Iraq had no plan to deal with these people. Imagine being interrogated harshly (not there is a euphamism..), eventually being recognised as having nothing to do with the incident but being held for three months extra anyway.
This is not a message the Americans are going to like but they just made a bad situation worse by the events in this book
Its disturbing but a compelling read - not one to wind down to at the end of an evening.
We marched off the moral high ground with this one
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