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When you look at a photograph, is that the truth? If it’s a disgusting picture, such as those taken at Abu Ghraib, what judgments do you make in your mind about those in the picture? Do you think about what is going on just outside the frame of the picture? Do you think about the motivations of the person taking the photos, or the conflicting emotions of a woman giving a thumbs-up every time she is photographed? Can you fathom anyone looking at any of the pictures from Abu Ghraib and not think they are anything other than torture? These are the questions addressed in Errol Morris’s documentary.

Like Morris’s other documentaries, such as MR. DEATH and FOG OF WAR, he mixes talking-head interviews, where the subjects look nearly into the camera, and re-enactments, a technique he revolutionized in THE THIN BLUE LINE. In building this film, Morris seems captivated by statements by indicted soldiers Megan Ambuhl and Javal Davis. Ambuhl says that the photos only show that moment in time not what lead up to it or followed it. Davis says that the real torture, often committed by CIA agents, was never caught in photos or videotaped. All that was going on in the notorious photos was “softening up,” just standard operating procedure.

An interrogator interviewed breaks down, which photos, from a military point of view, depict crimes and which ones do not. One of the most famous photos, where a detainee wears a pointed black hood standing on a crate with his arms extended at his sides, would simply be S.O.P. As for the degrading photos of detainees piled naked on top of each other and forced into other sexual positions, those were not simply snapshots of what was going on, but posed photos. Pvt. Lynndie England, whom was often featured in those photos, reveals that the photos where staged by Charles Graner, a staff sergeant who would eventually impregnate England, and then later marry Ambuhl, who was often present during the “photo shoots,” but conveniently cropped out of the frame. Another women took the photos. Sabrina Harman says she took them to chronicle what was going on, so that people would believe her. Her signature thumbs up in all the photos was her way of dealing with a photo she was uncomfortable with. Some people just smile, she smiles and gives a thumbs up.

When asked if they would have done anything differently, most of the soldiers can only say they wouldn’t have joined the military. In a prison, where CIA agents were torturing detainees and there was constant pressure to find Saddam Hussein, under conditions where detainees bent on killing guards were mixed with the innocent, and the prison was being shelled every single day, what choice did they have? They either followed orders (at least followed the vague orders they perceived where right) or go to jail for not following orders.

Morris’s film covers many of the same issues as Alex Gibney’s Oscar-winning documentary TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE. However, Morris focuses in on those photos that have so defined the issue of torture during the Bush years. The film talks to five of the seven soldiers convicted of the crimes at Abu Ghraib. The military would not let Graner participate. STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE is a different film than DARK SIDE, which was more of a fact-by-fact indictment. SOP made me less angry, but it made me sadder. Still there is a bubbling resentment in this film as well. Former brigadier general Janis Karpinski was relieved of her duties when she wanted to investigate what really happened at Abu Ghraib. No one higher than Graner was changed with crimes. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld toured Abu Ghraib and can’t stomach more than one cell. It’s easier to look the other way and blame it on a “few bad apples.” Morris talks to those apples and we come to realize that it wasn’t the other apples that were the problem, but the barrel that didn’t support them.

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