This documentary starkly (and unflinchingly) examines the prisoner abuse scandal involving American soldiers and detainees at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison in the fall of 2003. Director Rory Kennedy offers a scathing indictment of how the lax policies of the Bush administration enabled the soldiers to blatantly violate clearly stipulated rules of the Geneva Conventions: The prisoners were deprived of sleep, stripped naked, and sexually humiliated. Worse yet, one female soldier even went as far as to have a photo of herself taken with the dead body of a slain captive while smiling and giving the thumbs up sign. While the soldiers who did this vile misconduct were penalized, the superiors who let this appalling stuff happen got away scot free. The soldiers try to justify their actions by explaining that they were merely "following orders," which speaks volumes on how they are rigidly trained to do exactly what they are told without questioning any of it for a minute. So the whole military mind comes into question here; it's terrifying to think about man's capacity for extreme cruelty and inhumanity when provided the proper circumstances to indulge in such things (Donald Rumsfeld approved in a memo the harsh techniques the soldiers applied to the prisoners while the climate at the prison was unbearably tense and thus conducive to all kinds of brutality). One interviewee says it best when he remarks, "There's no such thing as a little bit of torture." Indeed. Torture is torture no matter what's being done and that's just flat-out wrong according to the Geneva Conventions. Searing stuff.
Review of Ghosts of Abu Ghraib
