Standard Operating Procedure Blu-ray

• Additional Details
• Format: Blu-Ray
• Rating: R
• Number of Discs: 1
• Run Time: 116 Minutes
• Region: A
• Aspect Ratio: Widescreen
• Studio: Sony Pictures
• Blu-Ray Release Date: October 14, 2008
• Subtitles: English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Chinese, Korean, Thai, Turkish
• Audio: ENGLISH: Dolby TrueHD 5.1
  FRENCH: Dolby TrueHD 5.1
  PORTUGUESE: Dolby TrueHD 5.1
  
• Director: Errol Morris
• Genre: Documentary
• Color: Color
• Includes:
  Commentary With Director Errol Morris
  9 Additional Scenes
  Nearly 2 Hours Of New Interview Footage
  Berlin Panel Discussion
  Berlin Press Conference
  Los Angeles Premiere Q&A With Errol Morris
• Release Date: 2008

Is it possible for a photograph to change the world? Photographs taken by soldiers in Abu Ghraib prison changed the war in Iraq and changed AmericaGÇÖs image of itself. Yet, a central mystery remains. Did the notorious Abu Ghraib photographs constitute evidence of systematic abuse by the American military, or were they documenting the aberrant behavior of a few GÇ£bad applesGÇ¥? We set out to examine the context of these photographs. Why were they taken? What was happening outside the frame? We talked directly to the soldiers who took the photographs and who were in the photographs. Who are these people? What were they thinking? Over two years of investigation, we amassed a million and a half words of interview transcript, thousands of pages of unredacted reports, and hundreds of photographs. The story of Abu Ghraib is still shrouded in moral ambiguity, but it is clear what happened there. The Abu Ghraib photographs serve as both an expose and a coverup. An expose, because the photographs offer us a glimpse of the horror of Abu Ghraib; and a coverup because they convinced journalists and readers they had seen everything, that there was no need to look further. In recent news reports, we have learned about the destruction of the Abu Zubaydah interrogation tapes. A coverup. It has been front page news. But the coverup at Abu Ghraib involved thousands of prisoners and hundreds of soldiers. We are still learning about the extent of it. Many journalists have asked about GÇ£the smoking gunGÇ¥ of Abu Ghraib. It is the wrong question. As Philip Gourevitch has commented, Abu Ghraib is the smoking gun. The underlying question that we still have not resolved, four years after the scandal: how could American values become so compromised that Abu GhraibGÇöand the subsequent coverupGÇöcould happen?

Expert Review:
Master documentarian Errol Morris interviews the soldiers featured in the infamous photos from Abu Ghraib, which caused a scandal over the torture of prisoners in the War on Terror. But how much do these pictures really tell us, and who is truly to blame for this outrage? The answer isn't as simple as one would like to believe, and Morris excels at exploring the complexity created in a heavily visual world. By Daniel Schindel of ScreenPicks