Documentarian Errol Morris follows trail of infamous Abu Ghraib photo

I just finished reading a brilliant piece of investigative journalism by noted documentarian and friend of Werner Herzog - Errol Morris. Morris made the pioneering 70s documentary on pet cemeteries - 'Gates of Heaven' after being encouraged by Herzog to make a film. Herzog challenged the young filmmaker to make a movie and promised to eat his own shoe if he succeeded and when Errol completed 'Gates', Herzog kept his promise, resulting in this film - Werner Herzog eats his shoe. Yes, Herzog is a man of his word and you can take Errol Morris very seriously as well, not just by dint of his connection to the Godlike Teutonic genius but because of his brilliant work. He has also just released a movie called - Standard Operating Procedure detailing the story of abuse and cover up at Abu Ghraib. The movie website is a work of art in itself with interviews and the biographies of soldiers and interrogators closest to the scandal.

Back to the piece on hand. Morris recounts being troubled by this photo of Sabrina Harman at Abu Ghraib. At the beginning of his investigations he was confounded by his editor's refusal to condemn and thus dismiss her as just an example of callousness and evil. This forced him to conduct a thorough investigation into the circumstances surrounding the taking of the photograph and the results of his inquiries have far more chilling implications and raise questions about our clean cut sentiment of disapprobation that we have so far felt towards her. He dulls the blacks into greys and adds details to the whites, turning the picture back against us and forcing us to extend our blame beyond the scare crow figure that is Ms Harman and focus it at the real culprits.

In a curious phenomenon, he describes, how our horror at Sabrina's insensitive pose prevented us from asking more important questions, like - who the real killers of al-Jamadi (yes that was his name, he was a man, with a name, not just a victim of American arrogance or a symbol of the scandal)were, why she took the pictures at all, what lapses in procedure allowed this man to die, what was the nature of the interrogation that killed him, who was responsible for him when he was arrested and on and on.

How about the game of 'pass the body' that the various agencies played in the immediate aftermath of al-Jamadi's death? Or the fact that al-Jamadi, because of his status as a captured intelligence asset was designated by the same acronym - O.G.A. - Other Government Agencies as the operatives from secret government agencies like the F.B.I., C.I.D., C.I.A., D.I.A., and Task Force 121 were known in military parlance.How about this for a joke - "Indeed, when al-Jamadi was finally entered into the prison log book on November 5, 2003 (since he was a “ghost” detainee without an identification number), he was simply identified as “Bernie.” (as in Weekend at Bernie's) After he died, the prison guards had to carry on an elaborate charade including hooking him up to ivs to fool other prisoners into thinking that he was suffering a medical emergency when they transported him out of Ghraib.

Why could they not enter al-Jamadi's name into the system? What was the possibility that this guy, who might have at most been an insurgent fighter, carried in his head national secrets such as the minority of real terrorists in Guantanamo bay do? If we even buy the argument that special provisions of secrecy are required to control information flow from guys who were captured in Afghanistan over 6 years ago(I don't, dated intelligence is the most useless commodity in the world - the only reason to muzzle those guys is to stop them from telling the world about the conditions they face), how do they apply to Iraqi fighters in this war? Why could they not be treated using the same tactics used in regular warfare? Why the pervasive need for secrecy?

Since his name was not entered into the system when he was captured, he did not exist, just like the people who interrogated him. In fact, if not for those photos, al-Jamadi and Abu Ghraib would not exist. As it turns out, Sabrina Harman wanted to take those pictures to expose the true nature of the prison. Her smile was a reflexive reaction to being in front of the camera. She, along with the guy who took the picture, entered the morgue and examined the corpse and even removed bandages to determine the true cause of death. She was later charged with tampering evidence - evidence that was already carefully doctored(bandages, ice packs) to turn a homicide into death by heart attack.

The rest of the article is devoted to facial analysis to determine whether Ms Harman was enjoying herself in the picture being taken. An expert in the matter shows how one can conclude that she was actually just putting on a fake smile. Whether you believe it or not is up to you. I for one am not completely convinced that her smile is entirely forced. However the idea being conveyed is that soldiers in a war zone become so hardened to death and degeneration that they are not able to convey the same external signs of horror as a civilian might have in their place. This is not to say that they do not feel human emotions inside. In Sabrina's case, her inability to display a normative reaction or affect resulted in her being condemned unfairly and to us seeing some link between her and the violence committed against al-Jamadi, which in turn let others off the hook.

What are the lessons we learn from Morris' exercise? Firstly that evil is not revealed in a face, it more likely reveals its aspect in procedure, in military terminology, in bureaucratic facades of normality. The pictures of smiling soldiers posing with corpses most likely helped expose the moral corruption at the heart of the prison but it also gave it an exaggerated and false face that the higher ups diligently used to stop the blame from ascending up the ranks. The true culprits completely dodged the blame as a result, partly, of our indignation and emotional outbursts of anger.

In order to perfect our moral discernment we need to practise our intellectual faculties as well as our emotional ones. We need to familiarise ourselves with the procedural aspects of the military, government and the press in order to recognise and direct our moral indignation. You as readers need to read the entire article I cited to understand the full dimensions of the horror I speak of. If you aim to critique a sound byte and thumbnail culture then you have to stop using those very same methods and adopt a rigorous technical approach to defeat it. It is a slog in the mud, not a shouting match with slogans and epithets.

Errol Morris sets a profound example for the right sort of journalism and we would all do well to follow his example. He followed his lead to its rightful conclusion and questioned his impulses to condemn the subject of his article. Even harmless journalistic sloppiness has moral dimensions to it. A slip shod statement only contributes to the confusing morass of information or rather disinformation that characterises the Internet and TV pundit shows.

Being blog writers does not excuse us from the responsibility to sound reportage. If anything our job is far easier and allows us at the click of a button to do better research. All that remains to do is to put a little effort into fully developing our thoughts and ideas and expressing them in a ordered fashion. I hereby call for more thought out articles and for more sophisticated arguments. A simplistic statement of anger or disgust at a public figure or policy, apart from being representative of a juvenile mind, also pollutes the general body of discourse. Why add to the nonsense verbiage and never ending flame threads of the Internet?

I urge posters to take a little extra time and put in effort to bring something extra to the table. Anyone can get their news from one of the media hubs that everyone else reads. All of us feel an undifferentiated anger at the prevailing state of affairs and simply being naggingly reminded of it with a patchwork of links and defensive posturing does little to articulate our rage. That should be the goal of our endeavors - to understand ourselves better by examining our relation to the affairs of the world. That is what Morris tried to do in this article. If this article doesn't receive wider attention, a Pulitzer and worse doesn't lead to follow up action, I will eat my shoe!