BuzzFlash Reviews

BUZZFLASH REVIEWS

"When I was doing the interviews with the Iraqis, I remember thinking, I cannot believe that America did this to these guys, how could we have gotten to this point in our country that we would allow this to happen? I've done a number of projects that deal with human rights abuses that have taken place in the worst dictatorships you can imagine, and what I heard from these Iraqis was on par or even worse than any of that.

And the people who created these policies have almost all gotten off scot-free or been promoted."

-- Rory Kennedy

From HBO:

The familiar and disturbing pictures of torture at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison raise many troubling questions: How did torture become an accepted practice at Abu Ghraib? Did U.S. government policies make it possible? How much damage has the aftermath of Abu Ghraib had on America's credibility as a defender of freedom and human rights around the world?

Acclaimed filmmaker Rory Kennedy (HBO's "Indian Point: Imagining the Unimaginable") looks beyond the headlines to investigate the psychological and political context in which torture occurred when the powerful documentary GHOSTS OF ABU GHRAIB.

"How could ordinary American soldiers come to engage in such monstrous acts?" Kennedy asks. "What policies were put into place that allowed this behavior to flourish while protections granted to prisoners under the Geneva Conventions were ignored?"

"These photographs from Abu Ghraib have come to define the United States," says Scott Horton, chairman, Committee on International Law, NYC Bar Association. "The U.S., which was viewed as certainly one of the principal advocates of human rights and...the dignity of human beings in the world, suddenly is viewed as a principle expositor of torture."

For the first time, GHOSTS OF ABU GHRAIB features both the voices of Iraqi victims (interviewed in Turkey after arduous attempts to meet with them) and guards directly involved in torture at the prison. Conducted by Kennedy, these remarkably candid, in-depth interviews shed light on the abuses in an unprecedented manner.

Through these interviews, the film traces the events and the political and legal precedents that led to the scandal, beginning with the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.

While the White House and Pentagon claimed that the situation at Abu Ghraib was "a kind of animal house on the night shift," other on-site participants and observers maintain that the abuses at Abu Ghraib were part of a general pattern of a "gloves off" interrogation policy that had been put in place after 9/11.

GHOSTS OF ABU GHRAIB strongly suggests that, far from being an unauthorized, isolated event by rank-and-file soldiers acting on their own initiative, the physical and psychological torture employed at the prison was an inevitable outgrowth of military and government policies that were implemented in a climate of fear and chaos, inadequate training and insufficient resources.


More from Rory Kennedy, the director of "Ghost of Abu Ghraib":

"To date, there have been eleven low-ranking soldiers who have served time. No high- ranking official has served any time for what happened at Abu Ghraib. I think we the American People deserve to know what happened. We can't just imprison people and push this under the rug and say it's over and we've moved on.

There are a number of organizations like Human Rights First, the ACLU, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, who are very active in campaigns to ensure that we change our policies so that we don't continue to advocate torture in this country. And people can certainly reach out to those organizations. They have very active campaigns that aim to get to the bottom of what happened, and change US policy.

I would hope Ghosts of Abu Ghraib is a contributing factor to that dialogue, and encourages people to get involved. People can have gatherings where they talk about it, write their local newspapers--all these things make a huge difference. Also helpful is calling and writing their Congresspeople, talking to their friends and family about what's happening and really demanding change.

We need to voice those concerns, and really embolden our leaders to take action, and change our policies back to what America used to represent--human rights and human dignity, and respect for the law."



BUZZFLASH REVIEWS