S.O.P. Standard Operating Procedure

Synopsis

Errol Morris, Academy Award® winning documentary filmmaker, trains his camera on the abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison, the photographs that exposed the scandal and the procedures and legal opinions that made it possible. After two-plus years of investigation, yielding a million and a half words of interview transcript, thousands of pages of unredacted reports, and hundreds of photographs, Morris discovers that "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." While exposing the previously unpublicized scope of the abuse Morris tries to answer the essential and unresolved question, "how could American values become so compromised that Abu Ghraib and the subsequent coverup-could happen?"