GHOSTS OF ABU GHRAIB
US, 2007, 78 minutes, Colour.
Directed by Rory Kennedy.
This film made an impact, especially in the United States, in 2007, only a few years after the events that it portrays. A year later, prolific documentary maker, Alex Gibney, made the Oscar-winning Taxi to the Darkside, expanding the themes of Ghosts to incorporate not only the torture of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib, but extending to the experiences Guantánamo Bay and Bagram Airport.
In later years, there are a number of films about American torture of prisoners including Rendition, moving prisoners from country to country, Zero Dark 30, interrogations and the taking of Osama bin Laden, The Mauritanian and a focus on Guantánamo Bay. For an understanding of the positions taken by the Bush administration, by exposes, and by diligent research, the film to be recommended is The Report with Adam Driver and Annette Bening.
On the one hand, a number of officials of the American administration are incorporated into this narrative, including George Bush, moments of Dick Cheney, some speeches by Donald Rumsfeld, there are spokespersons who explain the post-2001 interpretation of the Geneva conventions, especially that they did not apply to terrorists. There are also details about types of torture.
However, Incorporated are quite a number of photos taken of the torture and some video clips. And photos not been taken and brought to public and media notice, then might not have been any investigation or expose.
But, the main speakers in the film are military personnel who were assigned, without training, to Abu Ghraib, Saddam Hussein’s of prison and torture centre, to work with the prisoners, all of them giving a personal impression of what they saw, what they did – and the information that most of them served prison terms. This included a Brigadier General – the highest rank officer who was demoted. On the contrary, the higher officials who administered the regimes with torture were honoured.
The film opens with some sequences from the Stanford 1961 experiments by Dr Milgram, testing the obedience of those directed to administer torture, finding that they did obey instructions and applied the torture (actually an actor impersonating the effects of the torture but they did not know this). And the film returns to this era at the end.
This film was released soon after the events, championed by those against torture, condemned by those who felt that was undermining American authority in the war against terror.
