STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE

Saying something is SOP in the military is standard fare. It is like saying, "how do you do something?" Oh, just follow the SOP. In the civilian world it might be called a vision statement, protocol, whatever but in the military it tells you the rules and exactly how to do something, step by step. It spells it out, no questions asked.

Well guess what? SOP was not followed at the Abu Ghraib prison if the infamous photos show anything. In some ways, it didn’t tell us what we had not already heard.

What it really boils down too is a bunch of unsophisticated emotionally and intellectually kids left to their own devices. Non thinking youngsters who get into a kind of cult existence, led by this 37 year old n'the well who becomes their guru. The military, however, is where the real fault lies, the overall military is complicit. All of us who have any connection to the military should be ashamed. The chain of command totally broke down, leaving these kids on their own. And, to make it worse, they are National Guard troops, some of the first to arrive in the country, almost no training. And, then they are thrown into this crazy situation and it's the toll of war in more ways than one. From their perspective, they simply do what they are told to do.

My suspicion is that we have so few in Congress and other places who have next to no experience with the military, they did not even know the right questions to asked. Where was the chain of command? The Sergeant Major, The First Sergeant, Platoon Sergeant. No unit that I've ever been in would have let this happen. The First Sergeant and the chain of command would have been all over it. This is a sad aberration but one where only a few went to jail is equally an aberration. There are so many at fault who got away with not even a slap on the hand: Generals, commanders, non commissioned officers, civilians, the list is endless.

Seeing SOP makes an ex Army guy ashamed. This is a disturbing movie that few will see. The movie maker does those Hollywood sorts of things that make the picture entertaining in a weird sense: the music, etc. What is amazing are the interviewees; with this entire group, not one seemed to honestly get it, "not my fault, doing what I was told." Almost all didn't seem to get any connection between right and wrong, humiliation, basic decency. Maybe one youngster who was a generator mechanic and kind of got caught up in it. He felt bad that he had soiled his family's reputation.

Up the chain of command, there is not a single person who says, "I should have been there." The most obvious one was the Brigade commander. It was her job and in her interview, if accurate, merely plays the "left out of the loop" card. And, what about Sanchez. I always liked him but ultimately, knowing or not, it was his job. In his book, just out, Wiser In Battle, he absorbs himself from blame. Someone else's fault. To me, this story is the story of how everything associated with our debacle in Iraq has been mismanaged in every way. Sad, sad, sad.