The film's bloody dramatizations...suggest a fundamental distrust of the efficacy of the word over the image and a bland assumption that audiences have lost their ability to empathize.

For American military personnel to descend to Saddam's level was one of the worst moments in US history, and Morris's film reveals the truth: the poisonous Abu Ghraib pictures were not merely an American scandal but a human catastrophe.

Standard Operating Procedure is a brilliantly, almost self-consciously, stylish film.

The documentary and accompanying book contain a good deal of valuable and harrowing material.