Standard Operating Procedure Page #9

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The individual with the wires tied

to their hands and standing on a box,

I see that as somebody that's

being put into a stress position.

I'm looking at it,

thinking,

"They don't look like they're

real electrical wires."

Standard operating procedure.

That's all it is.

Does this one actually constitute a crime

or is it standard operating procedure?

That's probably

standard operating procedure.

The panties on the head

are an added touch,

but it's no more than

sleep deprivation.

They weren't being

tortured, per se.

They were going through discomfort to

try to aid in obtaining information.

I've been in the Army for 20 years.

You know, I've been to Desert Storm One.

I spent four months

at Guantanamo Bay.

People that haven't been

where I've been

I can't expect them to see

the pictures in the same way.

I came back from a meeting,

it was very late at night.

I opened my classified e-mail.

"Ma'am, just wanted to let

you know I'm going in to brief

"the CG on the progress of the

investigation at Abu Ghraib.

"This involves the allegations

of abuse and the photographs."

And I sent an e-mail

back to him and I said,

"I don't know what to say.

First I've heard of it."

I was preparing in my mind to

hold a mini-press conference

to tell the truth

and to tell it early.

To say, "This is what

we've uncovered.

"We're looking into it because

we discipline ourselves.

"We're Americans, and we

know right from wrong."

General Sanchez said,

"No, absolutely not. You're not

to discuss this with anyone."

The fear of the truth

silenced people.

Everybody knew. Everybody

that was inside of that prison

that stayed there, lived there,

worked there, they had the pictures.

They would come over and they

would get copies from Graner.

And he had all these discs

so he would make copies.

"Well, here you go, here you go,

which ones do you want?"

Everybody had a copy of a picture.

Everybody knew.

When those photographs came out,

the infamous photographs

the day after

Colonel Pappas issued

a battalion-wide

amnesty period.

Any type of evidence

was destroyed.

Burn it, throw it away,

erase it off your hard drive

and be done with it.

He just wiped out every

last single defense witness,

every last single person

that would've been

available to come forward

and say, "Look, this is

what I know," in one day.

You know, after

the amnesty period,

who's gonna want

to come forward?

Who's gonna want to say,

"Hey, I know something.

"I know what happened"?

No one.

Find a way to make it go away

and that's what they did.

Sacrifice the little guys,

that's how they cover it up.

I'm a 28-year-old young

American. A volunteer soldier.

And I'm gonna get

everything blamed on me.

HARMAN:
"Well, sweetie, you married a criminal.

Yep, the pictures are out

"and I'm under investigation

as of 10 a.m. this morning.

"So much for turning those

pictures in when I come home.

"I knew I'd be in trouble

just by being there.

"But how else would you let people

know the sh*t the Army does?

"You think I'd be scared,

but I'm not.

"I knew I'd go down with them.

Wrong place, wrong time.

"What sucks is almost the entire

company knows what happened,

"have seen the pictures

and have done nothing."

AMBUHL GRANER:
My husband

is in prison right now.

I can't move on from this

until he comes home.

So, that's pretty difficult.

This huge political monster

cost Lynndie England three years,

Ivan Frederick eight years

and my husband ten years.

When I went through Desert Storm,

we were seen as the rescuers, the heroes.

Our mission was to reclaim Kuwait.

That was something that was honorable.

This war in Iraq,

like Vietnam,

will probably get remembered as

the one time that we not the heroes,

we were not the saviors.

And these photographs will

play a big part in that.

War is a stressful

time for people.

They were getting shelled on a

frequent basis at that prison.

A young person with no

experience in the world

being thrown into something

like that may get confused.

We all say that

hindsight is 20-20.

And I'm sure they all look back

realizing what happened was wrong

and they played a part in something that

was very embarrassing for the country.

But at the time,

they were in a war zone

where the rules

get fuzzy sometimes.

Lynndie England,

I really feel sorry for that gal.

It's obvious she is one

of those young people

that doesn't have much

experience in life.

There had been

no indication

that she would have been

involved in anything like this.

But she was in love.

Ambuhl. She...

Well, she knew when

the line was drawn

and when it was time

for her to disappear.

Because she would be

present during some things

and then noticeably

absent during others.

Um...

So she was probably

one of the smarter ones.

ENGLAND:
In the pictures that came

out in the media, all you seen was me.

You didn't see Megan

'cause that was

the cropped picture.

Graner told me he just

wanted her out of the shot

'cause it was interfering with,

I don't know, his picture.

Maybe it was to

secretly protect her

because now that I know

that they were closer

than what I thought at the time,

maybe he was trying to protect her.

MORRIS:
When did he find out

that you were pregnant?

Well, when I found out

on February 20th,

I come back and I told

the First Sergeant Commander.

And, of course, they wanted

to know who the father was.

So they knew,

and then I told him.

At first he sounded excited

and then he was just like he

didn't want anything to do with me.

He didn't want anything

to do with the baby.

Once the story broke,

and it came out that I was pregnant,

he denied that the baby was his.

He was accusing me of cheating

on him, which I never did.

So if that's how he wants to play it,

then that's fine with me.

He'll never see him.

It's his choice.

I was in the mess hall.

I look up

and I saw myself

and Dan Rather

and I'm like,

"What the hell?"

It's like, "Javal,

Sergeant Javal Davis."

I'm like, "Whoa.

Yo, that's me.

"Where the hell did they

get this picture from?"

They went to my high school.

They acquired a picture

of me from the newspaper

when I was running track,

going over a hurdle.

They cut my face out

and showed me like this.

But, in actuality,

I was jumping over a hurdle.

So they made me look

like this mean-ass guy.

They're showing

naked people in a pyramid

and then they show

a picture of me.

I'm like, "Hold on.

If you look at these pictures,

"do you see a black guy anywhere

in any of these pictures?"

There would be no me,

no no one else,

no shock-the-world, no scandal,

if there wasn't any photographs.

It'd went away, it'd went

underneath a rock,

and that would have

been the end of it.

PACK:
Photographs

are what they are.

You can interpret

them differently,

but what the photograph

depicts is what it is.

You can put any kind

of meaning to it

but you're seeing what happened

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