Standard Operating Procedure considers the infamous Abu Ghraib photographs of prisoner abuse and asks how this defining moment ot the Iraq War came about. Told through the voices of the soldiers who took and appeared in the pictures, it shows how these men and women were themselves victims of the US adminisztration, as well as the instruments of a great injustice. Drawing on more than two hundred hours of startlingly frank and intimate interviews with the soldier-photographers who left us what have become iconic images of the conflict, Philip Gourevitch's relentlessly surprising and perceptive interpretation of these chilling events is a war story that takes its place among the classics.