“Standard Operating Procedure,” the critically acclaimed new film by Oscar winning documentarian Errol Morris, opens nationwide this weekend. Hailed by reviewers for its evenhandedness, the film follows Morris' own standard operating procedure -- last seen in 2003's "The Fog of War" -- of minutely dissecting his subject through extensive and penetrating interviews. This time, he turns the camera upon the mistreatment of prisoners held in US custody in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison and traces responsibility for these abuses to the upper echelons of the Bush administration.
The White House is countering with a mass media event of its own: the release of the latest installment in the popular spring break-themed “Girls Gone Wild” video series, filmed with Administration support at the Guantanamo Bay military base over the last month and a half. Previous videos in the series have used more stereotypical spring break locations in Florida, Mexico, and Jamaica as backdrops for the montaged footage of American female college students in various states of intoxication and undress that is the franchise’s trademark.
“Girls Gone Wild: Guantanamo” follows the standard format in an effort to depict Guantanamo Bay as a tropical paradise where the only laws violated are those concerning drinking age and indecent exposure. In recent years, this U.S. military base located on the tip of Cuba has become primarily associated with the detention of “unlawful combatants” captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere, who have been held held there in suspension of the rights of habeus corpus and -- like the prisoners of Abu Ghraib -- subjected to interrogation techniques widely characterized as torture. Over the last few weeks, spring breakers have been flown into the base at government expense to party among the chain-link enclosures housing terrorist suspects clad in orange uniforms.
Vice-President Dick Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales join in the fun, making brief cameos as judges of a wet t-shirt contest. It is unclear whether the contest's coincidence with the midday call to prayer, which can be heard dimly in the background, was accidental or deliberate.
Above: Vice-President Dick Cheney announcing the
winner of the "Girls Gone Wild" wet t-shirt contest.
Amnesty International has filed suit in federal court on behalf of the detainees, arguing that non-voluntary involvement in the video and round the clock exposure to screaming coeds and their "Neanderthal male companions" constitute a new low in prisoner treatment.
Like its predecessors, “Girls Gone Wild: Guantanamo” will be sold for $19.95 through late-night TV infomercials and the internet.
“Girls Gone Wild: Guantanamo” follows the standard format in an effort to depict Guantanamo Bay as a tropical paradise where the only laws violated are those concerning drinking age and indecent exposure. In recent years, this U.S. military base located on the tip of Cuba has become primarily associated with the detention of “unlawful combatants” captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere, who have been held held there in suspension of the rights of habeus corpus and -- like the prisoners of Abu Ghraib -- subjected to interrogation techniques widely characterized as torture. Over the last few weeks, spring breakers have been flown into the base at government expense to party among the chain-link enclosures housing terrorist suspects clad in orange uniforms.
Vice-President Dick Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales join in the fun, making brief cameos as judges of a wet t-shirt contest. It is unclear whether the contest's coincidence with the midday call to prayer, which can be heard dimly in the background, was accidental or deliberate.
Above: Vice-President Dick Cheney announcing thewinner of the "Girls Gone Wild" wet t-shirt contest.
Amnesty International has filed suit in federal court on behalf of the detainees, arguing that non-voluntary involvement in the video and round the clock exposure to screaming coeds and their "Neanderthal male companions" constitute a new low in prisoner treatment.
Like its predecessors, “Girls Gone Wild: Guantanamo” will be sold for $19.95 through late-night TV infomercials and the internet.
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