A scene from Standard Operating Procedure Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.

Some of the most poignant moments in Morris's film are when Sabrina reads excerpts from letters she wrote at the time to her wife in New Jersey. It is clear from the letters that she saw herself as a whistleblower, documenting the brutality even as she participated in it, because, as she rightly realized, the story would never be believed without them. Morris's film presents a powerful picture of scapegoating and cover-up that he hopes will resonate even with viewers who see the torture itself as justified. "Why does the guy who committed the murder skate? No charges, no court martial, no imprisonment. Why does Sabrina Harman go to prison for a year? I think the photographs are responsible and have aided and abetted one of the great, great miscarriages of justice. Not that these people are lily white. But I do think that the photographs incriminated them in a way that completely hides the reality of Abu Ghraib, and what was going on there. And I would like to correct that, in some small way if I can do that."

As reports come out that the torture at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and elsewhere were authorized, in the face of international law, at the highest levels in the Pentagon and the White House, Morris sees the film as part of an ongoing investigation. A book by New Yorker writer Philip Gourevitch will accompany the movie, and Morris intends to make publicly available the photos, documents and transcripts that he has gathered in his research: "I'd like to put all of this online. I'd like to create and Abu Ghraib Archive. I think there's a lot of stuff here to think about, and I'm still thinking about it. I raised a lot of questions for myself and I hope for other people in making this movie. I look at is as something to continue to explore. I'd love to find those two prisoners; I'd like to interview them. There's endless officers. I can think of about 20 or 30 names that I think could really make a difference in understanding this place."

Despite this ongoing investigation, Morris dismisses parallels to his earlier film The Thin Blue Line, in which he uncovered the wrongful conviction of Randall Dale Adams for the 1976 murder of a Dallas police officer, resulting in Adams' release from prison: "This is the real difference between this and The Thin Blue Line. That was one case, this is like 1,000 cases. It's too much for one person to handle. You can't really make an analogy, though of course I think about it all the time. There are so many differences. No one cared about [the Randall Adams] case. I wandered into it over a decade after it happened. No one cared. Here, everyone cares. Everyone's aware of it, and in a way has repressed it, or suppressed it. Everybody knows the photographs. And yet we don't know who the people are that took them, and we don't know what the pictures mean. My hope is people will want to see, and will want to talk about and think about that."