He’s still waiting for the outrage

One in a series of occasional stories profiling authors as they discuss their work in bookstores and other public venues.

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The photos of Iraqi prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib shocked millions when they were leaked to the media in 2004. But have they sparked meaningful changes in U.S. policy, and did they fundamentally alter the nation’s political landscape?

For Philip Gourevitch, the answers are discouraging. And as he fielded a reader’s question this week about the U.S. response to the scandal, the writer who set out to document and explain it in his new book, “Standard Operating Procedure,” seemed momentarily stumped.

“I don’t have a great answer for you,” he said after a brief pause. “I actually think that people don’t mind torture that much. I don’t think there’s a great public hue and cry over this, I haven’t seen it. There’s a general feeling that it’s all right.”

Gourevitch, an award-winning author who penned “We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories From Rwanda,” tried to illuminate the reasons for flagging outrage over Abu Ghraib. It was the last thing he expected when he began working on his book several years ago in a unique collaboration with Academy Award-winning filmmaker Errol Morris (“The Fog of War”).

A trim, dark-haired man who speaks passionately about the subject, Gourevitch displays an indignation -- and disappointment -- that are unmistakable.

“As a population we haven’t been entirely helpless, but we have been acquiescent,” he said. When the grotesque photos of Iraqi prisoners were first revealed, “we learned this policy came from the very top [the White House], and the top has to be accountable. But that’s not what happened. Somewhere along the way we lost some sense of purpose. We were upset but it wasn’t clear what you were supposed to do with these feelings and as a result we tuned it out.”

Pushed to back burner

Gourevitch struck a chord with many in the overflow crowd of more than 150 people who turned out to hear him speak. They were riveted as he read from an interview with Tim Dugan, a civilian interrogator who arrived at Abu Ghraib in November 2003. Dugan was appalled at the intelligence gathering staffed largely by 18-year-old reservists and military contractors.

When Gourevitch finished reading, a man who said he was a Vietnam vet suggested the cruelty shown toward Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib was nothing new, given the demonization of Vietnamese as “gooks” and “water buffaloes” by U.S. troops during that war. Another person asked if the issue would resurface in the current presidential campaign. Again, Gourevitch was pessimistic.

As he covered the 2004 presidential race for the New Yorker, he had assumed -- incorrectly -- there would be a protracted debate over Abu Ghraib.

Four years later, neither side in the presidential race has stoked anger over the scandal. Sen. John McCain, the presumptive GOP nominee and a survivor of wartime torture, supported the president’s veto of a Democratic anti-waterboarding bill. Meanwhile, Sen. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has not made torture a major issue in his campaign.

Spurred into action

Gourevitch, 46, is also the editor of the Paris Review, a respected literary journal, and he brought a writer’s eye to his book along with a journalist’s instincts.

The project began when Morris sent him transcripts of interviews he’d done with key players in the scandal. He also read interviews conducted by military officials. The overall effect was transforming.

“I was surprised by the power of the voices,” the author said. “I hadn’t heard them yet in this war.”

The result was a dual project where Morris used the interviews for a documentary, while Gourevitch made them the basis for his book.

“We decided it would not be the book of the movie, or the movie of the book,” he said. “They would be two parallel collaborations.”

While some may think they get the main points of the Abu Ghraib story, the book offers a provocative challenge by not including any pictures. The reason, Gourevitch said, is that a photograph fails to reveal the full context of what is happening. The real story can get lost.

Gourevitch became surprisingly sympathetic to some of the soldiers, noting: “I don’t feel they’re exculpated, because they all think they did wrong. But they were wronged as well.”

It all comes back to the accountability of the administration, and that issue has been swept under the rug, the author concluded: “We can’t explain Abu Ghraib by simply saying that 12 to 15 bad apples got kinky on the night shift. To do that is to miss the bigger picture.”

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josh.getlin@latimes.com

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Who: Philip Gourevitch, author of “Standard Operating Procedure” (The Penguin Press), the story of U.S. soldiers and military contractors at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq

Where: Barnes & Noble on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, Monday