Is it a jaded point of view to believe horrible things such as are depicted in the photos take place on both sides during times of war?
“Well I don’t think there was any disagreement about whether these were horrible things. The disagreement of course was who ordered them. The photographs became politicized immediately. People would argue [and the] left would say one thing, right would say something else. And very, very quickly it devolved into an argument about rogue soldiers versus the administration policy, without anyone ever really bothering to investigate the circumstances under which the photographs were taken. It became political football.
I pointed out a couple of times my surprise that no one had really bothered to investigate the photographs per se. No one had bothered to talk to the people who’d taken the photographs. No one had bothered to figure out really what happened in these photographs. Instead people simply argued about them, each assuming that they knew what they were about. And to me that’s the underlying problem. I don’t think you want to get into a discussion about whether bad things happen in war. I don’t think there’s much of an argument to be made. Of course bad things happen in war. We’re not talking about that. We’re talking about pictures and what they mean, and the question of policy.”
But Americans believe we don’t do those things. Was there a certain sense of dawning awareness for you as you spoke to the people that maybe that line has been crossed? That what’s acceptable now or what Americans will or won’t do is no longer applicable?
“I agree with you and I feel I have to say one thing to qualify what you just said. When I say that the pictures were politicized, they were politicized for that exact reason. The question do these pictures have something to say about us as a country? Do these pictures have something to say about the current administration, the military, or are they pictures that say nothing more than these were rogue soldiers? Their behavior was initiated by themselves, no one else. They have really nothing to say about us. Nothing whatsoever to say about the war in general. If you’re asking me what I think, I made this entire movie to figure out what I think. What are these photographs showing us? What are these photographs about? And if you like, it would be disingenuous to say otherwise, what do these photographs have to say about us? What do they have to say about my country, about the policies of the current administration? And my answer is they have a lot to tell us.
I remain shocked. You can look at the picture of the hooded man on the box with wires and you can say, ‘Rogue soldiers.’ ‘Administration policy.’ ‘Rogue soldiers.’ ‘Administration policy.’ Well let’s ask somebody. Let’s actually try to come up with some evidence of what was actually going on there, rather than just conjecture about what a photograph represents.”
