Lifting the hood on Abu Ghraib

Documentary maker Errol Morris won the Silver Bear jury prize at the Berlin Film Festival in February for his film about American torture in Iraq, crafted around the iconic image of the black-hooded man standing cruciform with wires attached to his hands at the Abu Ghraib prison camp.

Now Standard Operating Procedure has finally opened at cinemas in America. It is not expected to equal the box office of an action flick. But as it reaches screens across America and around the world, it will be held up as peerless testimony to all that has gone wrong since President Bush took office.

That is because Morris illuminates the deeper perversity behind the outrages committed in Bush's 'war on terror'.

Morris made his name in 1978 with Gates of Heaven. He