- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
You have all (the apologists who blame Graner and, practically, ONLY Graner - the bullshit "bad apple" defense) not actually read what i posted before have you? You have not read the other revelations that have since come out since Abu Ghraib have you? About high level meetings where "harsh" interrogation tactics were discussed? Or how about Rumsfeld visiting Gitmo early on and witnessing some (illegal) harsh interrogations?
Get it through your heads (and read the article at the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/28/AR2008112802242.html?hpid=opinionsbox1>"The Interrogator Speaks" to read about the REAL world). From the top (President, Vice President, SecDef, JCS, Pentagon) on down there was AND IS an official and substantive lowering of restrictions and encouragement of "creative interpretation" of the very clear laws. The leadership setup an unmistakably permissive environment that not only encouraged abuse, but rewarded it - I myself was on the receiving end of an official military briefing by an official JAG commander (LtCol) who expressly said "the Geneva Conventions don't apply, blah blah" to an entire room of officers and enlisted alike. This shit does NOT happen in a vacuum. These were indeed bad apples mixed in with "good" apples, ALL of them abusing prisoners and outright violating the Law of Armed Conflict (which merely INCLUDES the Geneva Conventions...also everyone seems to forget there is a thing called the Conventions Against Torture, Abuse, and Inhumane Treatment that leaves NO wiggle room for "creative interpretation" and makes no exceptions whatsoever for prisoners, whether legal or illegal combatants).
Graner was a pile of shit going in, he remains a pile of shit. But he is a pile of shit to which the Bush Admin, the Pentagon, and his immediate command structure added to with happy shovel fulls of official shit. They FED Graner and encouraged Englund.
