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Orders are orders, the classic Nuremberg defense, rejected then as it should be rejected now. It was up to Chuck Graner to refuse illegal orders.
The author implies that Graner was a product of the Bush regime's evil lawlessness. He was not, he was, and is, a sadistic sociopath, Mr. Graner went bad a long time before Abu Ghraib.
In 1991, he was a 22-year-old soldier in Saudi Arabia, calling home at all hours to see if his wife was there.In 1992, he was working at a county prison in Pennsylvania with guards who acknowledge beating up prisoners as a means of control.
In 1994, he made a fellow prison guard sick by spraying Mace into his coffee.
In 1997, he was accused by his wife of threatening to kill her.
In 1998, when he was working as a guard in a state prison, he was accused by one inmate of slipping a razor blade into his food.
And in 2001, he was accused by his now-ex-wife of grabbing her by the hair, dragging her out of a bedroom and trying to throw her down the stairs.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16832-2004Jun4.html
Does Graner deserve punishment? Absolutely. Do the conditions of his current sentence amount to torture? Yes, but this is also true of the 2.2 million Americans now serving a sentence in your prisons.
And to those of you with your revenge fantasies and your sanguinary lust for "punishment" of the "evil doers", how, exactly, are you any different from Graner and those like him? It is that exact same retributive mindset that led to the torture at Abu Ghraib. If you want Graner to be tortured, if you support his torture, then you and Chuck are in the same room, so maybe now you can stop wondering how this could happen.
One thing I can guarantee. Chuck Graner will not emerge from this experience a better person. Torture doesn't work.
