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Makes one wonder what he'd have to do in order to be fired from his corrections job, let alone prosecuted, doesn't it?
-- Confucius Always Say
He just didn't get caught until after Gulf War I. I have a brother who served time, and I am a military historian. Some prison guards act like this without any PTSD. And most PTSD victims do NOT pull this kind of stuff. You can't blame PTSD for this. He was a sociopath long before he got to Abu Ghraib. He was facilitated by the Bush administration's deliberate smearing of the bright line rules of command and control. The Bush administration deliberately set up ambiguous command and control situations because they did not care. Had those pictures never leaked out, that psycho would be back at a civilian prison torturing civilians.
I think he is where he deserves to be. He should have been in prison in W. Virginia, and the fact that he was free IS a big question. I think Lyndie Engkund et al should still be in prison AND that his civilian and military commanders should have been punished. That said, I want no clemency for him. He clearly enjoyed his sadism, and I want him to caution others to not push these borders.
Bush will pre-emptively pardon everyone from Gonzales on down involved in torture. I know this, everyone involved with the military knows this. Obama will not even have the opportunity to decide about investigation. We also know that there are many ways to obey orders, and many ways to "obey" orders. One can creatively ignore and bend orders at will.
Bush is culpable for creating this situation, for his illegal insistence that torture is acceptable, and for his cashiering of anyone who challenged that view. He will get away with it because half of the US public has the ethics and knowledge of an alley cat. That does not mean we let Graner go. Graner went far beyond even what the grinning idiots at the AG's wanted.
I am reminded of the guy who stood by while his buddy molested and killed that little girl in Vegas, and got off scot free. That's not justice. Graner is like that guy. He is getting what he deserves.
Anyone who thinks solitary is equivalent to what Granier delighted in doing needs to re-think that. Equating solitary with actual pain is a trivialization, an exercise in esoterica by the comfortable activist. If his people had simply fragged his tail, it would have been too good for him. He deserves time to let his self-pity become self-loathing.
This thread shows me that many people are disconnected from the US prison system here. If you had a relative in prison, you would have less sympathy for this man. There are way too many of them in the system, and they get away with it far too often. Granier just got caught. The question should be "How many get away with this without getting caught... in the US and worldwide"?
