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The issue of fairness here isn't that Graner got caught and sentenced. He is a war criminal and lucky he didn't get the death penalty.
What is unfair is that nobody else, particularly his superior officers and the architects of this policy, got prosecuted.
And why didn't they get prosecuted? Because the higher up you are in rank in the US, the less the law applies to you.
For example: Bush. He lied America into a war, he obstructed audits into government spending, he instituted a policy of torture, if there was a corrupt thing a president could do, he did it - right down to making contracts with the government dependant on which party you voted for.
But he didn't even get a stern word in Congress. Heck, he told the Democratic Congress to jump, they were in the air before asking how high.
Graner, on the other hand, was just a grunt, and hence subject to the full weight of the law.
Another example: Scooter Libby: The guy was implicated in treason, a death penalty offence. He got away with a book deal.
Again, if you look at lower ranked people who did crimes, well they didn't get off so lightly.
And you see it in the corporate world. If you poison someone's water, you get tried for attempted murder, if a big corporation does it? The most they will get is maybe a fine, chances are the Republicans will even argue against that - saying they want to protect people's jobs.
These bailouts: If you got sick and went broke, you would have your assets stripped from you and you would have to start again from scratch. Now if it is the big three auto manufacturers, or a major bank, well the worst you would get is a golden parachute.
About the only way a really rich guy can get into trouble is by non-tax fraud - because that is normally stealing from really rich guys. Stealing from everyone else? Hey that is capitalism.
The moral of the story? America, if you are rich or of high enough government rank, is the land of the free-to-do-anything-you-want without consequences.
If you are not, well you better watch yourself.
The original idea of America was to avoid this, because this is essentially what feudalism was about, but because dumb-ass Republican pond-scum-sucking inbreeds felt that their religion, or their right to damn people for disagreeing with them, or their fear of science, or their wish to stick it up the noses of the people who happened to live in cities was more important than maintaining even vague equality before the law, you now have a society where you have an established nobility.
Have fun with it.
