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Read other letters about this article
1. Graner was regularly emailing the abuse photos together with sadistic descriptions of his role to his family. Yet all we get is a warm-and-fuzzy softball questions for them? They are responsible for this too. Yes he was family, but he was a little Eichmann in the family. They should have reported him or blown the whistle. Did they even tell him to stop?
If they had blown the whistle they might have not only stopped and prevented the torture of many Iraqi detainees but might have prevented Graner from getting anywhere near the level of punishment he ended up with. Failing to act in this case is not a crime but is morally repugnant.
2. Graner was in SHU. You are not sentenced to serve in an SHU (that would be "cruel and unusual"). You are put there for administrative purposes. The article rightfully bemoans the rigid SHU conditions, but does nothing to inquire as to how he got there. It only takes at face value his self-reported statement that it was for having one too many magazines or forgetting a bar of soap. This I find beyond belief, especially from a brutal man with a proven history of brutalizing those under his control.
I don't know much about military prisons. I do know in civilian lockup SHU is generally given to those who are so violent that they are out of control or those with a persistent history of serious infractions. SHU is abused and there are terrible cases of mentally ill individuals who are kept in SHU for years without treatment. But here we have no explanation. Salon does not have his disciplinary records and does not report that it even tried to obtain them. If it did I am willing to bet the farm that he's not in lockup for dropping the soap.
No sympathy for Graner here. I don't have that much sympathy to go around.
