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Torture is an act. The definition is not dependent upon who inflicts or receives cruel treatment. Bureaucratic distance from the physical torture procedures doesn't lessen the burden of guilt for espousing or encouraging them.
Mr. Graner is treated with the same cruelty he treated others. That doesn't undo damage done, doesn't "fix" the issue of torture or shift the political or moral context. Punishing, torturing, really, one person, no matter how apparently publically gratifying, doesn't challenge the institutional position that torture is useful and acceptable.
Inflicting torture as payment for torture makes no sense. It contradicts itself! It also undermines the legal and moral reason for court martialing Graner in the first place.
For those who think there was a way out for Mr. Graner, I must ask them what action they've taken, besides posting to Salon and joining Amnesty International. I must also ask when they've been trapped between a rock and a hard place. I'm sure those occasions were not as fraught as Mr. Graner's.
