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Read other letters about this article
Other letter writers have detailed excellently why Graner deserves to be behind bars, as well as the gross unfairness represented by the fact that he's the only one there.
Of course, he's a human being, and was also doing reprehensible things under orders. He was an integral and willing participant in the culture of sadism that took over at Abu Ghraib. He was detailing it all in dispassionately-written e-mails home, attaching grisly photos as most of us would attach new baby photos. There's no question that he deserved strong punishment in a military prison, pictures of him in Santa's lap notwithstanding.
He has been going through what our country used to call torture, and by the same morally-cancerous logic that's gripped our country since 9/11, he's more deserving of this treatment than the hundreds who have been unfairly imprisoned (and tortured) in Guantamo, guilty of no crime. The sad thing is, this case study is a perfect example of how far our moral compass has degraded, that we can so easily justify psychological torture of someone because he has also tortured.
That being said, none of this elicits my sympathy for the man who's being punished now. I wish Mark Benjamin had not confused the issue of Graner's unfair punishment with sympathy. There are many higher-ranking officials that deserve punishment, true, and we should not justify the method of Graner's punishment by comparison with his crimes. However, let's be completely clear, a criminal is a criminal, and the serving out of one's sentence should be no occasion for misplaced "sympathy."
