Site Presented By
Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
such as "What about Rumsfeld?", "What about the "CIA?", "What about the others in the gang of which Graner was the ringleader?". Well, what about Rasputin while we're at it and his role in the weakening of Czardom? Btw, I got my information on Graner's domestic and other behaviour from "The Washington Post" and did not pluck it out of the air or from my own fevered imaginings. Graner was angry with Linddy England for admitting to the "cruel and unnatural" treatment of Muslim men in Abu Ghraib, a vindictive exercise of power in which she and her clearly exulted. She has a child by Graner and I wonder if he's ever shown any interest in that child or if everything revolves around his ego and his own need for HIS parents to throw themselves into the fray on his behalf. By any standards, civilised or other, the man is a sadist but should probably be released from solitary confinement if he's not a danger to other prisoners and to himself. If he got murdered in prison there could be more re-writing of history and then we'd see Graner the Martyr emerge from this sordid tale.
Barack will be US President in about six weeks time, elected by the American people, so that's good enough for anyone who has faith in the electoral system. We don't always get what we want and there's a furious row going on in Britain just now about suggestions that Parliament is being subverted by the police while we're being hectored by our own government, a bunch of clowns, and the EU bureaucrats in Brussels to vote again on a referendum to which we said "No" last May. We enraged French President Sarkozy when we, a tiny country with a vital vote, put a stop to his gallop in extending the European Union further eastward. As a character in one of Sean 0'Casey's plays grumbled "The whole world is in a state of chassis"; for "chassis" read "chaos".
I didn't drop the suet balls but tied them on to trees. Placing them on the ground would invite visits from mice and rats. You must be a man, Confucius. In general, women have more sense. I saw HRC on television last evening. She was glowing and Barack was beaming while he said lovely things about her. They were only fooling us all the time by pretending to despise each other but those games have been going on from time immemorial. I'm off now, with many other things to do rather than indulging in raillery and disputaion on Salon.
But there's no excuse for putting someone under 24 hour lights without even a clock. The least they could do is dim the fucking lights.
That said, I have a growing suspicion about the wisdom of prosecuting "war crimes." It seems to me that war itself is the crime. Singling out certain wartime behaviors as being special crimes feels like it is normalizing the rest of it, like somehow, we should protect the reputation of the "honorable soldiers" by punishing the "dishoronable soldiers." And that is getting dangerously close to legitimizing a warrior ethic, a sort of modern-day Bushido.
I hate warrior ethics. I think they're among the most pathetic perversions of human moral reasoning ever devised. The only thing that makes me crazier is Taliban style machismo (which I'm sure includes a bit of "successful violence is a virtue" of its own).
So, I don't judge Graner and his associates too harshly. They were members of an organization whose most vital prerequisite is a willingness to commit violence on a proffessional basis. There are only two types of people who have that willingness - people who enjoy violence for violence's sake, and people who are gullible enough to believe that they will only be asked to perform violence at the most severe extremety of need.
Atrocities are inevitable in war because wars are prosecuted by soldiers. Trying to pretend otherwise is like trying to separate the sausage from the slaughterhouse. Bushido is a lie, chivalry was what the thugs talked about between massacres, and no soldier is ever a knight.
As long as we live in a society that feels it needs a military, we live in a society that needs people like Graner. Eight-hundred years ago, he would have made someone an excellent jarl.
At the very least, they should let his ass out of jail. What he did was no worse than what half the country did when they re-elected GW Bush.
Fuck him. I hope he rots in jail.
It's sufficient for the superior officers in the hierarchy of supervision- from (above) Maj. Gen. Miller on down, to send the message to those with hands-on authority over the detainees that ordinary norms of humane conduct toward those in their custody don't apply, meanwhile keeping pointedly silent on what won't be allowed- or whether any limits whatsoever exist in that regard.
Not really. I have worked in senior positions in facilities similar to prisons, and also worked for a while in a maximum security prison. Such organizations have a myriad of policies and procedures that staff are very familiar with that set standards for how inmates are to be treated and their rights protected.
Even if I had received a memo from the governor of my state saying that as of now all human rights of my charges and all abuse laws were suspended, my staff would still have been obliged to follow all policies and procedures unless they were specifically directed to ignore them.
For example, if the inmates got three meals a day, it would not be a simple matter to say: O.K. it has come to my attention that the inmates are too fat, so effective immediately there will be no breakfast. The bacon, eggs, toast, and coffee will all be delivered to the staff mess for consumption by staff.
I give this example simply to show that if a specific procedure is in place, then it requires a specific order to countermand it. You cannot just issue an order saying that the inmates are too fat, so please give them less food, without specifying how this is to be done.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
