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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Looks like the age of torture is not yet over. If he has to be kept in prison, must he be shackled and in solitary confinement?
Perhaps President Bush ought to pardon him!
irrc, his prior experience as a prison guard (civilian) and his age and experience as a member of the military added too ... my impression was that HE very much wanted to please and impress the big-boys in military intelligence ... and they were pleased and impressed, very pleased, glowing with praise ...
He should have had the knowledge, the seniority and sense of responsibiity to at least protect HIS underlings ... he was a bad leader, he let things spiral out of control, a responsibility he still seems to refuse to acknowledge ... as in the following:
Graner didn't hold out much hope for a change in his situation. "When I first arrived at [prison], both the commandant and the deputy commandant told me that I had embarrassed the Military Police Corps and that because of that I would never receive any type of clemency or parole from them," Graner wrote. "This could have all been talk, but so far all of my co-accused are out of prison. I have received no clemency or parole."
As I recall his "co-accused" were his underlings ... I seem to recall his defiance wrt both the "wrongness" of his own acts and his further responsibility for the acts of others (he was coach and cheerleader) factored into the lack of "charity" on the part of the military commission.
I'd much rather see him paroled with sentence commuted to community service ... say, orderly duty in a nursing home or non-Veteran's Administration rehab unit, some "sweat equity" towards the process of regaining his humanity... unfortunately, he seems to still be stuck in "victim" mode ...
Last week's attacks in Mumbai, India have exposed the futility of a 'war on terror.'
~
Confucius Sometime Say? The Prison sneeze bar prevents bear hugs, hand shake,
and no more kisses from fellow wretched tortured persons who are bare-naked perverts.
The Bush administration is an accomplice. Ahem. Higher-ups? Frenzy ill-ugh, OY! Mayhem.
Rehabilitation. Recidivism? Let's hope all perversion are examined. Graner is being punished.
The idea, as I read Mark B., the greater perversion was promoted by Vile DOJ/DOD/CIA's etc.,
Somewhere, I remember that a FBI agent complained. Thee good "watchdog" was dismissed?
The family must suffer? But I never spoke, or received the letters with more detail. Sympathy?
Sympathy? NOT for perpetrators of such barbaric ill, berserk, O sick, "out of control" DOJ's etc.,
If Abu Ghraib remains open... Keep a Sleaze DOG whistle blower Siren, and a Filthy Sneeze Bar.
The Jail needs to be full? Fools at the DOJ/DOD etc., Blong in some Grovel Pit. I can hardly say?
'Um Black Lab Mongrel Jackals, Polecats, and Hyena's? Send Gates or O.B. to strip Mr. Panda Yoo? Stinky bear pants?
Where some respect?
What of a Conscious Law?
Confucious Sometimes peep?
Mark Benjamin delete. me Fussy!
No say: achy. Coo. Accept dull pain.
You know I don't usually agree with you, but well said.
He didn't wait to go to Iraq to show what an unspeakably cruel man he is. He was a prison guard in Pennsylvania and was accused by a prisoner, convicted of burglary, of putting a razor blade in his food. Graner is also a wife-batterer and an ogre to his children. Like all bullies, he's a coward at heart so it's not in the least surprising that he's now looking for sympathy for himself and that his latest wife (not Ms. England, mother of one of his children) has set up a website pleading for clemency for her delightful husband, Charles Graner. The man is a barbarian and that's that.
Mark Benjamin, you wrote this:
"Years of revelations, however, show that the prisoner abuse started at the top, yet nobody who ordered the abuse has ever been tried or convicted of anything."
Graner testified to the opposite; Graner stated under oath that he, Lynndie England and the other merry pranksters from his National Guard unit were not under orders to do what they had done.
I fully expect that if Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney had had in mind a special operation to abuse prisoners for potential intel, they wouldn't have entrusted it to a crew as woefully incompetent as Graner's pathetic unit of reservist janitors and sometime prison guards.
Mark Benjamin; please explain whose orders you think that Graner was carrying out. Otherwise, I urge to to please hold your breath, very tightly, until Don Rumsfeld sees an indictment.
You have a nice crunch when bitten, but your flavor is too bland and you're much too stringy. I prefer carrots.
and he will then be the victim of Salon and Mark Benjamin ...
His leadership ruined the careers of all of his co-workers ... that's a lot of heartache ... and a lot of military training and effort down the drain ...
He was self-centered in using his unit to "please the (even bigger) big boys" then ... and he remains utterly self-centered now...
There can be no doubt that Mr. Graner deserves the prison sentence he got. And yet, like Mark I cannot help but feel a little sympathy for the man. First of all, the conditions he is held in do not square well with the idea of prison a civilized society should have after the era of enlightenment – but I concede: the Bushies were not only after the New Deal they were also after enlightenment. He “reaps what he sowed” should be beneath us.
Virginia Dentata describes a rather drastic choice that one faces in war times, yet in many cases the choice is not fraught with such extreme consequences. But in a hierarchy where command and obey is the rule and hammered into you daily, you need quite a moral compass to not just go along – and a little further. I served in the German Air Force in the sixties, and – given our history - we were taught, too that there were some orders you might refuse and others you had to refuse. Consequences of error in judgment, however, were yours to bear.
And that is the first instance of unfairness in Graner’s case. Quite a few of fellow posters are in the comfortable position of not having faced the inducive conditions of a prison guard in Abu Ghraib. I commend you on your moral rectitude but for those of you who are religious, is there not a line in the Lord’s Prayer “And lead us not into temptation”? If it were so easy, why then the necessity to pray? Rose put it very nicely. Being a German and born just after the war I have asked myself the same questions a lot of times. What would I have done in place of a seventeen year old youth in the Waffen-SS? And, yes, what would I have done in Graner's shoes? We are now slightly better off because we learnt our history. We do have role models - people who stood up for their moral beliefs, some facing death, others not even a demotion.
And of course, fairness in the judicial system means that everybody is treated the same before the law and according to one's responsibility. That certainly is not the case here, yet I am sorry to say, “He should not be in jail” is not what I feel, but certainly he should not be in such a prison - and should have lots of company.
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
