(no subject)

[edschweppe]

The good news is that SPC Graner, of Abu Ghraib infamy, has been convicted, busted to E-1 and sentenced to ten years and a dishonorable discharge.

The bad news is that the current Administration is still spinning Abu Ghraib as "a few bad apples" and an aberration. (The fact that Abu Ghraib happened at all is still bad, but is no longer "news".)

The sort-of-good news is that not everybody is buying the "few bad apples" line. The BBC's headline for the story, for instance, is Iraq prison abuse 'leader' jailed (their quotation marks, not mine).

Comments

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

I'm torn.

Part of me wants to say "If he was ordered to do this, in a way that he felt the orders were legal, I want the head, ass, and balls of the people responsible on a silver platter. A hot silver platter, if they're still attacked to the person in question. I don't care *who* gets them, but they're doing it for my sake as well as the sake of every decent US citizen."

Part of me remembers that he is quoted as saying something like "As a Christian, I hate it; as a prison-guard, I love to make a grown man piss himself".

I don't care what orders he was given, that indicates that he handed his heart, balls and spirit over willingly.

The biggest, most telling thing of this is that his quote about getting grown men to piss themselves would not have been available if he hadn't thought it was safe enough to say something like that. That strongly suggests that he thought the ordinary rules were gone.