http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/01/14/graner.court.martial/index.html
Does no one besides me find it amazing that no officer has been tried?
If for nothing else but derelection of duty?
Who supervised these guys?
Nope, I’m not surprised at all.
Was it Tom Ridge?
From here http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4175713.stm
So, as long as the majority of prisoners are piled into pyramids, I guess it’s OK.
This has been bugging me from the first time I saw reports of the whole Abu Ghraib debacle. So, was Graner acting under orders or not? Seems like a lot more could have been done to get to the bottom this question. If he was indeed acting under orders, the OP seems to have a valid point, but OTOH the defense apparently chose not to have Graner testify on his own behalf, at which time he presumably could have named names and aired out the issue. This suggests that the defence in fact had no way to prove that such orders were ever given.
Yeah? Well, flag flag flag flag flag flag flag flag 9/11 9/11 9/11 flag flag flag!
I trust we will have no more questions on this matter.
I’d like to see some higher-ups in the hot seat on this, too. I can’t believe this was just a bunch of enlisted folks doing this on their own.
Anyone know what happened regarding this story from last summer? Senior Officers May Be Charged
It really doesn’t matter. One of the things that was drilled into my head during boot camp was that I was required to follow all lawful orders. The orders Graner followed were not lawful. He was not obligated to follow those orders and, indeed, should have reported those illegal orders up his chain of command. He chose not to and is suffering the consequences.
It would be nice to see the person who gave the orders suffer the same consequences but I’m not going to hold my breath. 
Well… not much surprises me anymore when it comes to The War on Peace and Freedom™
I’m sure that prison was run completely by enlisted men with no officers present…
You know all those officers were shocked … shocked! to find out what those grunts were doing while they were busy supervising … other stuff. Those Justice Department memos that Alvarez ginned up for Rumsfield … mere coincidence. And besides flag flag flag 911 911 911 911 911 flag flag … Look! A dog with a fluffy tail!
Others may be guilty but Graner was certainly not innocent. He’s no scapegoat - at best he’s a co-conspirator.
I agree Graner is a sociopath.
But that doesn’t let higer ups off the hook.
Well, it does matter, of course, from the standpoint that the military, should it sincerely wish to avoid such incidents happening again, would want to know who is running around issuing such unlawful orders. Now I don’t know much of anything about US military justice, and I haven’t seen any transcripts detailing everything that was discussed during the trial, but I still find it bizarre that the several enlisted personnel brought up on charges could repeatedly state that they were following orders, yet the investigating officers (presumably) show not the slightest inclination to dig any deeper. Seems as though there are really only two potentials here: 1) the ones arrested simply made this up to deflect their impending punishment and have not been able to tell any coherent story or name a name that backs their claims of acting under orders; or 2) the military has decided to inflict a massive case of amnesia on itself.
I’m asking seriously, here. If someone with experience of military jurisprudence can explain where I’m off here, or give a logical reason why the courts martial would not pursue those who supposedly gave the orders, please, have at it.
I choose 2.
Courts martial are not investigatory bodies. Soldier/sailor/airman is charged, brought before the court on those charges, and is acquited or convicted on those charges.
The evidence produced at Graner’s trial was clear that he didn’t follow orders many times, including multiple direct orders to stop fraternizing with Pfc. Lynndie England. So the best spin that he could have hoped to put on his actions was that he only followed the orders he liked, and he liked the orders to abuse prisoners.
The evidence produced also implicated military and civilian intelligence officers, but that is not a mitigating defense under the UCMJ or war crimes law. No “I was just following orders” defense if the subordinate knows the orders are unlawful. Graner’s defense never attempted to show that he thought they were lawful.
The evidence produced also clearly showed that Graner was a sick, twisted, sadistic individual who enjoyed assaulting and humiliating people he was placed in a position of power over. Conviction was the correct action of his court martial.
Graner is not a scapegoat in any meaningful sense of the word. Scapegoat means an innocent or minimally-involved person who is punished for the sins of others. Graner was creatively and enthusiastically involved, and a principal actor in the abuse.
Scapegoat also has a more general meaning as one who is sacrificed to expunge the guilt of others, without reference to the goat’s state of guilt or innocence. Sure works in THAT sense.
Except that the whole point of the scapegoat in historical practice is that it is innocent. How can a goat be guilty of sin? It can’t, but it was symbolically the carrier of the community’s sins.
OK, maybe usage has broadened from the historical precedents. I see some dictionary definitions that support your point.
I would point out the OP is wrong on two counts. The guy is not a scapegoat in that he is a sadistic brute. Further he is not ‘another,’ as he is the first one found guilty.
While he claims officers told him to do these illegal things, the Son of Sam said a dog told him to kill. I give equal credence to both criminals with no evidence.
The difference, Sam, of course, is that Son of Sam was pretty much on his own - well, him and the dog - while SP4 Graner was working in a structured and hierarchical system with officers and non-coms supervising him and with other lower ranking people working with him, side by side. It is just inconceivable that his actions were secret and unknown to the people who were supervising and directing him. It had to be known. It could not have been unknown.
From my jaundice view there were people who had a duty to prevent this sort of thing and to stop it. They did not. I can only think because the command structure withing his company and battalion, the command structure for the interrogators, condoned and approved, turned a blind eye, and probably directed and encouraged this barbarity.
No one who has been a soldier will accept the idea that this low level enlisted member was instigating the whole thing on his own and without the knowledge and approval of the officers and NCOs who had a positive duty to restrain him. That said, there is a reluctance to cashier senior people for a dereliction of duty, especially when doing so presents a likelihood of a disclosure that the chain of culpability matches the chain of command.
The rational part of my mind asks if things make sense. I’ve read that the prison where these abuses were exposed was not a prison for military prisoners - the people they had were regular criminals. So there was no reason to think these people would have any special knowledge of the activities of terrorists, insurgents, or the military. Even if you believe that American intelligence officers are willing to systematically torture prisoners for information, you’ll have to concede they’d be more interested in torturing people who have useful information.
So a likely possibility is that there was no master plan for torturing the prisoners at Graner’s jail. Graner and his fellow abusers were hidden in relative obscurity by their prisoners’ unimportance and took advantage of this. They probably justified their actions to themselves and each other by claiming they were interrogating prisoners for information. But they were really just a bunch of sick fucks.
Of course, another possibility is that there are teams of professional torturers who are working on Iraqi military prisoners. As professionals, these people aren’t letting evidence leak out and the Pentagon is working with them to conceal their activities. Graner’s gang may have just been some amateurs who were imitating things they heard were going on in other places.
I think the term “Fall Guy” fits better here than “Scapegoat”. What I have digested from reading and hearing about this is that Grander and company were “urged” to do this, it was “suggested” that they should “soften up” certain people, “it sute would be nice” if this prisoner were more complaint tomorrow, and the like. There WERE special sections of the prison where actual high value prisoners were kept, apart from the street criminals held all over the rest of the place.
MI guys are psychological warriors, they manipulate people for a living. They would not normally issue “orders”, since that would remove their plausible deniability. The term “Intelligence Officer” does not denote that all these people were Commissioned Officers, they are mostly Enlisted Military Intelligence soldiers. There were guidlines such as
Graner is sick fuck. I seem to recall he was a prison guard in his civilian life, and had problems mistreating prisoners there, too. The General in charge of the many parts of that unit, Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, has been essentially fired by the Pentagon.