Graner guilty in Iraq prisoner abuse case

It's not so easy to refuse to obey an order from a superior officer. There are many quiet--and not so quiet--ways in which you will pay for such refusal. Maybe a few will take warning from this scapegoating, but only the punishing of everyone involved would really put a stop to it, and that's not happening. Most soldiers will continue to take the easy way: obey orders and hope you get away with it.

 

http://www.sorcerers.net/ubb/ultimatebb.php?/topic/20/1142.html

This is what Tal is talking about, DMC. American justice, not at its finest, nor its worst, but at pretty much average.

 

egad, Stanford research showed that anyone in that position would have done the same thing...
They'd probably only give him 18 years because the crowd would else lynch him.

Uhm, hello? The army? Their superiors are responsible.
"I was following orders" IS an out-of-jail free card, because if they resisted, they would be insubordinating and locked up without a trail, and nobody would have heard of the situation.

And besides, the torture would have his reasons, maybe one of the prisoners would snap and tell all about his friends, and that would save a few hundred lives, it's always better to sacrifice 10 for a 100.

 

I couldn't DISagree more with that type of thinking. Especially when you DON'T KNOW whether sacrificing these 10 will save anything (it very rarely does these days, it seems)

As for dmc's initial question, I agree with Tal. Propaganda did an excellent job in minimizing this to the extent that, a couple of months later, no one was talking about it. When the time came to vote, no one bothered to remind people that one of the presidents they were voting for had tolerated these events happening. And the next time this happens, no one will bother remembering it's happened before.

 

how about sacrificing 1000 to save a million? or 10000 to save a milliion? Where do you draw the line? At what point does it become unacceptable?

I dont think it is ever acceptable to sacrifice lives for others. Otherwise, who the hell are you trying to save?

 

Graner seemed to like his job at Abu Ghraib

Sweet guy ... but then, with someone elses words:

 

If it doesn't matter, then it doesn't matter. Now does it?

The group?

 

It's pretty tough to disobey orders, but there's a difference between reluctantly following orders and enthusiastically doing so.

In this case, it appears the latter applies, so he's getting what he deserves. If the former was true, then I still think he should be punished, but perhaps not as severely.

But in either case, I agree with other opinions in this thread - he's being used as a scapegoat.

 

Good for the group. I dont think the person who gets sacrificed will be all that happy about it though.

Would you be happy to be sacrificed for a group you've never met?

If you take that thinking to a personal level, would you sacrifice a member of your family to save the lives of 20 other people you've not met?

 

@Takara, if it comes to ourselves and family then it becomes all personal.
But if we take a person that has no emotional attachments to anyone and serves only the group by leading it, then he would sacrifice the 10.

Think of the Aztecs who saved the world every day by sacrificing their young children, prisoners of war, and themselves..

We are getting off-topic aren't we?

 

@Taluntain: I'd say it's not so much "bad things happen in war" as "people decide to do bad things in war, then use the war as an excuse".

Not to mention he didn't even bother answering the question.

This is nuts.

Oh yes, and the Groucho Marx quote is excellent

Morgoth, thinking of the Aztecs I don't see people who "saved the world" with sacrifices. I see people who murdered innocents because THEY TOUGHT they were saving the world. Now, replacing "Aztecs" with "US government"...

Even assuming they are saving the world and they are correct about their supposition, I'm with Takara on this. The law of larger number just doesn't get me any satisfaction. Was it OK to drop two A-bombs on the Japanese and kill several hundred thousand CIVILIANS in order to MAYBE save the lives of a million US soldiers? Nope. Sorry, that excuse just doesn't make it any more justifiable. Was there anything else that could have been done? I don't know, but that STILL is not a good excuse to justify slaughter on that scale.

 

First of all, I don't believe that the people up there ever have no clue what's going on in war prisons. Even if so, if they really have no clue about how their minions are pleasing themselves, it only shows that perhaps they shouldn't be up there...

Now, I don't believe that the soldiers are oh so unwilling tools in the hands of the CIA and the officers. Whoever does what they were doing maybe doesn't necessarily know what he's doing, but surely knows what he's doing to another human being. That's quite enough for me to put someone behind bars.

Another problem is that yes indeed, we do have an excellent example of scapegoating here. Just imagine what would have happened to Garner if he had refused to obey the orders. Perhaps the same what is happening to him right now.

But, if he actually obeyed an order, why aren't we watching his commander on a trial on the TV? I would like to see the bastard dishonourably discharged after the same manner as his underling is going to be. But this will never happen. Dishonourable discharge is not for guys who started their military career at a rank already higher than the little people will ever get.

Ah, and the personals of intelligence agents are secret, so it's already a crime to identify one, so you can't do that. Bad luck, you can't prove one ordered you something. But if you tried to protest...

And who's going to believe that? I'm seriously in doubt here.

OK, why hasn't the lieutenant's trial started yet?

Funny thing, the oh so noble Major won't say the same about the lieutenant and the intelligence agents.

The officers didn't care and were left comfortably alone, the intelligence agents had their "softening" done, and the minions had their part of fun. Everyone was happy. But only the minions are accountable (not like they don't deserve their sentences).

Last news: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=1&u=/ap/20050115/ap_on_re_us/prisoner_abuse_graner_31

[ January 17, 2005, 00:19: Message edited by: chevalier ]

 

I hope they lock him up with a really big dude named Bubba, who will do all kinds of cool things to him in the coming 10 years.

 

Tal, I must have somehow misworded things somewhere, because I was trying to make the same point you just did (see my comment on Bush and elections in my first post)

Yes, they do deserve it. But I find it disturbing that people higher (sometimes much higher) in the hierarchy are still running loose, without any fear of sentence, because the scapegoat has already taken all the blame. This is as sure a sign as you'll ever need that something similar will occur in the future, and probably with the same leading officers too. And again, the scapegoats will be the grunts... and so on.

And of course, let's not even dream of something being done at THAT level.