LAT: Unveiling the Face of Abu Ghraib Scandal (Chuck Graner)

[DeepModem Mom]

THE NATION
Unveiling the Face of the Prison Scandal
Chuck Graner, accused of leading the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, was a polite boy. Only in adulthood did troubling signs appear.

By Paul Lieberman and Dan Morain, Times Staff Writers


....(Chuck)Graner is among the seven U.S. soldiers ordered before courts-martial, accused of humiliating and torturing Iraqis in the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad, Saddam Hussein's own former house of torture. Four will face hearings beginning Monday, including Graner and his pregnant girlfriend, Pfc. Lynndie England, who downplayed their actions as "basically us fooling around."

But since the release of photographs and videotapes of what went on along Tier 1A at Abu Ghraib — showing England with a stack of naked Iraqis, for starters — the repercussions have been never-ending, including the mass release of prisoners and scrutiny of Bush administration legal memos on what's permissible in wartime interrogations. Over the last two months, the scandal at Abu Ghraib may have eroded America's moral authority not only in Iraq but on other fronts of the war on terror.

While the larger questions are yet to be answered — how widespread was such abuse? was torture authorized? — other guards have identified the ringleader on Tier 1A as 35-year-old Charles A. Graner Jr., the thumbs-up Army specialist who appeared to be enjoying himself while battering one detainee with his fist and posing with others shown naked, bloodied or dead....

***

....Chuck Graner began his life in suburbia, in a two-story brick home with yellow siding, on a hilltop south of Pittsburgh. He was a kid with promise before he became the man the world saw, the tattooed former prison guard who had pleaded guilty to harassing his ex-wife. He was also a veteran who had kept his cool guarding Iraqi prisoners in the Persian Gulf War — before he became a defiant man who was hard to figure, one who would display Bible verses outside his home, but pick passages from an angry prophet....


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/la-na-graner19jun19,1,6103248.story?coll=la-home-headlines

[monarch]

1. Interesting article and

one that must have taken some real work by the reporters. Why can't reporters like that be assigned to areas that really matter, instead of the PEOPLE magazine stuff ... or is this the only kind of article people read?

[DeepModem Mom]

3. Actually, I think John Carroll at the LA Times...

makes a specialty of giving reporters in-depth,investigative assignments. You may recall that the LAT recently won 5 Pulitzers -- one was for a three-part series on WalMart, which covered everything from one woman who lost her grocery store job when WalMart moved in, and then, ironically, could only afford to shop at the WalMart, to the effect of the gigantic chain on the whole world's economy.

[Sporadicus]

2. What Can Be Learned From This Story?

From my reading, the implicit message is that 'monsters are made - not born.' I have no doubt that Graner's transformation began during the first Gulf War and continued while serving as a prison guard, but it's not an excuse. The officers and supervisors - as well as Graner himself - bear responsibility for his acting out of sadistic fantasies. If anything, the story proves that prison systems encourage and cultivate cruelty in their guards as a means of control.

If publication of this article was meant to elicit sympathy for Graner, it fails - at least with me. I have a mental block when it comes to feeling sorry for aggressively sadistic prison guards. It doesn't stop with 'six bad apples,' however. I want the entire chain of command held accountable for the atrocities at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere - up to and including *.

[Frances]

4. I don't think the purpose of the article is to elicit sympathy

for Graner.

In fact, it seemed to me to show that Graner had problems long before being sent to Iraq the second time.

When I read the article, it seemed to me that Graner's life was much better in high school when he had a very stable girlfriend. The article doesn't say what his parents were like. I am curious about that.

[Name removed]

5. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[TahitiNut]

6. Coprocephalic?

That's such a shame. :eyes:

[ElectroPrincess]

8. Awe ...

I bet you make such heartwarming comments at all the places you invade. <warm smile> ;)

[struggle4progress]

10. I would love some links to support this.

When you say "the vast majority of those .. pictures.. were taken on one .. november night," are you including the thousands of photos Congress decided not to release?

Which people in the pictures are "criminals"? Somehow, I'm under the impression that the US has been releasing people left and right from Abu Ghraib, since ICRC remarked that most people in the prison were apparently innocent of any wrongdoing. There are also reports that recordkeeping at the prison was so sloppy that prisoners were moved about without records being kept, and that the soldiers consequently did not often know what detainees were charged with. This suggests that many of the people abused were simply abused for the sadistic hell of it.

You say "making such bullshit out of nothing." But there are a number of cases where detainees died during or after mistreatment. I personally call that murder and don't think it should be tolerated.

I wonder if you would care to make your case in more detail; to add to the interest, perhaps soldiers could jam lit cigarettes into your ears as you explained why such treatment counts as "nothing" in your world.

[TacticalPeek]

11. You want the pictures?

You can't handle the pictures.


Rick Perlstein quotes Seymour Hersh:


"He said that after he broke Abu Ghraib people are coming out of the woodwork to tell him this stuff. He said he had seen all the Abu Ghraib pictures. He said, "You haven't begun to see evil..." then trailed off. He said, 'horrible things done to children of women prisoners, as the cameras run.'

He looked frightened."

[UpInArms]

7. the "face" of all

of it is:

[cliss]

9. OMG, that photo.

Look at the knife. In the upper corner, George's eye is caught in the reflection of the metal blade. Note the dull, glazed pupil. It bespeaks ignorance, stupidity, and yet it captures his capacity for evil, too.

Man.

[UTUSN]

12. Wish the Reporter of the Article Would Do One on Shrub

All the pathological details have been scattered out there all over the place. When he does something SO unable-to-be-covered-for, media whores will be falling all over themselves to say, "There were SIGNS going all the way back to when he was blowing up frogs with firecrackers..." -----------like, perpetrating illegal wars for settling family cartel scores ain't SO bad...