But It's Okay, See, 'Cause He's a BAAAAD Person...

[Pamela Troy]

He has spent more than 29 months in solitary confinement over the past four years, allowed out of his narrow cell during some of that period only to stretch his legs, alone, for one hour a day. In solitary, he has almost no contact with other human beings. He is allowed no radio, no TV and, in a disorienting twist, no watch or calendar to mark the brutal grind of passing time.

With so little stimulation, the brain begins to work against itself. Prisoners in solitary have described delusions, even hallucinations. It can drive a man mad.

"Karma really is a son of a gun!" says Charles Graner, infamous as the torturer of Abu Ghraib….” Salon, 12/1/08

What is it about the sentence, “Torture is wrong and unacceptable” that so many people have trouble grasping?

Yes, driving someone insane through the kind of isolation described above qualifies as torture. If someone kept a dog under similar circumstances, locking it up in a bare room, with no contact with anyone or anything beyond being fed or occasionally sedated and examined by a vet, they’d be denounced as inhumane and filmed being led away in handcuffs on Animal Precint.

So to all you people who denounced Abu Ghraib with such righteous indignation, but are now smirking, and puffing out your little chests, and practicing your Clint Eastwood sneers in the mirror while you jack off to the idea of Charles Graner’s brain being turned to mush –

Don’t kid yourselves. You’re not that much better than he is. And you’d better hope and pray that, as an atheist, I’m right about there being no afterlife, because I have a feeling that if Jesus exists, and he has questions to ask you after you die, “Did you only get off on the torture of bad people” is not going to be one of them.

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

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[Pamela Troy]

3. Read the comments to the Salon Piece. THAT's Who it's for.

If you aren't doing what I've described, I'm not talking to you.

[Buzz Clik]

6. Have you posted your outrage at Salon?

I think that would be a far more appropriate outlet for your scorn.

[Pamela Troy]

8. Yes. I have.

[cliffordu]

2. Ignorant, Much???

[Pamela Troy]

5. "Ignorant" about what?

[Buzz Clik]

4. Someone is doing a Clint-Eastwoodesque sneer in the mirror while masturbating? How odd.

[anigbrowl]

7. He should be in jail, but...

I don't think that having the light on 24/7 is good, nor would I deny him access to newspapers or suchlike. Just going to the opposite extreme is not a good way to balance things out in my opinion - all we're doing is breaking the Geneva convention twice, so to speak (technically not since he's not a POW, but you get the point).

[jobycom]

9. Depends on why they are putting him in solitatry.

First, the article does nothing to generate my sympathy for him. He should be in jail, and for a lot longer than he was sentenced. The fact that others who should be aren't is no reason to say he shouldn't be.

But to discuss your questions (and generalized accusations) seriously, I'd have to know what he's in solitary for. Yeah, his family says it is for minor stuff like leaving soap out, but that tells me nothing except what he tells his family. Graner has a long and violent history, from domestic abuser to torturer. Domestic abusers are the sort who never see anything as their fault--the other person always has it coming, they themselves are always the unexplainable victim, etc. You've seen the type. Graner follows this pattern even now, blaming everyone above him for his orders, blaming everyone else for his actions. No doubt there's truth to that, but his pattern fits a pattern that I've come to distrust when I see it. Fair or not, that's how I view him and his accusations.

So, in general terms, if he's repeatedly put in solitary for repeated violations of rules, that's how he's disciplined, and he's in control of that. I don't like prisons in general, but I've known enough people who have gone to them to know that we have to have some form of penal system in place.

And I've known enough people punished beyond the severity of the crime to not just accept whatever I'm told about "debts to society" and all that. If he's put into solitary on the slimmest of precepts because some dark, shadowy someone is trying to destroy his mind because he knows too much (I doubt this, but who knows), then that's wrong. And if he's repeatedly put into solitary for minor infractions because someone more concrete and closer to his case is just trying to add additional punishment because of some personal reasons, that's wrong, too.

So, if Mr. Salon journalist wants to persuade me that Graner should be free, or that he's being tortured in prison, he needs to investigate a bit more thoroughly, find out the official reasons he keeps winding up in solitary, and build a case that creates doubt about those reasons. Barring that, I see a lot of injustices that I will focus on more than this one.

If the whole argument is that solitary is a barbaric form of punishment, I'll be glad to have that discussion, too. Prisons are not easy, fun places, but that's no need to be barbaric. On the other hand, punishment is not meant to be enjoyable, and we do need ways to enforce laws. Lockup is less brutal than many forms that have been used in the past.

That's my preliminary answer. Haven't thought much about it, so I'm open to my opinions being changed.

[Pamela Troy]

10. It's not my premise he shouldn't be in jail.

Nor really, does the writer say so. The strong implication isn't that Graner should be let loose, but that the people who enacted the policies he put into practice shouldn't be walking around loose.

And I certainly haven't claimed that he's the victim of some "shadowy cabal" out to deliberately destroy his mind.

No, I'm afraid what's described in this piece is fairly common in our prisons. No "shadowy cabal" need be invoked. And the reaction I was talking about is unfortunately par for the course among many people when the subject of decent treatment of inmates comes up.

Way too many of us like the idea of torturing people.

[muriel_volestrangler]

11. But you claim that people are ...

... "jack(ing) off to the idea of Charles Graner’s brain being turned to mush". However, there isn't actually any evidence that he is being affected by this - he writes letters OK, for instance. And now you say no-one is actually out to deliberately destroy his mind either. So who are the people you suspect of jacking off, to something apparently not happening, and not designed to happen either?

It's just that solitary confinement can cause damage to some people. He is allowed to read - but has to provide his own reading material (presumably meaning get people to send it in to him). He gets to write at times too (that could be in the periods when he's not in solitary, I suppose).

The reasons for the solitary confinement are important for this story - it's true that we can't just take Graner's word for why it happened. If he interacts badly with other prisoners (bullying them perhaps - that would be in character, after all), then solitary confinement may be necessary.

[TexasObserver]

12. It is wrong of our goverment to treat this man this way.

It's a simple concept. We should never dehumanize prisoners by depriving them of human contact and basic comforts of life. Their punishment is being in prison. Most of what they do to this guy is hideously mean and evil. It serves no purpose.

I hope Obama will stop this kind of shameful maltreatment of prisoners.

How a country treats its prisoners is the real test of its humanity.

[MiniMe]

13. It would probably help if you gave some context. From the article:

No one from the Bush administration has been held accountable for torture. But the guard from Abu Ghraib prison is still behind bars, and his family wants to know why.

The detainee held on charges related to the so-called war on terror is clad in an orange jumpsuit. His wrists are shackled to a leather belt cinched tight around his waist. A short chain connects his ankles, so he can only shuffle down the barren hallways of the prison, escorted by a guard at each arm.

"Karma really is a son of a gun!" says Charles Graner, infamous as the torturer of Abu Ghraib, in one of several letters he has written me from Fort Leavenworth, Kan., where he has been incarcerated since his conviction in January 2005 on charges related to the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at the U.S. prison in Abu Ghraib, Iraq. "Add a couple of years, change the color of my uniform and I find myself in the same position."

You remember Graner, the alleged ringleader of abuse at Abu Ghraib who showed up in those harrowing photos back in 2004. He was the mustachioed man grinning eerily back at the camera, giving a thumbs up as he stood over the body of dead prisoner. The pictures remain some of the most notorious images from the war. He and other soldiers at Abu Ghraib forced prisoners into stress positions and frightened them with dogs, stripped prisoners naked, put hoods and women's underwear over their heads. Graner, a 36-year-old reservist from Pennsylvania, faced 10 counts under five charges: assault, conspiracy, maltreatment of detainees, indecent acts and dereliction of duty. He was found guilty on all counts, except for one assault count that was downgraded to battery, and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

_____________

While I don't agree with what this guy did, torturing him by this treatment is just as wrong. He is the fall guy to protect the higher ups.

[Solly Mack]

14. Thank you for posting the Salon article

Off to read more and ponder

[FedUpWithIt All]

15. nobody is spraying Graner with freezing water in a frigid room.

Nobody is holding and abusing his children, nobody is injecting him with unknown chemicals, nobody is pouring water over his face till he passes out, nobody is forcing him to masturbate while another inmate kneels, cuffed, before him, nobody is requesting he sodomize himself while they take memory photos...should i go on?

Think it is all the same? I wonder if Graner would be up to prove your point? Think he would be willing to SWITCH places with those he harmed?

Bush et al. need to be in the next cell.