Bye Bye Private Graner!

I suppose one could say that Army Spc. Charles Graner had a bad weekend. As I'm sure we have all heard by now, "the ringleader" got popped for ten years on Saturday which has, of course, elicited mixed reactions from Iraqis and Americans. I'm not really sure from where I sit that a lot of Americans really care one way or the other. Some of course do and feel that justice has been served, and then you always have the few that say hang em'. This blog probably isn't for them. Most of my friends that have never been in the military just kind of shrug their shoulders, while my friends that have been in, or are presently in the military shake their heads and the usual thought is that the kid and his compatriots were all really some kind of dumbasses, because they got caught. They got caught doing something that, granted may have been over the line, but I'll bet you that they thought they had permission and justification for doing so. The Iraqis, or some of them anyway don't think that the punishment is enough. I can't say that I blame them. I have somewhat mixed emotions on the whole business. My reasons are simple enough. I don't think that the military punished the correct, or all of the correct people. How many have noticed the absence of officers in all of these court martial proceedings? If you answered, 1.) I did, 2.) Huh, 3.) Oh yeah, or 4.) What officers, and I'll even throw in scratching your head as No. 5, then you win.

One of the very first things that you come to understand about the military is the concept of "CYA", or Cover Your Ass, especially if you are of the enlisted ranks and on the lower end of that enlisted rank spectrum. You quickly learn that shit rolls down hill and when it's a bad day on the farm you do not want to be walking around looking like a poor excuse for a shit receptacle! First of all, the army wants us to believe that this little merry band of sadistic goofballs, all of who happened to be enlisted personnel, took it upon themselves, like it was an exercise for extra college credits or something, to torture Iraqi prisoners in the hopes of getting the big piece of missing intelligence information that would stop some towel wearing doo-dahs from driving a bus full of explosives into Starbucks in downtown L.A. Bullshit! Pardon my French. Look at these people! Really look at these people. I'm sorry to have to say this, but between them they would need directions to make a ham sandwich. How do I know this you may ask? Because anyone who takes pictures of themselves in the act of torturing or humiliating prisoners, Iraqi or otherwise, whether posted or not, for private viewing or not, has not a brain cell in their heads! Secondly, there isn't an enlisted person in the entire universe that is going to institute those kinds of prisoner tactics without at least thinking that his or her ass was covered by an officer and I mean probably above a captain. These guards made the mistake of actually believing anything that "military intelligence" told them, and secondly trusting the military intelligence officers word. I don't know too many officers that would screw up their career over being implicated in the beating of prisoners, regardless of whether they were hard-core al Queda or part of the first string, Iraqi Tasty Freeze, Ice Cream Company. It's just not going to happen, as I believe the course of events has played out and shown. Not one officer has come forward and three or four of the ones that were implicated have taken the military equivalent of the fifth.

Somewhere behind the scenes, quietly, a few of the lower ranking officers will be reprimanded and for all intents and purposes any thoughts of a career in the military are over, but I don't think we as a people, (love the Constitution), will hear anything too public mentioned about it. It's OK to hang an enlisted person out to dry, after all enlisted personnel are just idiots that need supervision by higher ranking, officer type idiots, but the military doesn't like to admit failure on the part of its officer corps. It's that whole "officer and a gentleman thing," or I guess the "officer and a ma'am thing." I don't know what the saying is for women, but I'm sure they have one. It's just too bad that the people higher up the food chain aren't held more publicly responsible for what happened at Abu Ghraib. But, this is the military way. Give em' the sacrificial lambs and maybe the Iraqis will accept it and maybe the American people will just let it all go away. I am not by any means insinuating that these people didn't deserve the sentences that they all received, however; we will probably never find out the whole truth behind the Abu Ghraib abuse, who actually issued the orders, who drew up the guidelines for where to start and where to end with the interrogation methods used. I personally don't think that we will find out much more then we already have, but I will bet you dollars to donuts that the orders or guidelines for interrogating those Iraqi prisoners came from someone or were approved by someone with at least one star on their shoulder, whether or not that military person was a command line general or military intelligence doesn't matter. We will never hear about it because it would go against the military concept of highly structured discipline and equality. Huh?