Spc. Graner was found guilty by a true jury of his peers, and may go to jail for around 18 years. Pfc. Lynndie England faces trial some time early this year.
These are the ghouls smiling in the all the famous pictures. England even recently gave birth to a child believed to be Graner’s. The argument these two and their colleagues have posed most often is that they were “just following orders.”
So, following orders absolves some people of some responsibility some of the time in some situations – if anything, soldiers not following orders based on any number of reasons in the current Politco-Military climate has become a regular thing. It also seems to be a foregone conclusion that gleeful, smiling snapshots don’t normally fall under the auspices of most ops, and certainly not in military corrections. It can be also assumed that commands wouldn’t lay along those lines.
On the absolute polar other end of the spectrum, you have Bush, Rumsfeld, and Gonzales. These are the guys who gave the big OK to the use of torture in the War On Terror. Based on a DoJ letter to White House Counsel, Gonzales made recommendations to the Bush Administration along these lines. This is information with which we’re all familiar. You may be less familiar with the White House’s smothering of a Senate bill that would have specifically regulated and forced disclosure of interrogation tactics, while prohibiting intelligence officers from torturing foreign prisoners.
So the quandry is this – where does the buck stop? We’ve all hooted and hollered about holding people high up the chain accountable for not only Abu Ghraib but an entire war based on lies. Rumsfeld and Bush will, barring some sort of legal Holy Grail, be totally bullet-proof at least until 2008. Its becoming common knowledge that the Bush White House is all but done with Rumsfeld, but, again, that pesky Politico-Military Climate comes into play. Firing Rumsfeld now would be the equivalent of admitting defeat, and that, of course, is unacceptable.
The buck doesn’t stop with Graner or England, and it obviously doesn’t make its way to Rumsfeld or Bush. The top legal authority in the United States is the Attorney General, so one might assume that the buck would stop there, but current evidence is to the contrary – Gonzales, the man who made recommendations to the White House as Special Counsel as to the legality of torture (not to mention how to get around the Geneva Conventions) is most likely going to be confirmed this week. The White House refused to make relevant communications available to Congress prior to his confirmation hearing.
The people who did the abusing and torturing are all going to go to jail, but the people who willfully created operating environmments in which that abuse and torture could take place are either immune or getting promoted.
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