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January 10, 2005
Give me a T! Give me an O! Give me an R! Give me a T! Give me a U! Give me an R! Give me an E!
That's what cheerleaders do, those naked human pyramids. And what's a leash? That's what parents use to control their todders in shopping malls. What's the big deal? It was all harmless. Anyway, he was ordered to do so.
Yes, those are the arguments Specialist Graner's lawyer made today.
"Don't cheerleaders all over America form pyramids six to eight times a year. Is that torture?" Guy Womack, Graner's attorney, said in opening arguments....
Womack said using a tether was a valid method of controlling detainees, especially those who might be soiled with feces.
"You're keeping control of them. A tether is a valid control to be used in corrections," he said. "In Texas we'd lasso them and drag them out of there." He compared the leash to parents who place tethers on their toddlers while walking in shopping malls.
And here's another bit of harmless cheerleading that Graner engaged in:
Explaining a new video that shows a detainee writhing as Private Sivits tries to cut off a pair of handcuffs, he said Specialist Graner had attached them so tightly, the detainee's hands were turning purple. "I personally thought he was going to lose his hands," he said.Another new photograph taken by Specialist Graner showed a 19-year-old Iraqi woman exposing her breasts. Private Sivits said that Specialist Graner said he had tried to photograph her pubic area but that she would not let him.
Asked to explain photos of detainees masturbating, Private Frederick said Specialist Graner "said it was a present for our birthday." Soldiers also said commanders explicitly told them not to take photographs.
Mr. Womack, Specialist Graner's lawyer, said that the photos were part of a plan to force information from detainees and that government officials blamed his client only after the pictures set off outrage around the world.
The only part true their is that "his client" is in court today only because there were pictures. Otherwise, all the people who pointed out that torture was possibly going on in American-run detention centers around the world just be painted as some lefty-loonly-America-haters who were moved to make these crazy allegations because they were overcome by their love of Saddam Hussein.
Posted by zeynep at January 10, 2005 10:59 PM
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Comments
Zeynep, sadly, some people are still saying that it is just crazy allegations by the America-haters, even with the pictures. They don't think it was torture, and they also rationalize it by saying the US troops didn't behead anyone, unlike the "terrorists".
As if morality was relative......
O'Reilly (FAUX news)is claiming that "some" people in this country (he means the progressives) don't want to see Iraq become peaceful and democratic. How sad those right wingnuts are!
Another experience I have had with the right wingnuts is being told I was responsible for the sickos in Iraq who lured other Iraqis into an ambush (18 were killed) by saying he would get them a job with the Americans. Yes, that was blamed on the pacifist left.
Now, if I could moderate people's behavior via long distance mind control, first thing I would do is install logical thinking and an inability to speak what is not true........... in everyone!
Posted by: Susan - USA at January 12, 2005 01:40 AM
"In Texas we'd lasso them and drag them out of there."
This statement implies that conditions in Texan prisons are even worse than in Abu Ghraib, and, by extension, in other American prisons as well.
Why are so many Americans more concerned about the suffering of several thousand people in Iraq and Guatanamo than the much worse suffering of over two MILLION of their fellow Americans? And why has the leftist-liberal blogosphere virtually stopped covering or mentioning this hellish situation, which I would argue is far and away the worst human rights problem in the world?
Cruise the leading sites and you won't find hardly a single link to any of the groups or individuals trying to address this problem, and I can barely remember the last time I saw a post on the subject. The practices overseas are just an extension of the ones here, Graner himself being an ex-prison guard, and if anyone really wishes to get to the root of the problem, that's where the focus should be.
Posted by: Mike at January 13, 2005 05:32 PM
Well it seems like some people were convinced. In our Australian press this morning, we learned that a witness at the trial of Specialist Charles Graner, the alleged Abu Ghraib prison abuse ringleader, hailed the stacking up of naked detainees as "a creative technique" (The Australian). Nothing wrong with a bit of "creative" torture, is there?
Posted by: Edward at January 14, 2005 04:48 PM