Seeds of Abu Ghraib

In January Army Specialist Charles Graner Jr. was sentenced by a military court in Fort Hood, Texas, to ten years behind bars. His crimes: assault, conspiracy, dereliction of duty and committing indecent acts.

Nearly a year after the infamous photographs of US military personnel abusing and humiliating Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad had come to light, the graphic allegations of sexual abuse, of guards forcing inmates to masturbate, of naked prisoners stacked into pyramids, of prisoners being hooded and draped with electric wires and of routine beatings, the 36-year-old Graner was taking the rap, labeled by prosecutors as the mastermind of the cell-block sadism.

Throughout his trial, the reservist had claimed he was only following orders, that his superiors had demanded the prisoners be violently "softened up" before being interrogated by military intelligence personnel. In the end the jury, four officers and six high-ranking enlisted men, all of whom had served in Afghanistan or Iraq, didn't buy his argument. "I was only obeying orders" apparently didn't cut it as a moral defense in 2005 any more than it did at the Nuremberg trials.

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