'Torture' on Trial (Excellent WSJ Editorial)

The Wall Street Journal ^ | January 18, 2005 | Editorial

[RegT]

The conviction of Army Reserve Specialist Charles Graner is hardly the last word on what really happened at Abu Ghraib prison. But the 10-year sentence for the abuse ringleader shows that the military justice system is taking the issue as seriously as it should. And the Army jury that handed it down clearly didn't buy his "just-following-orders" defense.

We doubt Specialist Graner's peers would have packed him off to prison for so long had he produced any evidence at all that his actions had something to do with interrogation practices approved by his superiors. Particularly telling was the fact that he didn't seem to have enough confidence in his own story to take the stand and face cross examination.

Senior officers are still being investigated, as they should be, but so far the military trials have done nothing to prove what writer Heather Mac Donald recently described on this page as the "torture narrative." That is, they have not supported the widely promulgated theory that Bush Administration legal discussions about the range of permissible interrogation techniques for al Qaeda detainees outside the Iraqi theater of operations somehow led to Abu Ghraib.

[RegT]

I thought this editorial was right on the mark regarding Graner's trial last week and the prison scandal in general.

[jaykay]

We doubt Specialist Graner's peers would have packed him off to prison for so long had he produced any evidence at all that his actions had something to do with interrogation practices approved by his superiors.

His peers convicted him and sentenced him as instructed by their superiors, nice and conveniently on an NFL divisional playoff weekend when no one would notice.