Abu Ghraib Pep Squad!
FORT HOOD, TEXAS (Reuters) — A lawyer for Specialist Charles Graner, the accused ringleader in the Iraq prisoner-abuse scandal, said yesterday that leashing inmates was acceptable prisoner control, and compared piling naked prisoners into a pyramid to routines performed by cheerleaders.
He compared some of the alleged instances of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison to the pyramids cheerleaders form at sporting events and parents putting tethers on toddlers.
“Don’t cheerleaders all over America form pyramids six to eight times a year? Is that torture?” Guy Womack said in his opening arguments to a 10-member U.S. military jury at the reservist’s court-martial.
In an astonishing piece of kismet, Charles Graner managed to find a lawyer who’s even more of an asshole than he is. My hunch is that he knows he’s screwed already, so he’d might as well go out throwing bombs. Can you imagine the global conflagration that will go down if Graner gets off the hook? It’ll make the Rodney King riots look like a Sunday in Golden Gate Park.
The scariest thing for me about Graner was learning that his civilian job was as a corrections officer. Are things like Abu Ghraib happening in our prison system every day? Why haven’t I seen this connection made in any media? (Because I’m wrong about this, I hope.)
It’s easy to see how he got his job in Iraq. “Find me the meanest, scariest MF you can get.”
[Soundtrack]
Dead Kennedys – Police Truck.mp3
Weird aside: A Google image search for “Charles Graner” gets you nothing?
“Don’t cheerleaders all over America form pyramids six to eight times a year? Is that torture?”
Naked, at gun point? Maybe in Texas, perhaps.