January 10, 2005

a danger to himself and others

When I heard on NPR today that a lawyer for US Marine Charles Graner compare his client's piling naked Iraqi prisoners in a pyramid to the stunts performed by cheerleaders I almost choked. While telling my boyfriend about it I looked on Google news for the quote and found this headline on Al-Jazeera: Iraq abuse compared to cheerleader show. None of the headlines from US sources had anything about cheerleaders. Do we think Bin Laden will ignore these flippant remarks? This jackass Marine and his jackass lawyer have endangered not just US troops abroad but all of us civilians back here with their inappropriate sense of humor.

Here's the quote: "Don't cheerleaders all over America form pyramids six to eight times a year. Is that torture?"

If you make them do it naked, with bags over their heads, with foreigners taking pictures of them it is.

Added 1/13/05

I really did not need to read this about Graner's lawyer:
As an assistant U.S. attorney in Houston in 1996, he helped market a device to school districts and law enforcement agencies called the Quadro Tracker. It was advertised as a high-tech divining rod that used chips to activate an antenna that supposedly could track down missing people and discover drugs, weapons or other contraband. More than 1,000 of the devices were sold around the country for as much as $8,000 each.
In reality, the device was simply an antenna attached to an empty plastic box.

1 comment:

Gary McGath said...

His name is Charles Graner, not Scott.

Other than that, good commentary. I've linked to your article from my blog.