A Second Look | Abu Ghraib Convictions Must be Overturned

via ‘Abu Ghraib US prison guards were scapegoats for Bush’ lawyers claim – Times Online.

Prison guards jailed for abusing inmates at the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq are planning to appeal against their convictions on the ground that recently released CIA torture memos prove that they were scapegoats for the Bush Administration.

The photographs of prisoner abuse at the Baghdad jail in 2004 sparked worldwide outrage but the previous administration, from President Bush down, blamed the incident on a few low-ranking “bad apples” who were acting on their own.

The decision by President Obama to release the memos showed that the harsh interrogation tactics were approved and authorized at the highest levels of the White House.

(snip)Charles Gittins, a lawyer who represents Charles Graner, the ringleader of the guards who is serving a ten-year sentence, said that the memos proved his long-held contention that Graner and the other defendants, including his former lover Lynndie England, could never have invented tactics such as stress positions and the use of dogs on their own.

I have written on several occasions concerning the unjust convictions of the lower enlisted at Abu Ghraib. Those posts can be found here, and here, and here.

Charles Graner and Lynndie England

In light of the release of the torture memos that show, undisputedly, that the directions for how and when to commit torture came from the highest levels, then the scapegoating of Graner and England must be fixed. The soldiers’ convictions must be overturned, the records of the Courts Martial must be expunged, and they must be issued new DD214 forms showing the conduct of their service as honorable. They must be treated with the same considerations as the CIA operatives that Obama said would not be punished.

This nation has taken much from Graner and England and we can at least give them back thier honor. We must set the goddess of justice back upright on her pedistal. We can’t totally erase the past for them, but we can make their futures a bit brighter.