Tuesday, January 18, 2005

Sullivan wusses out on Abu Ghraib flap

Andrew Sullivan, who passes himself off as a conservative blogger, quotes Abu Ghraib convict Charles Graner before slamming the military prosecution:

"I know the Geneva Conventions, better than anyone else in my company. And we were called upon to violate the Geneva Conventions." - Charles Graner, the sadistic monster of Abu Ghraib. I'm not so much shocked as intrigued by the relatively light sentence. It would be hard to find or invent a more graphic example of evil than that perpetrated by Graner in Abu Ghraib. And yet, he received only 10 years, rather than the maximum fifteen.

Please. Graphic examples of evil are evident every day in the war on terror. How about the mass murder of innocents on September 11? Or maybe the nightclub bombing in Bali? Or the routine decapitations of foreigners working in Iraq? Don't get me wrong. Charles Graner was cruel, and should be punished. But to suggest that he's the epitome of wickedness is to trivialize the real evil that we're up against in the war on terror.

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