Lynndie England is unrepentant for what she did, says this piece:
“We move on to another hideous image, in which the same group of prisoners – one of whom Graner had punched full in the face – were lined up and ordered to masturbate.
How long had this sick charade continued? ‘You are going to find this ridiculous,’ says England, half suppressing a snigger. ‘One guy did 45 minutes! Freddie [Graner’s fellow prison guard, Ivan Frederick] just wanted to see if they would do it – and all seven of them lined up doing this.
‘Well, six stopped after a few minutes, but the seventh carried on.’
Hearing this account for the first time, even Roy T. Hardy, her lawyer, who had thought himself beyond shock after representing England for five years, is clearly taken aback…..
‘Sorry? For what I did?’ she interjects, incredulous. ‘All I did was stand in the pictures. Saying sorry is admitting I was guilty and I’m not. I was just doing my duty’
……it is impossible to empathise with her, for she is such an unsympathetic character……”
More of the same at Drudge on England’s interview with the German news magazine, Stern.
My Comment
I read this report with interest for two reasons.
1. It substantiates, as many other reports have done since then, my early (July 2004) insight that there were pictures of women being abused that were being deliberately held back and that the key to understanding Abu Ghraib was that it was a deliberate policy.
2. It also vindicates the argument of an essay I contributed to “One of the Guys” (Seal, 2006), a piece called “The Military Made Me Do It,” that England got the benefit of double-standards that treated the women torturers as somehow victims themselves.
I was sympathetic to England, as far as she – and others low down in the pecking order – were made scapegoats for the military and government elites who actually developed the policy. I was also sympathetic about the class bias shown toward them (shown in phrases like “trailer trash” that are used in this report as well).
But I thought England could still have behaved better than she did. I compared her to Joseph Darby, the whistle-blower, who did his duty despite all the dangers of being seen as a “snitch” by his colleagues. Both were about the same age. I thought England benefited from a double-standard exonerating the young women torturers.
I suggested in the essay that England’s sex was really as much an advantage as it was a disadvantage in the prison where she was a guard (female-deprived).
Another point of vindication: many journalists treat the story of Abu Ghraib as primarily a story about America. I find this somewhat narcissistic. The story is about the victims. To my mind, putting England and her colleagues at the center of Abu Ghraib adds a second injury to the victims. And, as this report illustrates, the perps are rarely worthy of it, even as psychological case studies. Most evil is done by depressingly ordinary people.
A final point. I recall that some journalists made the culturally obtuse decision to interview the raped women, completely forgetting the consequences to the victims of such media exposure. Sure enough, some of the interviewed women ended up dead.
I have to wonder at journalists with so little imagination and compunction for the subjects of their stories…
‘Subjects’ are also subjects in the other sense – they have their own voices.
All this adds to my belief that the mediacrats can be as big a problem as the kleptocrats.
Lila,
What you call “a report” was not a report. It was an article in “The Daily Mail” which is an upper class trash tabloid in the UK. Notice how the reporter referred to her as “trailer trash”. The article was FILLED with half-truths and lies, flat out lies!
Lynndie apologized at her trial,5 years ago. She speifically apologized to several people and groups. If you read the book, you would see that the author included much of what was said at the trial in the book (and how her trial was a complete farce). On top of that, she was found guilty of “mistreatment of prisoners by posing in a photograph”. She was NOT found guilty of torture as she touched none of those unfortunate men, and she did not torture anyone.
Am I saying the photos were okay? NO! It was a dumb, stupid thing to do, but if you read the book you will get a better balanced context as to what was going on, the impact of sociopathic Charles Graner on her life, and how the few (yes, few pictures of her, about 10 out of the 1,000’s that are out ther)pictures taken of her were used by the Bush Administration to scapegoat their torture memo policies on to a young woman who held no power and was from one of the poorest and most stereotyped regions of the U.S. Everything you see in those horrible pictures was based on activities that were going on when the 372nd arrived at Abu Ghraib.
I wish this had neve happened as I did not sanction the Iraq War and am no admirere of the Bush Administration. Soon enough, if the Obama Administration (who I voted for) does not release the pictures they have, there are many former soldiers who have the pictures that England spoke of. I have seen some of them – they are far worse than any Lynndie stepped in to (and, yes, she stepped into those photos). If you read this very balanced book you will learn a lot more about what was actually going on when those photos were taken.
Stop sitting in judgment. She apologized at her trial, served her time, and will forever be notortorios for a stupid decision she made when she was 20 years old.
ps – it was her lawyer, who acts pretty dumb, who actually made her look bad that day to David Jones.
Yes, this is very much a class-based piece of trash (Daily Mail). I have family in England, and this is the one thing I do not like about English society is the snobbery that is allowed to flourish against those of a “higher class”. What the hell makes someone of a “higher class” – money? Who cares. I’m glad my mother came to the States!
sorry, meant “those of a lower class”.
I was “sitting in judgment” (as you put it, I prefer to call it expressing my opinion) about the media – more than about England, or didn’t you notice?
I think I know enough about the scapegoating, since that was the subject of my book where I think I offered up enough excuses for England.
The issue is not only what she did then but how she responded later.
Trash tabloid? I’d call that judgmental…
especially when you see what the respectable press has covered up…and whom it’s covered for…
She’s got her 15 minutes of fame…
enough of her…
And if you came to the states to escape English class distinctions, that’s a laugh…
Here’s you’ll find just as many class distinctions…in different disguises…
Boston Brahmins, Ivy League branding, profession based status,
liberal elitism, Wasp lineage, PC reverse elitism…
you make some good points, but I am sorry – England continues to be scapegoated while Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld live in luxury having gotten away with MURDER.
True –
But when’s that not been the case?
Steal ten dollars on the street and you’ve got a rap sheet that could lock you away with murderers
Loot and destroy whole economies, and you get to fund your own think-tank and speak into the ears of “world leaders”