Lynndie England, of Abu Ghraib fame, gives a lengthy interview in the German magazine Stern. England was sentenced to three years in prison for her part in the deeds there. She served 521 days and is now out on parole. How’s life for her?
“(She sighs) Oh, it’s just little things going wrong. I’m just trying to get by. Trying to find a job, trying to find a house. It’s been harder than I expected. I went to a couple of interviews, and I thought they went great. I wrote dozens of applications. Nothing came of it. I put in at Wal-Mart, at Staples. I’d do any job. But I never heard from them.”
Geez, that’s a big surprise. There are quite a few interesting quotes in this interview but England is not big on verbal skills, so, most of her answers are short and she is not very self-reflective (which, I think, has to do with social classes, self-reflection is a luxury).
On enlisting in the military at 17:
“As a child I mainly grew up on military gung-ho movies so that’s where I got the idea. Old Chuck Norris movies, “Delta Force”, “Rambo”, “Missing in Action”, “Platoon”.”
Oh yeah, that’s where you get a good sense of military ethics. And then, when the interviewer gets to the infamous Abu Ghraib photos and her experience, that is where you really have to question England’s conscience and morality:
“Can you understand that people who look at this photo are offended?
Well, they weren’t there. And they don’t know what went on and they don’t know how we felt at the time, in that environment and what we were told to do.” (…)
“Do you feel sorry looking back now?
To be honest, the whole time I never really felt guilty because I was following orders and I was doing what I was supposed to do. So I’ve never felt guilty about doing anything that I did there.”
About Gus, the mentally ill man on the leash in the photo:
“I didn’t even feel sorry for him at the time. And he’s probably out there killing Americans now.”
And of course, there is Charles Graner, the so-called ringleader of the Abu Ghraib unit, the Alpha male that she fell in love with and who enjoyed putting prisoners in human pyramids to “control” them:
“What’s the sense in making a pyramid out of prisoners? It has nothing to do with controlling them. It doesn’t make sense.
At the time I thought, I love this man, I trust this man with my life, okay, then he’s saying, well, there’s seven of them and it’s such an enclosed area and it’ll keep them together and contained because they have to concentrate on staying up on the pyramid instead of doing something to us. (…) I followed Graner. I did everything he wanted me to do. I didn’t want to lose him.
You are seen smiling in the picture. What was so funny?
Sabrina Harmon took the picture and she said, “Hey, smile for the camera”. So we did. It was a kind of the moment thing.
Have you never felt regret about smiling at a stack of naked Iraqis next to you?
I never really thought about it.”
You wonder if she ever actually thought of anything, ever. Although she does get mad sometimes. What makes her mad? That the guy who leaked the photos did it to get back at Graner, she says, and not for nobler motives. And that the media published the photos:
“Both. I guess after the picture came out the insurgency picked up and Iraqis attacked the Americans and the British and they attacked in return and they were just killing each other. I felt bad about it, … no, I felt pissed off. If the media hadn’t exposed the pictures to that extent then thousands of lives would have been saved.”
And here is the difference between an American and a German magazine: follow-up question:
“How can you blame the media? If you hadn’t committed the crimes in the first place, we would have no reason to report on it.”
Yeah.
Her only regret was that she was played by Graner then by the government. Her fears: that someone will recognize her and beat the stuffing out of her or hurt her son. At this point, she lives in a trailer with her parents and does not seem to have much of a life.
Cross-posted at the Global Sociology Blog
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Geez, I'm sorry, Lynndie, did your stupid trix bite your butt?
because I guarandamntee you you’re very very lucky not to be dead of rabies already.
and I don’t know where you’re from and you’d better be glad, because you have no business raising a child. None. Zero. CPS should be on your porch now to take your son away to grow up in a sane environment.
not self-reflective? I guess not. Easily led? A dupe?
Or, as she says herself, not conscience-stricken at all by anything she’s ever done?
what a waste of water, food, air, and time you are, Private England.
Lynndie: Portrait of a Sociopath
Not that I’m glad the punishment buck stopped with people of her relative rank, but after reading that I don’t feel too much empathy for her. Contagious, isn’t it?
Howard Stern would have been more appropriate
Oh yeah, that’s where you get a good sense of military ethics.
Well, y’see, that’s where the whole fucking country gets its sense of military ethics these days - one small but significant problem with this war is that it’s attracting kids who think the world is one big Chuck Norris movie. I can’t wait for those chickens to come home to roost.
…for the rest of us
No Empathy
here either. Although I can’t help but wonder about how it came to be that the dim, the sociopathic, and the cruel were assigned to Abu Ghraib. Which is not to lessen their guilt or absolve them of their crimes, but only to note that dogs bark, birds sing, and stupid, unreflective sociopaths torture with the right stimulus. I don’t believe it’s a coincidence that England ended up in her position, but was the result of a system set up by much smarter sociopaths. Ones who will probably never do a day in any jail.
That subject line was like a Rorschach test
I thought it was about Howard, sophisticated citizen of the world that I am.
No empathy here either
I think she deserved to serve her full sentence. She was NOT an innocent victims of circumstances. And the mixing of sex and torture is so disgusting. And obviously, she has no regrets… she just hates that her life stinks… tough cookies… choices and consequences and all that.
BTW: hello everybody. I have been reading you all with delight for months now but this is my first post here. I hope I’ll be good enough for these parts! I’m a DK refugee.
Thanks for making me feel at home here.
FD
"Does not have much of a life..."
I would say her life was constructed for her, and for a reason…. Not to take away culpability, because torture is evil, but to provide context. The lesson of the Stanford Experiment really is “There but for the grace of ____ go I.”
UPDATE Forgot to say… FrenchDoc, thanks for the post, and for the kind words. As you know, it’s a tough crowd here at The Mighty Corrente Building…
[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
I don’t know what any of
I don’t know what any of you are talking about. My freedom depends on naked pyramids of shit-smeared Iraqis.
it still sucks that none of her bosses have been punished at all
beyond sucks—it’s abhorrent and evil.
well
She’s not very bright and she obviously has no ability to examine herself and look inward for answers. Very dangerous to put someone like that in a position of authority over other people. She sort of reminds me of one of the women that hung around Charlie Manson.
Too bad her Guard unit wasn’t an Engineering unit instead of an MP unit. She probably could have been a fine road builder.
I read a snippet from another interview she did and she clearly indicated that the abuses were going on for a long time prior to their rotation into Abu Graib. She was encouraged to abuse prisoners to soften them up. So far the only people punished have been the grunts, as usual.
Was Lynndie England to blame...
… or was the real culprit the Bush military’s willingness to send mentally handicapped people to war?
Seeing that there may have been a biological reason for her sociopathy does make me feel some empathy toward her… and that much more outrage at her chain of superiors.
Yes, but she was used and discarded too
by people much, much more powerful, and much more adept at the uses of torture, than she.
[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
another nice catch, frenchdoc
welcome, and thank you for two fine posts in a row.
as for this woman…i have deep pity for her. her child will awaken all sorts of new emotions and feelings and the karmic debt she has yet to pay still awaits.
although i do know people like this, who never ’get better’ over the course of their lives, i do know their crimes and sins haunt them. it will haunt her. it probably does now. seriously, this is classic republican talk. “i never think about” “they’re probably out there killing americans” projection and lies, projection and lies, that’s all that ever comes out of mouths like hers.