Lynndie England. An Army of … pawns?

September 28th, 2005 at 20:45 Björn Hallberg

The symbol for the Abu Ghraib abuse, Lynndie England, was sentenced to three years in jail. Someone has to take the fall and every token investigation has been strangely unable to show any sort of pattern beyond the already indicted low ranking soldiers. It’s almost too good to be true.

BBC - Private Lynndie England, who faced up to nine years in prison, has also been given a dishonourable discharge.

A military prosecutor had argued that England had humiliated prisoners because she enjoyed it and had a sick sense of humour.

“Who can think of a person who has disgraced the Unites States Army more?”

How about the guy who started the war on a false premise and sent it racketeering?

It is also pretty nasty to vilify England despite overwhelming psychological expertise. But that is the United States. Where people just can’t be found guilty but have to be dragged through the mud. And in this case it is clear that these convictions serve a different purpose. The message to the world has been sent and the people to take the fall have all been lined up.

Another Day in the Empire - So messed up is Lynndie England, she did not know her actions were wrong at the time, according to Army Spc. Charles Graner Jr., who was fingered as the primary torturer at Abu Ghraib, as Amin al-Sheikh, a Syrian inmate, revealed during Graner’s trial. England grew up in a trailer park in Fort Ashby, West Virginia. She joined the Army Reserve while a junior in high school to escape a night job in a chicken-processing factory. In short, England appears to be a poor woman of sub-standard intelligence who joined the military to escape a dismal life of few options in Appalachia, one of the most poverty-stricken places in America and happy hunting grounds for military recruiters. As such, she is eminently expendable as a patsy to take the heat for what is in fact official military policy—the systematic torture and rape of Iraqi prisoners, most of who never committed a crime and are not connected to the resistance.

Indeed. This is a social project that is all made in America. The poverty. The misery. The mental breakdown and brutality of the military.

Entry 262 filed under: Americas. This entry was posted 2 years, 10 months ago. RSS feed for comments on this post.