On MSNBC just now, this report: One of the counts, to which England pleaded guilty, was conspiracy with Charles Graner. England testified, as part of her guilty plea, that when she posed for the infamous leash photo, she did it for the amusement of the guards.
Graner today testified, MSNBC reports on air, that “he asked her to pose for the pictures. He asked her to pose for legitimate training purposes.”
The defense has presented evidence inconsistent with the guilty plea, said the judge. “You can’t have a one-person conspiracy.” Now the case goes back to the convening authority, the adjutant general. I had read a couple weeks ago that Graner had been refusing to testify against others because he felt it wasn’t right. I’ll look for that source. In the meantime, from a news bulletin:
“Knowing what happened in Iraq, it was very upsetting to see Lynn plead guilty to her charges,” he wrote. “I would hope that by doing so she will have a better chance at a good sentence.”
POLL BELOW, and crucial details about England’s past:
On Tuesday, a school psychologist from Mineral County, W.Va., who worked with England when she was a child testified that she was oxygen-deprived at birth. He said her speech was impaired and she had trouble learning to read.
Thomas Denne said England’s learning disabilities were identified when she was a kindergartner, and though she made progress in school she continued needing special attention.
“I knew I was going to know Lynndie England for the rest of my life,” Denne said.
Asked by the judge if England knew right from wrong, Denne said she had a compliant personality and tended to listen to authority figures. …
I admit I should never be on a jury. I tend to see all sides. (Actually, maybe that’s why I should be on a jury!)
But, it’s always struck me that Lynndie England was likely highly influenced by Graner, moreso than usual because they were having sex, and she was vulnerable to his demands. And I see nothing gained by putting her in prison, away from her baby.
By the way, I haven’t seen a news story that says where her baby is living now.
And it seems that Graner, in his own stubborn way, is trying to be a stand-up guy for his fellow soldiers.
Go ahead. Bash me for being a bleeding heart liberal.
But I think it goes deeper. How many people would have stood up to Graner and the entire hierarchy above him — going up to Rumsfeld? Especially with a “compliant” personality type, and from a little trailer park in West Virginia?
You are too reasonable…just kidding. I agree with you.
I stumbled into one of the England diaries at dKos and people were advocating that England and the rest of the “Hemmler defense” people should be “stood up and shot”.
Glad to see there’s some compassion left in this world. Not sure how that is liberal…and it got a 4 by a respected Kossack and many pats on the back from others.
Crazy.
Best we know, she didn’t beat or administer shocks to anyone, nor did she murder anyone. The humiliation of which she was a part, however, will have lifelong adverse effects on those at the receiving end.
But, prison does almost no one any good. I think only those who are actual dangers to others should be locked up. The rest would benefit from educational community service, and be so affected they’d be changed people.
Make her serve five years in an office for human rights. Get her help.
The outrage should be that Rumsfeld, Gen. Sachez, and Gen. Miller aren’ facing jail time.
We would be doing our soldiers a great disservice if we didn’t direct our outrage in the right direction.
I agree that the guys at the top should be the ones answering for these crimes, not the folks at the bottom who were follwoing their orders. Not that the behavior is easily excusable at any level, but I think we’ve seen enough to know that this is a pattern that was condoned and supported by those higher up in the chain of command…all the way to the oval office.
And what is to be gained by making that baby (England and Graner’s) a virtual orphan?
Bam! Bam! There’s your bashing.
I agree with you. I resent that Graner stated that the
dog leash on a naked prisoner was ‘legitimate practice.’
I resent that England looked like she was enjoying herself. But there’s no way she should go to jail
considering her background and her IQ. I hope she
gets to live a peaceful life with her new baby.
Who else was deprived of oxygen at birth and later
executed by the state of Florida?
Aileen Wuornos
As we have seen in the MSM, their is no responsibility beyond the level of SSg, for the terrible atrocities that have occurred not just in Iraq, but Afghanistan, and Gitmo. Why can’t you see it, those nasty SSg’s got together, you know how they can just grab a jet and move around the world without anyone being aware of it, and decided to torture all those prisoners in retribution for 9/11 and all other atrocities perpetuated against America. It never crossed their minds that Gonzalez, Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush, all made it clear that the Geneva Convention is dead to American Politico’s and that they will have the final word on who is a POW and who is lost in the shuffle and they have lost many in that shuffle. Never mind that the CIA imported known human rights violators to interrogate prisoners and that US Military operations kidnapped and moved prisoners to countries known for their less than stellar methods of gaining information, IE torture them until they tell you what you want to hear. But we all know it was a conspiracy amongst the enlisted men and women, headed by those pesky SSg’s who we all know control the military.
There’s a good article in yesterday’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
Private who became the poster child of the Iraq prison case pleads guilty. Critics complain the brass has not been held accountable.
Pfc. Lynndie England, the young woman who became the face of the Abu Ghraib scandal, pleaded guilty Monday to abusing Iraqi prisoners, but critics charge that her superiors are going unpunished in the notorious case that tainted America’s mission in Iraq.
… Graner’s mother charged that her son’s superior officers were “all guilty” but had passed the buck to their underlings.
“He got 10 years in prison for something he was told to do,” Irma Graner told reporters at Fort Hood, Texas, when she attended her son’s court-martial in January. …
“Clearly, the people directly involved do need to be prosecuted and held accountabl for their actions,” said Jumana Musa, advocacy director for Amnesty International USA. “However, in order to effectively put an end to these types of activities, the prosecution cannot stop at the low levels.”
“We won’t be satisfied until there is a thorough investigation all the way up the chain of command to the military and civilian leadership,” said Musa.
OH!
She faces a court martial, but at home she is toasted as a hero.
At the dingy Corner Club Saloon they think she has done nothing wrong.
“A lot of people here think they ought to just blow up the whole of Iraq,” Colleen Kesner said.
“To the country boys here, if you’re a different nationality, a different race, you’re sub-human. That’s the way girls like Lynndie are raised.
“Tormenting Iraqis, in her mind, would be no different from shooting a turkey. Every season here you’re hunting something. Over there, they’re hunting Iraqis.”
There is little understanding of the issues in Iraq and less of why photographs showing soldiers from the 372nd Military Police Company, mostly from around Fort Ashby, abusing prisoners has caused a furore.
A colleague of Lynndie’s father said people in Fort Ashby were sick of the whingeing.
“We just had an 18-year-old from round here killed by the Iraqis,” he said.
“We went there to help the jackasses and they started blowing us up. Lynndie didn’t kill `em, she didn’t cut `em up. She should have shot some of the suckers.”
link
This story was originally in the Telegraph, but the page there is no longer available. It was echoed, however, by several different sources.
I stand by my opinion that the most effective defense for those chosen for show trials is outlined in the remarks of Lynndie’s neighbors: She didn’t know she was doing anything wrong, I don’t think anyone has suggested that she or any of them would do such things to people they considered to be humans.
Lynndie’s child has been being raised by her mother, so no one need worry that he will grow up deprived of the family values.
I can remember reading this and at first being horrified and then pissed off then becoming almost defeatist and thinking how in the hell will anything ever change when so many people think this way.
This problem of prejudice is systemic and isn’t going to change without some major overhaul on this country’s part in our thinking..and which starts in many ways in our whole education system.
As for Lynndie herself I do think she should get a nominal jail time like 6 months but then as Susan suggested have to do something like work for Human Rights Commission for 5 years or more and get mental help etc while being closely monitored. Then go back home and have to open some sort of human rights training office in her home town.
Of course what any of us say here doesn’t mean jack shit and ain’t gonna happen.
While the real criminals like Rummy, Bush, Gonzales etc go scott free.
I agree with you and Susan, what Lynndie was wrong and she should have to make amendments. But more important is to go after the real culprits, who use people like Lynndie and who are truly responsible.
I still hope all that talk about Karma is true and that at some point they have to balance it. Hopefully they will have to do it in this lifetime.
with her. And the rest who were raised that way. And those who raised them.
In a perfect world, of course they would all be admitted to excellent facilities with beautifully landscaped grounds in a tranquil setting and given intensive therapy by skilled, caring professionals.
But in terms of real world options, there are no answers. Putting them in US military prisons is not going to help.
As you point out, these people are all scapegoats. Their ‘superiors’ have already been ‘cleared’ by the warlords themselves.
The most intellectually honest thing would be to give them all promotions and commendations, as was done with Sanchez.
Graner’s primary concern appears to be with the issue of photography. I assume he understands that is why he is in prison, and now that cameras have been banned, and an example made, I don’t think there will be further instances of unauthorized snapshot-taking.
I love your sentiments here. They are very admirable and compassionate. But let’s be realistic, Lynndie doesn’t have the mental capacity to do human rights training let alone being the right sort of individual to work for a Human Rights organization.
Sadly she is “damaged goods” and, from the article in this diary she comes from a whole town of “damaged goods”. “That part of the country” is rife with child abuse — physical, sexual, and emotional — and has been for many generations. Children are chattel, and so are wives in some cases, and you can do with them what you want if they are your family. It’s what Dobson’s “sanctity of the family” is all about.
And when I say “that part of the country” I’m not talking about a physical location. No, no! I live in Manhattan and I can go to “that part of the country” by taking the elevator down one floor and knocking on my downstairs neighbor’s door. I’ve heard what goes on in that apartment and the authorities have been notified.
It’s a mindset that is rampant in this country and in poorer countries across the world. Discipline is mistakenly convoluted (that’s not the word I want) with punishment. In fact they think that discipline means punishment. So physical beatings and unbridled rage in adults is not only tolerated it is thought of as good parenting. And it begets children who turn into the monsters their parents were.
That said I think that Lynndie needs to be confined for several years to an institution that teaches another way. Is there a jail in America like this? I doubt it, but it would be a dream.
And some human rights group better get their ass down to Fort Ashby, West Virginia to teach the entire down a better way!
If it were not, US would not find itself in the situation it is in today, and any suggestion of invading anywhere would have been met with 8 figures of outraged crowds in the streets.
Lynndie, like her superiors all the way up to the Pentagon and the White House, is merely a product of her culture.
Boy you said a mouthful! … and wrote the conclusion that I didn’t. Thanks!
His goal, he said, is to convince his listeners that
the abuse of innocent Iraqis by the American military is
not limited to “a few bad apples,” as the military would
like the public to believe. “At what point,” he asked,
“does a series of ‘isolated incidents’ become a pattern
of intolerable behavior?”
From Bob Herbert’s column in The New York Times. His source is
Aidan Delgado who has photographs to back up his descriptions.
http://tinyurl.com/aojsv
Europe had to experience two …
.
devastating wars before the insanity, horror and inhumanity of it, committed nations to say NEVER AGAIN and ACTED on it by creation of the six nation European Union.
Another quote from Bob Herbert’s column in The New York Times:
Only when you are in war itself, will the Guernica realization hit home. The US attitude is clearly, we don’t want to fight them in our backyard, let’s fight them in Iraq.
The dead have no voice.
Oui – Liberté – Egalité – Fraternité
She is one of “them.”
When the Bush administration had a chance to protect its people over here, they failed.
As Richard A. Clarke, former terrorism chief said, attacking Iraq in revenge for 9/11 made as much sense as attacking Mexico. I think only 35% of the Americans polled approve of Bush’s handling of Iraq right now.
We were discussing yesterday your quote in reference to the war in Vietnam. We remembered seeing a US troop truck hit a land mine in Vietnam on television LIVE. Images like that brought the war to a close. But today we have the US pressuring Qatar to close down al Jazeera because they might present the truth of what is going on over there.
That appearance by General Myers yesterday was a prelude to the draft, I’m afraid.
.
the hundreds and thousands of men, women, family members of the Iraqi civilians, who were caught up in the rape, torture and murder at the hands of US soldiers serving our nation in Abu Ghraib. Realize this torture happened in a single barrack in cooperation with the interrogation teams of CIA and private corporations. England disobeyed orders by being in those barracks.
We are talking about adults, signed up for service and duty in our Armed Forces, the most lethal machine mankind has ever known. How did you think the Hitler and Nazi terror could have survived for so many years? Through the same tactics, the small of stature, less educated German men and women, given a position where they could command and have power over other human beings. In the case of Germany the victims where the psychiatric patients, the cripple, minorities, Jewish race, and any and all who opposed the regime. Horrible experiments by Dr. Mengele on human beings, to further the science of medicine and the goals of the Arian race.
Yes, we start by prosecuting the lower in rank, as we should. It would be a great disservice to fellow men and women in our Armed Forces, if these evil acts went unnoticed and not severely punished! Great courage for the US soldier, who reported the acts of rape and torture to his superiors, and to Sy Hersh for his journalism.
The judgement and sentencing I leave up to the courts, based on the Laws of our nation. But beforehand, no understanding of these acts and no apologetic writing on Abu Ghraib horror.
PS Dutch TV have excellent coverage on Pvt England, a documentary and interview on the human side of her story.
Oui – Liberté – Egalité – Fraternité
The descent of corporate media into tabloid nationalism is the greatest shame of the Iraq War. The stink and corruption of the colonial occupation of Iraq is spreading across America. A handicapped women is thrown into the cess pool Abu Ghraib prison. After digital pictures of torture featuring her are published, she becomes the scapegoat for the revolving door of ass kissing officers and civilians who enabled the collapse of command and control in Iraq and the loss of the moral high ground for the USA.