From a Picture of Pride to a Symbol of Abuse in Iraq....(Pointy Girl)

From a Picture of Pride to a Symbol of Abuse in Iraq
By JAMES DAO

Published: May 7, 2004







ORT ASHBY, W.Va., May 6 — For weeks, the Mineral County courthouse has proudly displayed the photographs of local soldiers stationed in Iraq along the stairway at its front entrance. "We're hometown proud," the banner said.

But in the last few days, one photograph was taken down, that of Pfc. Lynndie R. England, whose face has become famous for a painfully different reason.

Private England is perhaps the most prominently displayed person in a series of photographs taken in the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad that show members of the 372nd Military Police Company abusing prisoners.

In one image, Private England is clenching a cigarette between her teeth while giving a thumbs-up in front of naked Iraqi prisoners. In another that became public on Thursday, she is holding a leash attached to a naked prisoner's neck.

The photographs have left her family and friends aghast and searching for answers. They are convinced that she would never have thought up anything so cruel on her own and that she must have been following orders.

more....

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/07/national/07SOLD.html

:wow:

I'm not trying to be funny. It really does look like her. Do I need glasses?

No, I don't give a flying fuck about Condi either....

She must have taken time away from torture and humiliation for a little booty call.

She has been a busy girl.

Edit: Authentic USA on her sweatshirt? There should be humor in that somewhere, I just can't find it.

This all makes my head - and my stomach - spin.

The guy did not know which soldiers where involved.

Don

.. a relatively common tactic to get out of service in a combat zone.. she and her boyfriend (who I believe was reported to be another abuser) probably knew the shit was going to hit the fan soon.

WIth the IRC report out today.. it's hitting it now!

when I was in the military that's not what we thought of women like her.

... and I truly believe this woman must be punished for her actions. But, I also feel very sorry for her. And the moment I feel sorry for her, all I have to do is look again at that picture of her holding the leash. Her family and friends are probably right... that she was following someone's orders. But her family and friends also need to learn to live with the harsh reality of the fact that she did not have to follow those orders.

Hell, I wouldn't care if she was put on a leash and drug around in public for a while.

Her life is ruined because of this mistake.

The difference is that most people don't have their mistakes televised to a billion people.

Why shouldn't she bear the consequences of her actions?

She makes a pretty convincing case in her "Banality of Evil" that there was really nothing particularly special about the Germans with respect to their midsconduct during the Holocaust, save maybe they were a little more efficient than most others might have been. But the underlying capacity for ordinary people to commit unspeakable atrocities is universal, not limited to just the Germans, all you have to do is give them the right encouragement. Which brings to my mind the more basic question of from whom she might have received such encouragement? Who might possibly have fed her the message that she was engaged in a crusade against evil, defending her beloved homeland from the imminent threat of mushroom clouds, in the combat against which basic legal and behavioral norms were appropriately chucked out the window? Damn, that sounds so familiar, like I've heard that somewhere before, who could it have been?

comes from Justin Raimondo in todays antiwar.com
Not sure if its convincing, but definitely chilling
and thought-provoking

http://antiwar.com/justin/

Mistakes are unintentional acts.

Her acts were deliberate, gleeful and willing.

I hope her and the other torturers get full Courts Martial.

which i think isn't a mistake at all... it's filling up mediatime that might otherwise focus on THEM....
what's galling is the media pro's know this....and they just mosey along aw shucks while christianity/the west/ america or whatever is reduced to moral bankruptcy..... in our own eyes!

Explain her happy, gleeful smile on the other photos of her with the naked prisoners! She is NOT a victim. Screw your head on straight.. she is the perpetrator here.

I never said she was a victim. And I did say this "And the moment I feel sorry for her, all I have to do is look again at that picture of her holding the leash" ... which I meant to mean that whenever I feel a little sorry for her, I just have to see those pictures to convince me that she doesn't deserve the pity. I'll try to be more clear next time. :)

In a year, they've given us not one, but TWO poster girls as metaphors for this Iraq war - as opposites of each other.

Just like the two-faced diety Janus - two sides of the same coin.

And from opposite sides of the state, at that.

Side 1 - from the Ohio River side of WVA (west) - the sweet, virtuous and eventually morally courageous Pvt. Jessica Lynch.

Side 2 - from the Panhandle side of WVA (east) - the impetuous, adventurous, but apparently morally depraved Pvt. Lynndie England.

(sarcasm off)

Note: This is not meant to be a slam against our West Virginian friends and allies of DU - after all, I can't get mad at a Senator from the state who has denounced this war from the get-go. (Robert Byrd)


:evilfrown:

same? If she had been put in that position. I'm not going to make the assumption that she would not have despite her blond hair, blue eyes and sweet smile.

No one really knows, and we won't know til all the soldiers are home and the ones who resisted, or tried to resist, participating in this start talking.

I think England was used in these pictures because it was particularly humiliating to have a woman do these things, someone said it was pretty standard technique.

Just pretty telling that so many are from Appalachia,one of the poorest regions in this country, where the land is being raped for all it is worth. Complete and total exploitation of all that region's resources, human and otherwise.

Back in the '70s at Stanford, a psychologist named Zimbardo conducted a study in which study participants comprised of ordinary university students were randomly assigned the role of either guard or prisoner and were then placed into a simulated prison environment for a week. Within three days, those designated as guards had already started to display brutal, sadistic behavior towards the prisoners, while the prisoners had been cowed into extreme passivity, docility, and obsequiousness. The moral of the story: absolute power corrupts absolutely - the study participants, you, me, PFC England, anybody, this is just another demonstration of that infallible truism.

I just wish I had someone in Texas like him. Oh wait, maybe I do.......checking now....... Ron Paul, Gary R. Page, Morrison going up against DeLay!! Yes we do. I am so sorry for all this. Ms England should........I just don't have a good answer.

I'm not an apologist for Ms. England, but I think that it is despicable that she is taking most of the blame for the torture that was done by the US military. Sure she is prominently featured in the photographs, but are we really to believe that the her comrades didn't partake in similar, if not worse, actions?

I believe that the troops are being scapegoated and that the higher-ups will get off with nothing more than a slap on the wrist. Further, I believe that Ms. England is bearing most of the burden because she is a female.

The troops that are responsible must be reprimanded, but so must the officers that were overseeing, if not ordering the atrocities. We also need a shake-up with the civiliian bureaucracy. This must go beyond teh Bush administration. A committee should be set up to investigate the way that military prsoners are detained and interrogated.

Call me naive, but I can't believe that this sort of behavior wouldn't have happened if the president was named Al Gore or Bill Clinton. . .

that focus on the guys involved?

where are the front page photos focusing on the guys?

And most importantly, as you point out, why is the media not pointing their fingers at those who are truly responsible: George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld.

That profiled the one called Graner, I think (the Iraqis called him "Joiner"). It said he had 3 charges against him by his ex-wife in the States for battery. I believe he is the father of the child Ms. England is said to be carrying. They also profiled a man called Frederick (something like that) who was involved in these events. I think he had been a prison guard in civilian life.

It may only be in the printed edition though, as I can't find the on-line story.

I agree with your sentiment, that these troops are the image of a bigger problem. However, I doubt that a National Guard company from WVA would have been guarding prisoners in a former Saddam jail after occupying Iraq, if Clinton or Gore had been President.

Sid

Guard companies in Iraq. Involved in a war crime. Because a group of non-Iraqi`s. (Bu$h Inc.`s buddies the Saudi`s to be precise) Attacked our unwarned airlines with box cutters. I just have to agree with you. It is seriously doubtful it would have happened under the watch of either of those two men who both received the most votes in their respective elections. But some people are still borrowing the half of brain Rush Limbaugh has tied behind his back. And for those people the search for truth is futile.
Peace
Wildman
Al Gore is My President

and clinton had a war in kosovo with plenty of atrocities and ethnic problems to go around.

SHE posed for those photos. SHE needs to be responsible for her actions.

Scapegoats are innocent. She is NOT innocent. If she is punished (and I hope she will be) it will be because she was part of this atrocity. She should get her full, fair share.

I do NOT agree that she is bearing the burden because she is female. She is bearing the burden because she is in the pictures!!
It is the visual impact that is putting her face on the atrocities. Big BIG mistake on her part. But her first, and most CRUCIAL mistake was to allow herself to torture prisoners. Under orders or not, it was still her choice to make, and she made the wrong one.

I agree with you that there are many others that are guilty in this. I want ALL of them punished, just as you. But I have NO SYMPATHY for Ms. England. None at all.

I was a PFC in the Army a long time ago. There is no way I could have been ordered or brainwashed to abuse people like this. I DO want the chain of command to be closely scrutinized and punished, as well as other agencies or individuals involved. This incident has disgraced our Nation and we have to do everything to try to prevent it from happening again. I don't want to see PFC England be a scapegoat, but I do want to see her do time in Leavenworth for her crimes.

That's what I keep wondering! Whoever is behind the camera is equally responsible, unless he/she can prove the photos were taken as an expose'. And why don't we know the names of the American men who appear in the photos?

I'm not defending Ms. England, but ALL of the other people involved should be punished equally.

woman within the same reserve unit. I have also read(Seymore Herst) these pictures are just the tip of the iceberg, since there are other pictures and videos of the torture

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040510fa_fact

TORTURE AT ABU GHRAIB
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
American soldiers brutalized Iraqis. How far up does the responsibility go?
Issue of 2004-05-10
Posted 2004-04-30
In the era of Saddam Hussein, Abu Ghraib, twenty miles west of Baghdad, was one of the world’s most notorious prisons, with torture, weekly executions, and vile living conditions. As many as fifty thousand men and women—no accurate count is possible—were jammed into Abu Ghraib at one time, in twelve-by-twelve-foot cells that were little more than human holding pits.

In the looting that followed the regime’s collapse, last April, the huge prison complex, by then deserted, was stripped of everything that could be removed, including doors, windows, and bricks. The coalition authorities had the floors tiled, cells cleaned and repaired, and toilets, showers, and a new medical center added. Abu Ghraib was now a U.S. military prison. Most of the prisoners, however—by the fall there were several thousand, including women and teen-agers—were civilians, many of whom had been picked up in random military sweeps and at highway checkpoints. They fell into three loosely defined categories: common criminals; security detainees suspected of “crimes against the coalition”; and a small number of suspected “high-value” leaders of the insurgency against the coalition forces.

Last June, Janis Karpinski, an Army reserve brigadier general, was named commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade and put in charge of military prisons in Iraq. General Karpinski, the only female commander in the war zone, was an experienced operations and intelligence officer who had served with the Special Forces and in the 1991 Gulf War, but she had never run a prison system. Now she was in charge of three large jails, eight battalions, and thirty-four hundred Army reservists, most of whom like her, had no training in handling prisoners.



.......you can also search DU and google for more information on those involved......

is that anyone even casually paying attention knows her name, but the mainstream media is ignoring the other people involved. She has become the symbol of the incident and, as far as suffering public humiliation, that lets the other perpetrators off the hook.

But the reason she is suffering the brunt of the criticism is because of exactly the same reason the Private Lynch became a 'war hero'. Lynch was in a group that got lost, then got in a car wreck trying to flee. Not exactly 'heroism'. But she was a pretty female who got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Now we have Pointy Girl. I doubt she did any of the beatings. She probably wasn't responsible for hardly any of the abuse that went on. But the mere fact that it's a petite female smiling and posing for the camera makes her an instant celebrity. People are much less shocked by the guy who appears in some of the photos. Nobody talks about him.

Frankly, I have very little sympathy for her, any more than I would have sympathy for anyone in the US who laughed and joked their way through sexual and physical assaults. She is living proof that anyone is capable of doing repulsive things under the right circumstances.

I said this in a thread in GD.

Ok, here are my two cents and I've been kicking this about in my head since last night.

Martha Stewart: guilty, and brought to justice quickly so we'd think that the system works, justice is done and the problem is solved. Meanwhile, other CEOs far more guilty still elude justice. And only a few people even said "What about Ken Lay?"

Lynndie England: guilty, and exposed quickly so we'd rein in the abuses of the military in an evil and illegal war and think the system works and the problem is solved. Meanwhile, we've forgotten about the DynCorps, the Blackwater USAs, and other mercenaries who might be guilty but there's no provision for how to deal with war crimes not committed by soldiers. Is anyone looking at the abuses contractors might be complicit in, or just the ones involving actual USA military personnel?

Last week we were all disgusted and rightfully so by the contractors. Lynndie England diverted us this week, the same way Martha Stewart diverted us from Ken Lay."

I also deplore the fact that for young West Virginia girls like Lynndie England and JESSICA LYNCH (remember her?) there are limited choices in life: work at WalMart, have babies, or join the Army. It's sad.

These soldiers have shoulder some of the responsibility. What they did was disgusting and wrong.

However, these soldiers would not have behaved this way if they hadn't been trained in an atmosphere where the Iraqi people were considered less than human.

The blame and responsibility goes all the way to the top to the Commander in Chief for creating an atmosphere where brown-skinned people are treated like animals.

Let me add that this incident has made me physically ill and full of shame for my country.

They are the ones who vigorously encouraged these cretins and mental midgets to pound the crap out of the POWS

Lynndie by herself has all the ability to learn to screw the cap off a bottle of beer.

NO FOLKS THIS SHIT GOES A LOT HIGHER to the CIA

She's just become the "poster child" for this war because she's relatively unique. We haven't had a woman prominently placed among those who commit atrocities since the days of the Bitch of Buchenwald. She stands out because of conventional thinking and the incongruity of a woman (you know, the stereotypical women as nurturers and care-givers while men handle the rough-n-tumble) who appears in such an awful context. This is the "man bites dog" or "fish out of water" aspect. It's news simply because of the fact that we're not used to seeing a woman as an active participant in this kind of "activity." She stands out - BECAUSE she stands out.

That said, I, too, have no sympathy. She could have said no. She could have even just backed away and hung toward the sidelines or the walls. She could have NOT been willing to be photographed, and photographed SO DAMNED FLAGRANTLY. The photos are RATHER glaring - she doesn't exactly look like a reluctant participant, as though somebody'd held a gun to her head and forced her to point at the prisoners or smile and smirk and pose with her "loved one" above a pyramid of naked Iraqi men, or pose with one of the prisoners on a leash. The fact that she was there, smiling and appearing VERY MUCH as a WILLING PARTICIPANT - in MULTIPLE PHOTOS, OKAY? - is what condemns her. Justifiably.

But she's just one of MANY who deserve punishment. Unfortunately, what's called for here, in the interest of at least a semi-respectable attempt to repair the horrendous damage to international relations (to the Iraqis specifically, and to the ENTIRE Arab world - AND BEYOND - ANY country that would get in cahoots with us for ANY REASON), a bold gesture is absolutely demanded.

The courts martial should start FROM THE TOP, and the embarrassingly derelict Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He's at the top of the pyramid. If they start at the bottom, our darling Pointy Girl should be AMONG the punished. EVERY ONE of those people in the photos, plus whoever took those photos, should get the book thrown at them. Then, their supervisors WHO KNEW BETTER, OR SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER. I am a civilian here, knowing next to nothing about the military, but even I can recognize GROSS dereliction of duty when I see it. I mean, this is a no-brainer. And if the courts martial begin at her level, they need to proceed ALL THE WAY UP THE CHAIN OF COMMAND, and the top guy, Mr. Joint Chiefs Chair, should fall on his sword for this, if indeed he is not facing court martial himself.

An example MUST be made of this, for all the world to see, especially since their crimes were very much on parade for all the world to see. Punitive steps MUST be severe, to send a message that gives teeth, and meaning to all our verbal contrition. Otherwise other nations have just another reason never to trust us again, and to regard us as a joke and a sham instead of a leader in the ways of justice, liberty, and human rights protections. That is the ONLY way we can start recovering from this, and earning back even a smidgen of credibility with our allies and others in the international community. If we give this lip service, and only a few fallguys/gals have to face the music, it will look, to all the world, like we don't give a rat's ass about what happened, and as a country we are willing to just look the other way, every bit as egregiously as Lynndie England's supervisors, and THEIR supervisors, AND THEIR SUPERVISORS did.

Some bullets have to be bitten here, and bitten hard.

And somehow, I doubt this is gonna happen...

and was, I believe for the most part, taken as a conspiracy nut. It didn't help, however, that I thought at the time I might indeed be one!

The very carefully nuanced but morally SOLID disquisition on My Lai and Lt. Calley that one John Forbes Kerry presented on "Meet the Press" 33 years ago.

It's a stunner.

I THINK Democracy Now at Pacifica has an audio file. Dunno if they've transcribed it (expensive)

And there's the transcript of the excerpt Russert used in the most recent MTP transcript. http://msnbc.msn.com/ID/4772030/

The Freepers were literally in hysterics a couple of months ago looking for that same transcript

Also, check out the Q & A portion of his Senate testimony 33 years ago, which I think only C-Span has transcribed.

investigated, and sanctioned hard.

But the thing is -- she seemed to be enjoying what she was doing. She cannot avoid responsibility for what she did, even if others put her into the situation, even ordered her to do it. Sure, she should be offered lesser punishment if ... she will help the prosecution indict and convict superiors who ordered, encouraged, or just countenanced the torture.

Let's see....a sympathetic portrait of an emotionally fragile woman made so vulnerable by the horrors of war that she was brainwashed into committing heinous acts...

Wow! I'd better copywrite this idea, so I can make mega-bucks writing the screenplay for next summer's Hollywood blockbuster!

can smell the stench.

So sad and so sorry! And yes, you probably should get on the copywrite idea. I would like to implode now.

I don't believe the Army is about choice. It's about following orders.

She could have refused an order to commit such acts of atrocity? A woman coming from a redneck upbringing who sees the Army as her only route to escape from her humble background who is stationed, stranded 10,000 miles from her home?

You can call for her punishment all you want, but punishment is not what she deserves. She, herself has been tortured and abused by the U.S. military.

Help is what she needs.

THE PENTAGON IS IN FULL CENSORSHIP MODE

Meyers is working overtime to keep the lid on this. According to MSNBC the "PICTURES
AREN'T EVEN IN DC YET"

What a Freaking LIE. They could send a Giga bite of data in 2 seconds for heaven sakes ---do
they believe we are that STOOPID ??

NeoCon Fucking liars posing as Generals



Next week or the week after next the NEOCON Generals plan to let a few select congressMEN
see them..

Then after the congressMEN go on TV with their usual outrage statements THE PENTAGON
will decide what to do next.

I hope the DINOS and others keep the heat on these CRIMINALS IN UNIFORM