Twenty-year-old Lynndie England of West Virginia took the heat for higher-ups for the horrendous treatment of prisoners at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison. In 2004, photos began to appear in U.S. media showing England pointing at naked prisoners' genitals ad holding one, dog-like, on a leash.
On one hand, she appeared to be enjoying what she was doing very well. On the other, she was clearly following orders from people higher up the chain of command.
America had always prided itself as a modest, decent nation that accorded its war prisoners humane treatment. The Neocons of the George W. Bush administration, on the other hand, took the low road. It seems very likely that the orders to torture and humiliate came from the CIA, perhaps even from Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense chief Donald Rumsfeld.
As so often happens, however, England and six of her fellow guards took the blame and punishment while the higher-ups comfortably lay low, applauded by the Far Right.
England came to Iraq as a member of a reservist MP unit. She had already been married and divorced once, and before arriving in Iraq, fell for a fellow soldier 10 years her senior. England had his child, but he later married another member of their Abu Ghraib guard unit with whom he had been two-timing England.
The unfortunate England was tried in 2005 and sentenced to three years in military prison. After serving 521 days, she was paroled in March 2007 and was given a dishonorable discharge.
The moral of her story is that if you are going to be a skunk, be sure to be a high-ranking skunk. Then you really can be all that you can be.
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