The Global Sociology Blog

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.