Female Private Ordered to Pose with Leash

I think the trail of slime is going to lead all the way back to Chenney. But for now, they're trying to pin it on the most vulnerable members of this forced, illegal crusade.

"Army Pfc. Lynndie R. England was ordered by her superiors to pose with naked Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison, her attorneys said Monday, so that the photos could be used to frighten and demoralize other prisoners. "

I thought so, and why her?

"They picked her to get the smallest, youngest, lowest-rank woman they could find, and that would increase the humiliation for an Iraqi man," said Rose Mary Zapor, another member of the Denver-based legal team. "

Here's the link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16371-2004May10.html

What slime... what utter low life, completely immoral and treasonous bastards. To force her to go to Iraq, then to force her to be a prison guard, then to force her to participate in international crimes, then to force her to incriminate herself for their benefit and defense, and then to blame it all on her and a handful of similar setup scapegoats...

This isn't proof that our intelligence agencies need to be overhauled, it's proof that they need to be eliminated. We are now using standard CIA tactics against our own reserve troops. How sad, how incredibly and demoralizingly sad. What effect will this have on the other troops? Will they worry that by carrying out their orders, they will face life in the brig?

That a lot of tarnished brass lied their asses off today.

Which do we cure?

Well, we treat the symptoms as we fight the disease,...yes?

Fighting "symptoms" is like doing a shovel into a hole that will only get deeper,...and we will find no water or oil or whatever.

Fighting the "disease" is akin to filling up a hole that was worthless from the start.

Yes?

...has a definite agenda...may be true, may not

that Lynndie England and co were set up to be the fall-guys. This scandal was been under investigation for months. Taguba's report was 3rd or even 4th. That gave plenty of people plenty of time to set these lower-ranking kids up.

That picture of the 3 Iraqi men intertwined on the floor as 8 men were yelling at them, didn't see Lynndie in those photos yet we never see those 8 men again.

This is why I want to see all the photos. Karpinski + 6 just ain't flying and I do believe the smarter people set it up to pin it all on these 6.

what do I drag out? Ah yes, Lt. Calley, you may remember him, or not... but Mai Lay will live in US Military History as a day of infamy

Now reach further into the memory hole... ah yes do I see Colonel Collin Powell? Ah the Army investigation.

Wonder why only Calley faced the music? Not even his Company Commander faced more than cross questioning at Calley's court martial. Should Calley have paid? Yes, but rumors abound that there was a Class A cover up.

Difference is, this one will be harder to cover up

That is why they are offering Karpisnky up... a Brigadier sounds high enough.

Brigadiers and Sergeants DO NOT make policy in the US Army

got rewarded for something imo with his very own helicopter factory in Menominee, MI.

,...apparently, she has been fighting from the get go (which makes her particularly unpopular). If she becomes another "Martha Stewart" fall-gal,...I am going to be really, really pissed off.

identified by one of the charged soldiers. Fredericks perhaps? The contractor was the heavy guy leaning over the iraqis with black gloves on. I heard it on tweety's show a few nights ago.

1 -5 November, 2003
Maj. Gen. Donald Ryder issued a report titled "Assessment of Detention and Corrections Operations in Iraq" conducted by MG Donald Ryder and a team of military police, legal, medical, and automation experts. The Ryder Report concluded that the OEF template whereby military police actively set the favorable conditions for subsequent interviews runs counter to the smooth operation of a detention facility.


2 In January The 870th Military Police Company stationed at Abu Ghraib from October to March is told that the 372nd MP Company was being questioned for possible inappropriate contact with the prisoners and that they weren't going to tell them details about the abuses because they didn't want us to do it.

3 - 14 January
The U.S. commander in Iraq, Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, opens a criminal investigation into reported incidents of detainee abuse at a Coalition Forces detention facility. The release of specific information concerning the incidents could hinder the investigation, which is in its early stages. The investigation will be conducted in a thorough and professional manner. The Coalition is committed to treating all persons under its control with dignity, respect and humanity. Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the Commanding General, has reiterated this requirement to all members of CJTF-7.

4 - 24 January
The Chief of Staff of US Central Command (CENTCOM), MG R. Steven Whitcomb, on behalf of the CENTCOM Commander, directed that the Commander, Coalition Forces Land Component Command (CFLCC), LTG David D. McKiernan, conduct an investigation into the 800th MP Brigade’s detention and internment operations from 1 November 2003 to present. On 31 January The Commander, CFLCC, appointed MG Antonio M. Taguba, Deputy Commanding General Support, CFLCC, to conduct the investigation. MG Taguba was directed to conduct an informal investigation under AR 15-6 into the 800th MP Brigade’s detention and internment operations.

THE guy with the BLACK Rectal Exam Gloves is Grainer, he claims

THE BIG FAT BASTARD IS A CIA CIVILIAN (he's the one who didn't blouse his boots and is cuffing the guys on the floor.

... she sure did look like she was having a good time. Her facial expressions and body language in the pictures were pretty convincing: she didn't appear to be distressed in the slightest. Maybe she's just a really good actor, I don't know.

Who hasn't taken pictures of resistant children? Who hasn't told a joke or reminded the subject of a pleasant story and then snapped the picture?

Don't get me wrong. I have little doubt that Lynndie "got with the program." Compliance and cooperation is an authoritarian survival tactic in a war zone. But I will remain open to reasonable interpretations of individual photos.

Somebody supplied the leash. Somebody supplied the collar ... and put it on the prisoner. Somebody shackled the prisoner. There's no way Lynndie did that, at least not without a LOT of assistance.

Presumably, she can name names...

in July 2003..included Camp Bucca...I have the articles..Remember those other reservists that were on national tv..they're involved also..Rummy was aware of this at that time while he denied knowing last week. And, the congressmen were aware.

What a lame defense.

She certainly doesn't have the look of one "just following orders", does she? No disgust on her face. Just happiness.

Dogs are NOT popular pets in an Arab/Islamic country. They're regarded as "unclean."


If anyone thinks the collar and leash were just part of the soldiers' personal gear, they oughta change what they're smoking.

{or at least that's what they think)
my Lily doesn't eat garbage, but licks away any spiders she sees...
just an aside

Islamics do not like dogs is that dogs are said to have partially eaten the corpse of Mohammed after he died.

with the 'fiance' that impregnated her, it has been rumored that they did it right in front of the prisoners. :puke:

But she looked pretty happy to cooperate in some of the photos. I guess there will be a lot of "he said, she said", only the he will be highly placed officers and government officials, and the she will be a private.

Emotional states of mind cannot be proved so they are not very admissible as hard evidence in most courts. The biggest they can be are clues to intent in questioning. If its true or not she can say testify in private she was instructed to act that way. The burden will be on them to prove or disprove she was not instructed into the operations.

That is where her case could be weak, they will go with "not to obey a unlawful order" regardless of the others. They will make that the point if such things come up. This is how they shut people up. By separating them even though they are operating as a team.

People who have been started of affection in their lives will do almost anything to get attention from those whose opinions they value.

People who were abused as children will often accept abuse from others when they are adults because being the victim is the only way they know to get attention.

It's said that many prostitutes and porn stars were sexually abused as children. They keep on reenacting the abuse because that is all they know how to do.

Most child abusers were abused themselves as children.


I don't know where Lynndie England fits on this spectrum, but I have a very strong feeling she fits somewhere. She may merely have been an affection-starved child who is glad to do whatever her superiors tell her as a way of gaining their praise. Or she may have been physically or sexually abused in a way that makes her feel right at home in a situation where she is both the abuser and (via the photographs) the exploited. Her linking up with a wife-abusing boyfriend suggests the second may be closer to the truth

Her smile in those photos is certainly real -- but there may be a world of pain hidden behind it.

I don't think this was of her own volition though. Some of the expressions on her face seemed somewhat forced to me. Not that I would like to give her a clean bill of health, but she is no more guilty than what was probably at least the hundreds of others that saw the pictures before they rolled out the mass media.

They are only attempting a facade of justice because they need to try and cover it back up. The rest of the world will see that also though. Too many people have been outraged and mistreated or even murdered for them to get away with more cover ups.

The INTERNET broke down that wall. You can bet in days and years before the WWW.s they could get away with it, but them days are gone

This is coming from her attorneys, and until such time that it can be proven in court it's just hearsay.

And irregardless if she followed the order she still should be held accountable for her actions, unless of course she sees nothing wrong with humiliating another human being and that being treated the same way would not bother her.

Let's put PFC England to the test, you get the leash and collar, strip her nude and I'll take the pictures. Then we can put them on the internet and send copies to her family.

If she's not ashamed of these photos, then I'll support her without question.

the French soldier in the e-mail that the dunderheads sent around?

The whole idea of that debunked e-mail was that a six-foot "tough" Frenchman was afraid to take on a five-foot-two US woman that weighed in under 90 lbs. (Would that even be accepted?) Of course, I believe the term "Chivalry" was created in France, and the US probably leads the "civilized" world in spousal abuse/deaths of women.

Yeah, the French are so terrible that they actually sent troops to Afghanistan to help us fight the Taliban.

n/t

Nuremberg

One has a duty to refuse orders like this.

Nuremburg dealt with the whole "I was just following orders" bit.

Her actions, and those of her fellows, are inexcusable.

I hope this follows all of those involved for the rest of their lives.

I hope everyone of them looses out on getting that 'perfect' job because the interviewer recognizes them.

I hope people back home turn their backs on them.

I hope that everyone of them is personally identified and ridiculed in the press. REPEATEDLY.

I hope each of them spends the rest of their lives trying, and failing, to explain what happened in Abu Ghraib.

If higher ups are involved, nail them too.

some Talibornagain whack job will be HAPPY to give these "heroes" jobs.

England will one day be a very rich woman...Americans eat this stuff up. Im sure shes already been approached by a publishing house.

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I heard someone on a TV interview say Lynndie wasn't assigned to this area of the prison. She was there to visit her boyfriend. If this is true then I wonder, was she ordered or just ask to participate.

I too read she was not assigned to this area of prison but would go there to hang out with boyfriend. She was following his orders perhaps?

...went out with the Nuremburg trials. A military lawyer to invoking this defense is the pinnicle of desperation, IMO. I think this is for public consumption, not for the trial, unless they really are so despaerate that they have nothing else.

her superiors encouraged that behavior. But that she was ordered is a bit far fetched. She apparently really enjoyed having her pics taking in those photos.

Even if she was ordered, she could have refused and complained about it. The person who leaked the photos was brave enough to stand up.

What a piece of useless sh*t she is. I don't buy that "they made me do it crap"

This is a real reach, and they have no defense. Throw the book at her.

Her defense lawyers are claiming that she WAS ordered to smile. If you believe that she was chosen deliberately as the youngest, smallest, lowest-ranking female soldier in order to cause the greatest deal of humiliation, it's not such a stretch to believe that they would also order her to smile as if ridiculing the prisoner. I mean, that's the whole point of the photo, isn't it?

Whether or not this claim is true, I don't know, but I tend to believe it. It seems like all these acts were planned out very carefully to cause the greatest amount of shame in terms of Iraqi culture, so I think her claim is entirely believable. If you want to say she should have refused to follow the order, that's one thing. But I think it's silly to argue, as so many on this thread have done, that the fact that she is smiling in the photo is proof that she did it of her own volition or that she enjoyed it.

I've seen enough plastic for-the-camera smiles to know the difference. She appeared to be getting off on it. Regardless, she received training in basic that any reasonable person would conclude forbids such behavior.

Several former members of the military whom I work with are saying she deserves a public execution. I'm inclined to agree. What she did has inflamed the hatred for our soldiers and has further placed them in harm's way. When viewed from a terrorist's POV, she gave them aid and comfort. Aid, by inflaming the passions of those we are fighting against, and comfort, in knowing now that their beliefs about our presence there is dead-on accurate.

She's a traitor. Treason is a capital offense.

Lynndie England's smiles in those photos do not look the slightest bit faked or coerced. She looks positively gleeful. She and all the others are guilty and should be court martialed. And the officers--as well as officials of the Pentagon and White House--who allowed and/or encouraged the abuses should be stripped of their duties and prosecuted.

A lot of posters were asking rhetorically "Did they also order her to smile?" I was answering that question: According to her defense team, she WAS ordered to smile. I don't have the ability that Bush and some of you have to look into a person's eyes (or a photo of a person's eyes) and see their soul, so I can't say with 100% certainty whether or not she was sincerely enjoying herself. I personally believe she was ordered to do this, that she was carefully chosen, and that she was ordered to smile, because it goes along with these events being carefully planned by people who were very familiar with Iraqi culture.

Yes, she should have refused to follow an unlawful order, but I think that is easier said than done. The lowest-ranking people serving in Iraq are not in the same position as all of us. They are generally very young and not well educated. This isn't a 9-5 job. They are soldiers 24 hours a day - they sleep in military beds, eat military (well, Halliburton) food, and receive military healthcare. They can be killed or injured at any time. They are fed military propaganda (like Rush Limbaugh) constantly. And as soldiers they are heavily conditioned to follow orders unquestioningly. Do you think it even occurred to her that she did not have to follow an order? My hunch is that she probably wasn't too conficted about following this order (if her claim is true), at least at the time. I think she probably went along with the mindset that everyone else there had. Remember that photos like hers were passed around as entertainment.

I think that war makes monsters out of soldiers who might not be truly evil, and I think that just being in the military in a war zone is akin to being brainwashed. She should certainly be held accountable for what she did, but remember that she and these other low-ranking soldiers are mere scapegoats, and that the real criminals are those at the top who ordered/allowed this to happen.

I don't necessarily believe she was chosen as "the youngest, smallest, lowest-ranking female soldier in order to cause the greatest deal of humiliation." So, yes, it is still a stretch to believe that "they would also order her to smile as if ridiculing the prisoner."

These lawyers may assert that she was ordered to pose and that she was ordered to smile. They may even present that defense. But it is not a credible defense. It would be an extremely difficult order to issue, as well as an extremely difficult order to enforce.

Most importantly, the plain and visible evidence simply does not support this defense. These lawyers have no other defense given the photographic evidence of this person's conduct, so they are forced to resort to this.

she, unlike the prisoners, doesn't seem to have needed any arm-twisting. Why do people seem to think the idea that she was ordered or at least enouraged to do those things and the idea that she enjoyed herself thoroughly are mutually exclusive? It's a classic hierarchical/authoritarian maneuver: treat your underlings like shit, and then give them an even lower-on-the-ladder scapegoat for them to abuse as a "gift," so they can "let off steam." Translation of which: so that they won't by some chance turn all that bottled-up rage against the higher-ups. It serves more than one purpose: it's not just about exercising sadism, it's also about making sure everyone--Iraqis and lower ranking soldiers both--know their place.

And no, that *still* doesn't let her off the hook. It's *also* likely that they chose her at least in part because they had a pretty good idea that she'd be good at it.

That's a disgusting defense attempt.

I never said her claim was true, although I find it very believable and consistent with what we are learning about how and why such torture was/is taking place.

I find it hard to believe that the defense department would be forcing soldiers to smile for photos. Who was meant to see those photos? What, so other prisoners could be demoralized by someone smiling and giving the thumbs up to other people's dicks? Well, that would certainly make me talk.

There was no audience except for a bunch of fucked up people getting their jollies. That's 100% bullshit.

If you are going to set up people to take a fall you DAMN WELL make sure you do it right. Having her smile makes people such as your self assume she was enjoying it, and thus it causes the fact that those above were giving the orders lose credibility.

Come on people this isn't rocket science here.

This was a loss of control and a bunch of sadistic fucks taking pictures of attrocities. I'm sure Rummy had nothing to do with ordering smiles, not that he didn't know what was going on.

The modus operandi here is to completely fuck things up, then make up a story to cover themselves.

Please don't post assumptions that people who think like I do are idiots. I've been watching this stuff for a LONG time and paying lots of attention - hence the 1000+ posts.

he'd say anything right about now...

It think it's a relatively legit claim. They train soldier to KILL people. They train them to distinguish between "defense" and "murder" though both involve taking the life of another human.

The line between "torture" and "softening up" is a bit more blurry, I think. Ritual abuse is ingrained into some segments of the culture, especially within the prison and military systems. It's done to create a self-perpetuating culture of abuse, where abusers are "inside" and have the "secret" while those "outside" are considered virginal and untainted.

The higher-ups SHOULD be held responsible, and imprisoned, and the higher up the accusations go, more people should be put away. Right on up to Rumsfeld and Bush.

I was hoping she was 'ordered' by the court to wear a leash, naked with an Iraqi smoking a cig and wearing a shit-eating grin.

An eye for an eye and all that...

Tut-tut

I want a copy of that pic!

Taguba also told the committee his investigation had not found "any order whatsoever, written or otherwise," that directed the military police to cooperate with intelligence forces at the prison.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=542&e=2&u=/ap/20040511/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_prisoner_abuse

so his knowledge may be limited.
I don't want pointy girl exhonerated - she obviously was a willing participant. But I can also accept that someone above her choreographed all this. And I'd like to know who.

So I guess Rummy and all the brass are off the hook. Rove thanks you.

Because apparently you will believe any scheit that my lawyer dishes out. I mean, I have seen some gullible, naive people in my time. I've seen some crazy posts on this forum from way out there in tin-foil hat land.

But frankly this one takes the cake. Is it so hard for you to understand that some people in the service are just "hills have eyes"-crack-head-missing gene-run of the mill freaking idiots? We had a lot of those and you always had to put a good NCO on them. But in this case the senior NCO turned out to be one of the crack-heads himself so we got a disaster.

But hey, if you want to believe the CIA conspired to set up one PFC England from West Virginia, then more power to you. And say hello to the Easter Bunny for me while you're at it.

There's one giant conspiracy going on, but it doesn't mean it touches every shitty thing someone connected to the US Government does. Grow up, people and try to think rationally about things.

I'm not drawing a direct correlation between these guards and the Nazis, but "just following orders" didn't work at Nuremberg and it doesn't work here.

but she certainly made no attempt to show any disdain for the "duties" she was performing.

The principle terrorists of the Bush regime were not at Abu Ghraib when this whackjob chose to degrade her fellow human beings. Her commanding 'officers' did not force her to smoke a cigarette, and enjoy her role.

Of COURSE the US should not have invaded Iraq --yada, yada, yada. But, in that moment in time, England was responsible for her sickening actions. If such orders actually originated from above, she should have refused to follow them.

-Lori

--anyone with a modicum of conscience would resist such orders.

Army Pfc. Lynndie England, seen worldwide in photographs that show her smiling and pointing at naked Iraqi prisoners, said she was ordered to pose for the photos, and felt "kind of weird" in doing so.

In an exclusive interview with Brian Maass of Denver CBS station KCNC-TV, England also confirmed that abuses worse than those depicted in the photos were carried out at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, but she declined to discuss them.

England, 21, repeatedly insisted that her actions were dictated by "persons in my higher chain of command."

In the photos, England is seen smiling, cigarette in her mouth, as she leans forward and points at the genitals of a naked, hooded Iraqis. Another photo taken at Abu Ghraib shows her holding a leash that encircles the neck of a naked Iraqi man lying on his side.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/05/12/iraq/main616921.shtml

This is not a defense of England's behavior in any way. She is guilty of a war crime. We have the pictures.

But unfortunately, in a lawless war such as this, refusing to follow orders is a high risk endeavor, wouldn't you agree?

Only a person with real guts or a death wish would even consider it.

Hell.