There is a very fine line between explanation and exoneration, Ravi, and you are dangerously close to crossing it, if you have not already done so. From an abstract perspective, you can put a right spin on everything and raise reasonable doubt that the earth is round and the sun rises in the east. But this is not about abstractions, but about real life situations.
I fully agree with Doug's position that GOP-bots try to use England as a scapegoat to cover up the much greater culpability of the architects of the abuse, starting with the war criminal Rumsfeld, and we should not do their job for them. I also think that most reasonable people would support that position, regardless of their political philosophy. But that is not the issue here.
The issue here is culpability of an individual, not how everything is linked to everything else. I do not know what your experience of the US Army is, but I can tell you from my experience that situations in which a person is forced against his/her will to take part in behavior we witnessed at Abu Ghraib are rather rare. Being ordered to take part in a mission that turns to be a disaster (e.g. My Lai) - is one thing. When servicemen (or women) are sent to combat they know they will have to kill someone, because that is their job. If that mission turns out to be a massacre of civilians - it is usually the commanders who planned the mission, not the guys who pulled the trigger, who are to blame.
Likewise, the Army can send you to places like Abu Ghraib and there is little you can do about it, short of going AWOL. But being in that place does not mean that you have to participate in the prisoner abuse. You can, as many if not most GIS do, just report for duty, play it dumb and do nothing unless specifically ordered (nobody in the Army is punished for being stupid or having no initiative). You do not have to "volunteer" anything, and nothing bad will happen to you, except perhaps slowing your promotions. One of the first things you learn in the Army is to avoid doing things you do not want to do without being punished for that (playing stupid and incompetent is the name of the game). When people do volunteer, they usually do it for selfish reasons - to speed up their career, to please their superiors, to show off how "tough" they are and gain popularity, or for that matter, to "serve their country" (whatever that means).
BTW, "Soldiers have an obligation to refuse to follow illegal orders; all orders to commit war crimes are illegal. Under US military law, the only defense to obeying an illegal order is that the accused did not him or herself actually know the order was illegal and neither would a person of ordinary sense and understanding (Rule for Courts-Martial 916)" http://www.crimesofwar.org/onnews/news-justice.html
So the issue here is that MS England volunteered to take part in the abuse but she did not have to. She was not given a direct order. She volunteered. We can speculate abut the reasons why (most of which have something to do with crowd pleasing, as I already mentioned), but the fact remains that she did volunteer. The twinkie defense spin aims to deny that fact and substitute it with excuses why she (or for that matter any other criminal) should not be accountable for her actions.
The reason I decided to contribute to this thread is not that I feel particularly vindictive toward Ms England - I met hundreds of service people like her and I think I can understand why she did it and even feel kind of sorry for people who fall so low in their self-esteem that they need this kind of "props" to gain peer respect. However, I am pretty fed up with spin and excuse culture and the avoidance of any responsibility for one's own action, and I saw that at work in this case - so I decided to speak up against it. Does it make me a right-winger as you insinuate? Well, if avoidance of responsibility is a necessary condition of being "left" then I do not mind being labeled right winger - I know better than that.
And your "avoidance of further inquiry" argument? Where does that conclusion come from? Perhaps GOP-bots would want to see that in this situation, but I am pretty sure that neither I nor anyone else on this list have suggested that.
Wojtek