[lbo-talk] Lynndie England: "Well, He Screws Everything Up, Doesn't He?"

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Fri Sep 30 18:48:58 PDT 2005


Leigh wrote:


> > DH: Let's turn to the images of torture in which
> > women feature so prominently. This has been a
> > field day for the right who say this is proof
> > that we shouldn't have women in the military.
> > Some people are expressing broken-heartedness
> > over seeing women involved in such cruelty
> > because they're essentially good and pure and
> > something terrible has happened. How do you sort
> > it all out?
>
> It's all true, and Lyndie England is STILL responsible for her
> actions.

The best article about Lynndie England that I've read is this:

<blockquote>Behind Failed Abu Ghraib Plea, A Tangle of Bonds and Betrayals *Please Note: Archive articles do not include photos, charts or graphics. More information. May 10, 2005, Tuesday By KATE ZERNIKE (NYT); National Desk Late Edition - Final, Section A, Page 1, Column 4, 1719 words

In a military courtroom in Texas last week, there was a spectacle worthy of an daytime soap opera:

Private First Class Lynndie England, the defendant, holding her 7- month-old baby; the imprisoned father, Private Charles Graner Jr., giving testimony that ruined what lawyers said was her best shot at leniency; and waiting outside, another defendant from Abu Ghraib prison, Megan Ambuhl, who had recently wed Graner - a marriage England had learned about only days before.

To some, the misdeeds at Abu Ghraib, where the three soldiers worked for six months in 2003, have become a twisted symbol of the U.S. military occupation of Iraq.

But it is also a scandal rooted in the behavior of military reservists who were working at the prison, an environment that testimony has portrayed as more college fraternity house than military prison, a place where inmates were routinely left naked and soldiers took pictures of one another simulating sex with fruit.

The reservists' treatment of Iraqi prisoners and their entanglements with one another - pieced together from documents, court testimony, e- mail and interviews - have produced a dark melodrama, one whose episodes have continued to play out in the months since the scandal erupted and culminated in the Texas courtroom last week.

As with any soap opera, past episodes help explain the most recent.

England, now waiting for charges to be filed against her again, began dating Graner while they were training with their Army Reserve unit, the 372nd Military Police Company, based in Cresaptown, Maryland.

A hell-raising young woman from West Virginia, England, now 22, was briefly married at 19 - on a whim, she told friends - and violated her parents' wishes when she joined the Reserve in high school to make money for college.

Graner, 36, a Pennsylvania prison guard and a former marine, had rejoined the military in a burst of patriotism after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

He was fresh from an ugly divorce in 2000. His ex-wife, Staci Morris, had taken out three protective orders against him, and after he was arrested for harassing her in 2001, he admitted that he had dragged her around by her hair.

He introduced the two women, and Morris said she had felt "selfish relief" that with someone new, her ex-husband would stop being obsessed with her. And she liked England, finding her quiet and adoring.

In Iraq, England was disciplined several times for sleeping with Graner, which was against military rules. She flouted warnings to stay on the wing where she worked as a clerk and spent most of her nights in the cellblock where he worked the night shift.

One night in October, he told her to pose for photographs holding a leash tied around the neck of a naked and crawling detainee. He e- mailed one home: "Look what I made Lynndie do." The now notorious pictures of detainees masturbating, he said, were a birthday gift for her.

Ambuhl, who has been discharged from the army, was Graner's partner on the night shift. If Graner and England were loud and bawdy - they made a video of themselves having sex - Ambuhl was soft-spoken and serious.

England joined the army to see the world; Ambuhl had already been on college-study trips to Kenya and the Galapagos Islands. She had worked as a technician in a medical lab in Virginia, where she grew up, and, like Graner, joined up after Sept. 11.

She had been involved with another soldier. But by late December, she had ended that relationship and started one with Graner. But Graner had not completely cut off relations with England. On Jan. 2, 2004, he was caught sleeping in England's quarters and demoted.

A few days later, Ambuhl e-mailed him. She fantasized about when they might be truly alone. "Is it going to feel strange for just the two of us to be in a room together, with no chance of anyone walking in?" she wrote. They talked about taking a leave together in February.

But on Jan. 13, a soldier slipped investigators a disk with the graphic photographs of detainees. The investigation began the next day.

Graner, quickly identified as the ringleader in the abuse, e-mailed his father in early March to discuss the accusations against him, then had "more good news": England was two months pregnant, and the pregnancy would most likely get them sent home from Iraq.

"I stopped seeing her back in january," he wrote in the e-mail, "but when all this garbage came out i started seeing her again. chances are very good that it is my child....o well....daddy what did you bring home from the war????"

England - but not Graner - was sent back to the United States because of the pregnancy. The army moved Graner and Ambuhl, along with four other soldiers under investigation, to a tent apart from the rest of their unit.

And they resumed their relationship.

In April, Ambuhl e-mailed Graner an article headlined, "Study Finds Frequent Sex Raises Cancer Risk." She added, "We could have died last night."

England and Graner were no longer speaking when their son was born in October. She named him Carter Allan England.

Ambuhl, who had by then pleaded guilty and been discharged, was subpoenaed to testify at Graner's trial at Fort Hood, Texas, in January. The two spent evenings together during the trial, and it was then that Graner proposed.

He was convicted, sentenced to 10 years in a military prison and demoted from specialist to private. He had earlier been demoted from corporal.

At the wedding in April, another man stood in for Graner, because he had begun serving his sentence and Ambuhl, as an admitted co- conspirator, is not allowed to see him.

England heard about the wedding from her lawyers.

She had worked out a plea agreement that limited her time in prison to 30 months, and the jury could have given her less time.

Morris, Graner's ex-wife, had been subpoenaed to tell the jury that Graner was a bad influence, and she befriended England. She told England that she regretted not having warned her away from him at the beginning.

The day before his testimony, Graner sent a note to reporters saying he regretted that "Lynn" had pleaded guilty and hoped her plea would get her a light sentence.

Prosecutors advised defense lawyers against putting Graner on the stand, but they did it anyway. He testified that he had ordered England to remove a prisoner from a cell by a leash and that it had been a legitimate military exercise.

This presented an apparent contradiction - a defendant pleading guilty but presenting a witness who testified that she was innocent. The military judge threw out her plea agreement and ordered the court- martial process to start over.

"It's nothing you did," the judge, Colonel James Pohl, told England. "It's what he did."

England turned to Morris. "Well, he screws everything up, doesn't he?" Morris recalled England saying.

"I have to agree with you," Morris replied.

<http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html? res=F0081FF739540C738DDDAC0894DD404482> and <http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/05/10/news/abuse.php></blockquote>

Yoshie Furuhashi <http://montages.blogspot.com> <http://monthlyreview.org> <http://mrzine.org> * Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: <http://montages.blogspot.com/2005/07/mahmoud- ahmadinejads-face.html>; <http://montages.blogspot.com/2005/07/chvez- congratulates-ahmadinejad.html>; <http://montages.blogspot.com/ 2005/06/iranian-working-class-rejects.html>



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