🚀 go-pugleaf

Http://talkleft.com/new_archives/006522.html

Sunday :: May 16, 2004


The New York Times reports that in her sworn statement to
investigators, PFC Lynndie England said of the abuse heaped on Iraqi
prisoners at Abu Ghraib:

Pfc. Lynndie England explained the mystery of why soldiers at Abu
Ghraib took pictures of detainees masturbating and piled naked with
plastic sandbags over their heads by saying, "We thought it looked
funny so pictures were taken." Private England's statement, made May
5, narrates the graphic photographs now at the center of the prison
abuse scandal in specific detail and a matter-of-fact tone, describing
the abuse as routine and sometimes amusing, but almost never, to her
mind, out of bounds. [our emphasis]

Remember this picture of her leading the prisoner by the leash? That
was no momentary encounter.

She explains how she put a strap around a detainee's neck and forced
him and others to run and crawl down a hallway for "approximately four
to six hours;" how one soldier would regularly throw a Nerf football
at detainees with bags over their heads "to scare them;" how one
soldier would kick detainees and cause open wounds, then "would
personally stitch detainees if the wound weren't too bad," according
to a copy of her statement given to The New York Times. [our emphasis]

As to her conduct and that of her co-guards:

Asked if she ever physically abused a detainee, Private England said,
"Yes, I stepped on some of them, push them or pull them, but nothing
extreme." She described how Staff Sgt. Ivan L. Frederick II punched
detainees, "and the normal stuff as far as lean on them or push them."
"He also played some mind games with some of them with chemical
lights," she added. "He would tell them to lift their legs and place
the chemical light under their feet and tell them it was a knife. The
chemical light would then be broken and spilled on the ground, the
detainee would then be forced to crawl through it and then placed in a
dark cell, this would freak out the detainee because they would glow."

More about the guards' amusement:

"Picture 000015 was basically us fooling around," she said, pointing
to a photograph of detainees stacked naked in different positions in
1A, the area of the prison where the soldiers now charged with abuse
worked. Pointing to picture 000019, which shows her pointing at a
detainee masturbating, she explained, "Staff Sgt. Frederick had
removed the bags from the detainee's head and motioned for them to
masturbate themselves. The detainee I'm pointing at didn't stop so we
took a picture of it."

Her and her cohorts' actions are beyond embarassing. They are
depraved. Pitiful. Sick. And criminal.

The detainees were stripped, handcuffed together, and told to lie on
the floor, she said, then forced to run and crawl up and down the
hallway. "Was there anything done to these detainees that you felt was
`going too far?' " she was asked. "No," she replied.

Of course, England maintains, they were all acting on orders from
above. Does she even understand what the phrase means? How dumb is
she?

When pressed, however, she said there were no specific orders on how
to "break" the detainees for interrogation. But, she said, military
intelligence soldiers and others "would tell us to keep it up, that we
were doing a good job" aiding the interrogations. Asked who told them
to instruct the detainees to masturbate, she said, "I was just told we
were doing a good job," according to the statement.

Personal note: 

The similar treatment is done in Colombia, S.A., to peasants and
innocent peoples, and all Washington do is laugh about it. They 
could care less for as long as their interest is made safe.