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All the officer's I work with, do not have nice things to say about her...and it is NOT a "GENDER" thing...it's her lack of military bearing, the environment she allow to be created under her command, the heinous nature of the crimes they committed, but mostly, the way she turned her head and looked the other way (considering of course she in no way participated in any of the things that were done).

Lynndie England's mother...

"They were just doing stupid kid things, pranks. And what the Iraqis do to our men and women are just? The rules of the Geneva Convention, do they apply to everybody or just us?" she asked.

She said she didn't know where her daughter was being held, but had spoken to her on the phone.

"She told me nothing happened which wasn't ordered by higher up," she said.

"They are trying to pin all of this on the lower ranks. My daughter was just following orders. I think there's a conspiracy."

A colleague of Lynndie's father said people in Fort Ashby were sick of the whingeing.

"We just had an 18-year-old from round here killed by the Iraqis," he said.

"We went there to help the jackasses and they started blowing us up. Lynndie didn't kill 'em, she didn't cut 'em up. She should have shot some of the suckers."

Six soldiers from the 372nd are facing court-martial.

The commander of the prison service in Iraq, Brigadier-General Janis Karpinski, 50, has been suspended from duty and is expected to be charged.

Colleagues of the tough, super-fit officer last night described her as a woman with one mission - to raise her own profile.

Sources also said soldiers at Abu Ghraib, where Saddam Hussein was held after his capture, were often drunk - including when the shocking pictures were taken.

One colleague said: "Janis sees herself as making way for women to get to the top in the US Army. But many of her soldiers said she had been promoted beyond her ability because she was a woman.

"She was out of her depth and on a mission to raise her own profile. Now, she ll be forced to quit.

"She should have been aware what her troops were doing, but she wasn't."