Posted on 05/03/2005 5:43:15 AM PDT by shortstop
She shouldn’t spend a day in jail.
Pfc. Lynndie England.
Somebody should give her a stern talking to, dock her a couple of week’s pay and kick her out of the Army.
And then she should go back to her trailer in West Virginia and disappear into the woodwork.
But no way should she go to jail.
You know who she is. She’s the ugly female soldier holding the leash, the idiot with the cigarette pointing to the family jewels of some naked Iraqis.
They had her in court yesterday and had her plead guilty to seven counts of nonsense. Two counts of conspiring to mistreat prisoners, four counts of actually mistreating a prisoner and one count of committing an indecent act.
And for this she’s on the line for as many as 11 years in Fort Leavenworth.
Which isn’t right.
Sure, she’s an idiot. No doubt she’s poor white trash. Probably doesn’t have two brain cells to rub together.
But she’s nothing more than a scapegoat, some low-ranking nobody offered up as a blood sacrifice to appease the media gods. They want somebody to pay and, dammit, somebody’s going to pay.
Guilty or not.
But this chick’s not guilty of anything but being dumb. Which is not something you go to prison for.
First of all, let’s remember what was done and who it was done to.
In the pictures involving Private First Class England, there are some naked Iraqis, some of whom seem to be making a human pyramid, others of whom are standing against a wall, one or two of whom are wearing leashes.
Which is pretty scandalous.
But a hell of a lot better than getting your head cut off.
And I will remind you that the men pictured with this woman were all suspected terrorists, jihad boys intent on killing Americans by the busload.
I will also remind you that virtually all of those suspected terrorists are free now. They’ve been released. They fought against the United States and they get to walk free. The soldiers who teased them are going to spend a decade in prison.
Which is pretty screwed.
My mother told me: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.”
Same goes for posing naked like the UCLA glee club.
Ditto for the leash.
It’s not a whole bunch of fun, but it doesn’t make you bleed, bruise or die. You get up the next morning with nothing injured but your pride.
And I don’t think Americans should have to go to prison for injuring Muslim pride.
Anyway, there’s no way this lowly private deserves prison time. That prison was run by a one-star general who seems to have been completely incompetent to command. Supervision was non-existent and good order and discipline were unknown.
To me, it is inconceivable that a specialist and a few privates would be in charge of Abu Ghraib prison at night. I just cannot imagine how somebody could mess with all those prisoners and there not be a single sergeant or officer aware of it. I simply do not believe that some ill-trained backwater Reservists of such meager rank could do what they did unsupervised.
But the only ones in trouble are some nobodies.
It’s not right.
Especially for this England chick.
She was 20 at the time, beaucoup thousand miles away from home, under the direction of a far-older soldier who outranked her. If you’re an E-3 and an E-4 hands you a leash – especially if he’s a prison guard in the civilian world – and he tells you to hold onto it, you hold onto it.
That’s just how it is.
It’s not the brightest thing in the world, it’s the wrong thing, but it is what it is – and nothing more. Nobody got hurt, nobody got killed, nobody got anything more than inconvenienced.
So you chew her out, and give her an Article 15. And if you are really ticked off, you discharge her.
But you don’t send her to prison.
And I’d like to point out one more reason why not.
It’s her chest.
No, not her build. Her ribbons.
If you see some more video of her today, look at the service ribbons on, as you look at her, the right side of her chest. There are, by my count, eight of them. Two rows of three and one row of two.
That’s pretty good for a young soldier.
That’s pretty good for any soldier.
That means she did her duty, and apparently did a pretty good job at it.
And that ought to count for something.
It ought to count for something that she was overseas on combat duty while the rest of us were back home watching on TV. While all the media types and the angry senators and the so-called experts were safe on their fat behinds stateside, this 20-year-old girl was answering her nation’s call and doing her duty.
She left her life behind, she put on the uniform and she went to a war zone, where she was put in a prison to watch over men who wanted more than anything to kill an American.
And we’re going to lynch her because she didn’t do it exactly right.
I say that’s nuts.
She doesn’t deserve to go to prison.
And I hope the military court agrees.
I hope the military court doesn’t make her a scapegoat.
Mark
Probably because her defence counsel advised that tactic would get her the full 17 years
I was eighteen years old and trained to obey orders. If I had been ordered to hold a leash or point to a masturbating prisoner I probably would have done it. If I had been ordered to actually 'torture' someone I would have resisted. Regardless of what fat ass Kennedy says, Pfc London 'tortured' nobody. BTW, the captured terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan enthusiastically masturbated in front of female guards as a sign of disrespect.
I agree with that comment re the media. And the
Dems don't want to let that go! It will undoubtedly
come up again when the Marine Honch Admiral "G" comes
before the Senate.
As for Ms. England...they now have her lawyers pleading
extenuating circumstances because she was brain injured
due to lack of oxygen at birth. Watch for the next
installment wherein the lawyers sue the government for
taking her into the military in the first place.
I’ve read the posts in this thread, and many of you have interesting points. Now let me tell you why this woman needs to do time. Maybe maxing her out is a bad idea, but she needs to do time.
You see, my town’s unit, the 333rd MP Company, Illinois National Guard, was part of the battalion that moved into Abu Ghraib when England’s was moved out. They were in Kuwait ready to go home, and they were turned around and headed back into Iraq. I have no complaint about them doing the extra duty. It’s what soldiers do. A few days after they arrived at the prison, the story broke in the media.
And they started taking mortar fire. They’d get shelled almost every day. These guys were doing corrections work in full battle gear. One of them, Sgt. Landis Garrison, didn’t come home alive. He was killed by the accidental discharge of a firearm, and that certainly could have happened here in the States, but we’ll never know if he would have shot himself cleaning his police-issue piece, because he was in Iraq, cleaning up Lynndie’s mess. I may be wrong (after all, terrorists are terrorists) but maybe there were other coffins coming home because of the propaganda value of the Abu Ghraib photos. In fact, I'd say it's probably a miracle if her actions didn't lead directly to someone coming home in a box.
Those who’ve said that what she did was not worth 11 years…I can understand that. Those who’ve defended her actions or called her a scapegoat…you couldn’t be further off. England isn’t on trial because she put some terrorist scumbag on a leash, or took some photos, she’s on trial because she disobeyed lawful orders (everything about prisoners in the field manual for starters) and obeyed unlawful ones. She came to a spot she shouldn’t have been in to do a job she wasn’t trained for (she was a freakin' admin clerk!) at the behest of a sergeant who wasn’t in her chain of command. Add to that the sexual misconduct she was involved in, and my question is, if Lynndie England doesn’t deserve to be punished, what soldier does deserve it?
Give that man a cigar. You hit the nail on the head.
Thank you, sir.
Well said
I can also follow arguments that she should have been taken out and immediately shot, a summary condemnation and execution of sentance in a battle zone, making it clearly obvious to all observers that illegitimate authority will not be tolerated, let alone condoned anywhere in Iraq.
Her actions and publicity of that behavior has probably cost lives elsewhere and could easily sway public sentiment in that region 180 degrees against any US involvement in the region.
BCD and kick maybe if she had done that back home. Over there its tantamount to crying Fire! in a crowded theater as opposed to jostling your buddy in private.
Thank you.
" if Lynndie England doesn’t deserve to be punished, what soldier does deserve it?"
Exactly.
Thanks.
We sometimes tussle; however, I applaud your keen insight on this matter.
You make some really great points but I would say that there are prisoners and then there are terrorist prisoners, who you need to get information from. Yes, she's an admin clerk but there's that military disclaimer "...and all other duties as assigned." Pulling a small, meek-looking soldier from her paperwork and asking her to pose with the terrorists, probably served its purpose in humiliating them in order to get information. She should have been prosecuted for the sexual misconduct and nothing else. I don't know that I wouldn't have helped my shipmates in taking these pictures are acting in them, after seeing how other service members had been treated by the enemy. It's a tough call for me. Those pictures should never have been released to the public. We're at war.
Thanks for your comments. I'd give her a year and a DD.
This one:
Sgt. Asan Akbar of the 326th Engineer Battalion
Your points might be valid, if the pictures were part of an official action. They weren't.
For the equivalent, imagine if all the liberal lying about Alberto Gonzales ordering torture was true. And imagine that a group of soldiers said, "Well then, let's torture these guys over here for fun, and take pictures of it for our personal use."
These clowns don't have any relation to what is or isn't allowed or wise in war, because they were out for jollies.
So...how does that absolve PFC England?
That'll do.
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