I have a confession to make: I kind of wanted to feel sorry for Lynndie England. The journalists who wrote about her could barely disguise the politely-coded references: Trailer. West Virginia. Sheep farm. Night shift on a chicken processing plant. By the time a British legislator started referring to England and her colleagues, including Sabrina Harman (“former assistant manager at a Papa John’s restaurant”), as “smirking jezebels from the Appalachians” — not to mention “The Lynndie England Song” with its references to incest and “bootshine,” posted by an “Anna” as a comment on my blog — well, I’m surprised the New York Times didn’t just up and call her “white trash.”

For every soldier set to make a professional career out of the military, there’s another, probably many more, who joined — well, just to get out of a backwater town like Fort Ashby, West Virginia. Or, like some of my students, just to be able to finish college. Or, one suspects, because Burger King wasn’t hiring that day and they just wanted to get a decent job that paid a little over minimum wage.

This should in no way be read as a defense of England’s actions; my previous posts should make that clear. But it merely underlines the U.S. Army’s reliance on the working class, regardless of race (yes, I know about those DOD statistics on military casualties) to fight a war to protect the freedom of the bellicose brood of chickenhawks in the Bush administration, i.e., people who bent over backwards to get themselves out of military service. Nothing like sending out the poor folks to do the dirty work.

England and her fellow torturers — and dammit, everyone else around them (Tony Taguba didn’t call it “systemic” for nothing) — should be punished. (I can’t see how pulling a naked prisoner by the neck with a leash could be “at the wrong place at the wrong time,” not to mention her obvious glee. You can’t stage that smile.) But the outrage concerning the photographs of the tortured should not be allowed to eclipse the fact that civilians and soldiers — Americans and Iraqis and the other members of this ragtag coalition of the willing — are dead, and that the Bush administration should be held responsible as well.

So yes, I think I feel a little ounce — just a tad — of sympathy for Lynndie England. She must, of course, face the full consequences of her actions; “I was only following orders” wasn’t acceptable at Nuremberg, and it similarly isn’t acceptable here. But I can’t help feeling that she is something of a scapegoat as well, and the real war criminals get to retire on a Texan ranch.

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The problem with Terrie England and people like her — you read that right, not her daughter Lynndie, who has major problems of her own (check out this other stunner of a photo) — is their amazing capacity for denial. Denial, arrogance, stupidity — I can’t tell which:

“She wanted to see the world and go to college,” said Terrie England, whose T-shirt bore a design of heart-shaped American flags. “Now the government turned their back on her, and everything’s a big joke.”

…At most, the 372nd’s alleged abuses of prisoners were “stupid, kid things — pranks,” Terrie England said, her voice growing bitter.

I suppose this is what passes for “pranks” in America.

“And what the [Iraqis] do to our men and women are just? The rules of the Geneva Convention, does that apply to everybody or just us?”

A great question, indeed: what did the Iraqis do to our men and women, exactly?

But it’s unfair singling out one person — I can’t imagine that her daughter had anywhere better to go after Wal-Mart — so: denial, arrogance, stupidity — sounds much like the Bush administration to me. After all, “Iraq is free of rape rooms and torture chambers.”

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From Major General Antonio Taguba‘s report:

6. (S) I find that the intentional abuse of detainees by military police personnel included the following acts:

a. (S) Punching, slapping, and kicking detainees; jumping on their naked feet;

b. (S) Videotaping and photographing naked male and female detainees;

c. (S) Forcibly arranging detainees in various sexually explicit positions for photographing;

d. (S) Forcing detainees to remove their clothing and keeping them naked for several days at a time;

e. (S) Forcing naked male detainees to wear women’s underwear;

f. (S) Forcing groups of male detainees to masturbate themselves while being photographed and videotaped;

g. (S) Arranging naked male detainees in a pile and then jumping on them;

h. (S) Positioning a naked detainee on a MRE Box, with a sandbag on his head, and attaching wires to his fingers, toes, and penis to simulate electric torture;

i. (S) Writing “I am a Rapest” (sic) on the leg of a detainee alleged to have forcibly raped a 15-year old fellow detainee, and then photographing him naked;

j. (S) Placing a dog chain or strap around a naked detainee’s neck and having a female Soldier pose for a picture;

k. (S) A male MP guard having sex with a female detainee;

l. (S) Using military working dogs (without muzzles) to intimidate and frighten detainees, and in at least one case biting and severely injuring a detainee;

m. (S) Taking photographs of dead Iraqi detainees.

Meanwhile, Rummy defends himself:

Adding to the Bush administration’s discomfort is the dark history of the facility where the abuse took place.

It was inside the walls of Abu Ghraib prison that the former Iraqi regime is thought to have tortured and executed thousands of prisoners.

However Mr Rumsfeld was quick to reject any comparison between that period and what happened under American control.

“Equating the two, I think, is a fundamental misunderstanding of what took place,” he said.

Amazing, though, how op-ed columnists in the US are now tripping all over themselves to use the phrase “losing moral high ground,” as if there was any to lose in the first place. (Subsequent coverage keeps referring to reactions in “the Arab world” — as if they’re the only ones who should be indignant about this — and therefore shifting focus onto the act of publishing the photographs, and not necessarily the acts depicted in the photographs themselves.) Hopefully followers of the right wing will be a little more quiet in their constant bleating about America’s (God-given) gift of freedom and democracy to Iraq, but one doubts it.

I mean, Jesus, listen to Bush’s often-quoted reaction:

I share a deep disgust that those prisoners were treated the way they were treated. Their treatment does not reflect the nature of the American people. That’s not the way we do things in America. I didn’t like it one bit.

George, when are you going to wake up and discover that you’re really the bad guy?

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