Lyndie England: Not A Good Person. But, She Does Have A Point

19 Mar, 2008 by John Hawkins

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Little Ms. “prisoner on a leash” from Abu Ghraib is out of prison and causing a stir,

Lynndie England, the public face of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, told a German news magazine that she was sorry for appearing in photographs of detainees in the notorious Iraqi prison, and believes the scenes of torture and humiliation served as a powerful rallying point for anti-American insurgents.

In an interview with the weekly magazine Stern conducted in English and posted on its Web site Tuesday, England was both remorseful and unrepentant–and conceded that the published photos surely incensed insurgents in Iraq.

“I guess after the picture came out the insurgency picked up and Iraqis attacked the Americans and the British and they attacked in return and they were just killing each other. I felt bad about it … no, I felt pissed off. If the media hadn’t exposed the pictures to that extent, then thousands of lives would have been saved,” she was quoted as saying.

Asked how she could blame the media for the controversy, she said it wasn’t her who leaked the photos.

“Yeah, I took the photos but I didn’t make it worldwide. Yes, I was in five or six pictures and I took some pictures, and those pictures were shameful and degrading to the Iraqis and to our government,” she said, according to the report.

“And I feel sorry and wrong about what I did. But it would not have escalated to what it did all over the world if it wouldn’t have been for someone leaking it to the media.

England, who was a private first class, was in several images taken in late 2003 by U.S. guards at Abu Ghraib. One showed her holding a naked prisoner on a leash, while in others she posed with a pyramid of naked detainees and pointed at the genitals of a prisoner while a cigarette hung from the corner of her mouth.”

First of all, let me note that England’s behavior at Abu Ghraib was completely inappropriate, contrary to the way this country should treat prisoners, and morally reprehensible. Moreover, the article notes she did 36 months in jail for her part in the Abu Ghraib controversy. In my opinion, she got off way too light.

That being said, if Sixty Minutes 2 and the New Yorker, which forced their hand by planning to run the shots, had put a higher priority on the good of their country than getting ratings, they would have never put those pictures out. Not just because of England, but because of the media that released the pictures, Al-Qaeda got a great talking point to use against us, our country’s reputation took an unfair hit, and thousands of people died in the violence those pictures helped gin up.

If our mainstream media wasn’t so sleazy and irresponsible, those pics would have never seen the light of day. And what would the difference have been? The military already had an investigation under way so England and the rest of the pervs at Abu Ghraib would have been punished and the prison would have been cleaned up. In other words, the media sold their country out for the sake of ratings and to give the “I hate America” crowd on the Left something to gripe about for a few months.

If you want to know why the rich, frothy loathing that the American people have for the mainstream press is completely justified, the way the whole Abu Ghraib story was covered — from the release of the pics in the first place, to the way it was incredibly overplayed for months, to the way it was used to smear America and the military — is a telling example.