Lynndie accidentally speaks truth to power

Lynndie England. I've waited so long to  write about her: I was waiting for her lawyers to carry through on their plans to call the chain of command, or for her to speak in more detail about the Lord of the Flies scene that enabled  Abu Ghraib (protototype for the countrywide gulag we're building in Afghanistan?). My inclination to cast her as a terrified part of a larger machine kept being blocked by her own graceless statements: she didn't abuse detainees, "just kicked them."  And her guilty plea last week meant to me that she, like Graner, had agreed to bleat, joining Janis Karpinski and Sabrina Harman (whose trial is next week) as  the scapegoat "bad girls" taking the hit for the big boys.

Who knew those graceless statements would continue to her sentencing phase? That Charles "Hannibal Lecter" Graner would continue to defend his own actions, as well as those of "the mother of my infant son" (was Mrs. Graner in the courtroom?), as an appropriate form of inmate control?   That the wise military judge, after two days, would throw up his hands and declare a mistrial?

A commedia indeed. England's going to get a full courts-martial whether she likes it or not; to her credit, she seems incapable of the guile her guilty plea requires of her. It may be that she has, as her defense  claims, an information processing disorder that prevents her from strategically shutting up. (Think Asperger's, West Virginia style.)

In which case, the  next trial should be of the West Virginia recruiter who signed her up just out of high school.

Ignoring such disabilities is, of course, fairly standard:  anyone who was shocked - shocked! -- by yesterday's  Times piece, hasn't known anyone even contacted by a military recruiter. A young man with bipolar disorder, almost shipped out of a psych ward, might have been a buddy to Lynndie, but for his parents:

The parents say they went back twice more after the recruiters failed to return their calls. At their urging, their congressmen in early October finally learned that the recruiters had indeed enlisted their son. Days before he was scheduled to ship out, the young man was disqualified only after the father told the commander of the regional processing station about his illness.

In an interview, the commander confirmed the general outlines of the case. The Army would say only that at least two recruiters had been investigated in the case, which is closed. But the man's father said Army officials told him they had found no wrongdoing. "The fact that they would recruit someone straight out of a psychiatric hospitalization - give me a break," he said. "They were willing to put my son and other recruits at risk. It's beyond my comprehension, and appalling."

Co-workers in the stations where the recruiters worked said last month in interviews that the two were still on the job. One of the two declined to comment when reached on his recruiting-command cellphone; the other did not return a half-dozen phone messages.

Recruiters in Ohio, New York, Washington, Texas and New England said that as long as an offending recruiter met his enlistment quota of roughly two recruits a month, punishment was unlikely.

"The saying here is, 'Production is power,' " the recruiter in northern Ohio said. "Produce, and all is good."

All this only slightly more extreme than I heard when I worked at CCCO, when I met my old running buddy Carl Nyberg, a former Navy recruiter who's been telling the press what he learned for a very long time. (See him midway through this Atlanta TV spot.) I'd already decided not to write about that, either, until the England mistrial made me do that frustrated combination of laugh and cry that makes these issues so....special. (Update: I first called Graner "Hannibal Lecter" after his courtroom outburst in his own trial a few months back; I had no idea that was what his ex-wife called him after he put a knife to her throat,  or that he sent photos of his tortures home to brag to the kids. Who wonders why it took so long for his terrified ex to come forward?)

If England's going to have a trial, yes! bring in the recruiter. Bring in Generals Miller and Sanchez, and some of the Guantanamo survivors. Let the jury hold its breath and the judge make little Don Rumsfeld whimper. Let Alberto Gonzales.....okay, fantasy over. None of that is going to happen.

But the clueless duo out of Deliverance has stopped the smooth flow of whitewash. And for that, I'll throw some beer in their direction.

Comments

[firedoglake]

If only your fantasy trial could come true (*sigh*)

[Liz]

I know I'm a flaming radical, but your discussion of England brings me back to Fahrenheit 9/11. The scene where the military recruiters are stalking the parking lot of the mall looking for fresh meat is striking. Of course the recruiters don't care about any of the soldiers they sign up. They're just trying to make a quota.

And, of course, anyone who knows anything about the military has got to question the allegations against England. This young woman can't come up with a defense, but she was smart enough to somehow sneak past all of her superior officers and enact this level of inmate abuse with only one other soldier? Yeah. Right.

[Dianne]

Huh. Just this morning I was thinking "I wonder what Chris makes of this Lynndie England thing"... Great post.

[john]

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