Abu Ghraib Guard Was Lousy Soldier - Prosecution (Pfc. Lynndie England)

[Barrett808]

Abu Ghraib Guard Was Lousy Soldier - Prosecution
By Jim Loney

FORT BRAGG, N.C. (Reuters) - Pfc. Lynndie England was an undisciplined soldier who disobeyed orders to stop sleeping with a comrade, witnesses said on Wednesday as prosecutors sharpened their attack on the woman who outraged the Arab world when she was pictured holding a naked Iraqi prisoner on a leash.

At the second day of a military hearing to determine if England should stand trial for abusing detainees at Iraq's notorious Abu Ghraib prison, her supervisor testified England was late for work, left early and disobeyed orders confining her to a life of "work, chow and church."

Prosecutors have attempted to portray England as a rogue soldier, in keeping with President Bush's statement that the abuse of prisoners, which hampered the U.S. war effort in Iraq, was the fault of a small group.

"Her performance was not so good. She had a lack of discipline," Spc. Matthew Bolinger, her immediate superior at Abu Ghraib, told a military court at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

"One day we discovered that she was in bed with Corp. Graner," he added, referring to Spc. Charles Graner, who is also charged in the abuse scandal.

(more)

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040804/ts_nm/iraq_abuse_england_dc&cid=564&ncid=1480

[The Backlash Cometh]

1. Did anybody see the picture of her going to court?

She doesn't at all look like the same person. She looks destroyed. I think she knows she's being set up as a scapegoat.

[bagnana]

3. she sure doesn't look like a pixie anymore.

I have no sympathy for her at all. She looked positively gleeful in those photographs.

[The Backlash Cometh]

4. Well, I will say this.

They put me on the front and God knows what I would do. I can't judge her because she was a private. In the military, privates don't have all that much power unless something is very, very wrong.

[Calico Jack Rackham]

23. Too bad she wasn't on

the front. She saw no combat and was not exposed to the horrors of war like the grunts. She's a coward who enjoyed abusing other people for her satisfaction and she(as well as her CoC) deserves to be hammered by the full weight of the UCMJ.

[DoYouEverWonder]

25. Abu Ghraib prison is the front

they were getting mortared on a daily basis, plus there were a number of prisoner uprisings. Abu Ghraib is probably one of the most dangerous places in Iraq.

[Calico Jack Rackham]

26. Uhh yeah right.

being moratared, well thats a given; however, calling Abu Gharaib the frontlines is a stretch. They were pogues.

Abu Gharaib is one of the most dangerous places in Iraq, for prisoners.

[DoYouEverWonder]

29. Tell me this isn't a description of hell?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4934436/site/newsweek/

May 17 issue - Abu Ghraib Prison sits in the middle of one of Iraq's nastiest patches. Ever since "major combat" ended a year ago, snipers hidden in the palm groves that surround the vast prison compound have routinely fired on U.S. patrols. The guardrails on the highway in front of the prison are mangled for miles from the large number of IEDs (improvised explosive devices). Helicopters constantly buzz around. At night, soldiers in the guard towers get drawn into raging gun battles. And mortars rain on the prison like a lethal hailstorm. "I can't even count how many mortar attacks we've had," S/Sgt. Joseph Lane, an operating-room technician in the prison hospital, told NEWSWEEK last week. "Sometimes there are two or three in a day." And all this while military police must process thousands of Iraqis each month, never knowing who among them is a "bad guy" trying to kill them.


Steve Earl sums up prison life better than I can:


There's a guard on the second shift comes on at three
And he's always about a half inch off of me
Like he needs to keep remindin' me that I'm not free
God forgive him 'cause he doesn't see
He's no less a prisoner 'cause he holds a key
And God forbid he turn his back on me

[atreides1]

13. She's Not A Sgapegoat, She's an Idiot

She's an evil b**** with little to no morals, not exactly the kind loving daughter that her mother made her out to be.

She had a choice, to do what was right or to do what she did, and as the Grail Knight in The Last Crusade said,"she chose poorly". But then again maybe what she did was right for her, maybe it was something that she learned growing up, that certain people are not human because they are different, maybe some of the people in her unit believed this concept.

The girl isn't a scapegoat, she's an idiot, as are the rest of them.
They did something wrong and got caught, and I'll bet they thought that the MI folks were going to back them up. What a bunch of dumb asses, and let's not fall on the excuse that they were not trained properly, you don't need training to know right from wrong.

And the NCO's should have known better, and they too failed in their duties, they sat and watched while it happened and in some cases took part in the torture and abuse.

These people are not scapegoats, they are idiots and brain dead clowns that should never have been allowed to wear the uniform of the US military.

Personally I hope they all get what they deserve!!!

[saigon68]

22. .These are the troops we are supposed to SUPPORT

there a lot more of them who haven't got caught yet.

[HereSince1628]

27. “Lynndie”

“Lynndie”

To the tune of Windy by The Association
(Ruthann Friedman)


Who's peekin' out from under a sandbag
Calling them names that never will air
Who's bending down to give me a thumbs up?
Everyone knows it's Lynndie

Who's skippin down the line up of prisoners
Smilin' at all the “willies” she sees
Who's reachin' out to capture a moment
Everyone knows it's Lynndie

And Lynndie has willing eyes
That smile at the sound of cries
And Lynndie’s friends are M-I
Above the law (above the law)
Above the law (above the law)

---Flute interlude here---

And Lynndie has willing eyes
That smile at the sound of cries
And Lynndie’s friends are M-I
Above the law (above the law)
Above the law (above the law)
Who's skippin down the line up of prisoners
Smilin' at all the “willies” she sees
Who's reachin' out to capture a moment
Everyone knows it's Lynndie

[Worst Username Ever]

2. Wow, they say she's pregnant.

[Swamp Rat]

5. Gross!

[janx]

10. Yep.

[happynewyear]

6. why is her left eye shut

did someone punch her out or something? Geez, looks like a swastika queen in this photo!

ALERT: Graner's kid enroute! *ack*

:dem: :kick:

[janx]

9. Pretty creepy, no doubt!

.

[saigon68]

17. Lynndies WORK

[hippiegranny]

8. what an awful picture

I have zero sympathy for her, I think she's morally bankrupt to have been able to treat other human beings the way she did, but I do not believe she was a rogue warrior acting alone or in concert with only a few others. She is being set up to take the fall for Rummy and Bush.

[Name removed]

37. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[mac56]

40. That's harsh.

You can't possibly mean that.

[Mithras61]

7. Does anyone know...

how long PFC England was in the US Army?

It matters, because if it was less than 2 years, it'll be pretty damn difficult to prove she was a lousy soldier, since the promotion to SP4/CPL is pretty much a given unless you are busted. If it's less than 2 years, and she's a PFC, then she couldn't have been TOO bad... (for those who don't know, E-1/PVT is at enlistment, E-2/PV2 is at 6 months, E-3/PFC is at 1 year, and E-4/SP4/CPL is at 2 years).

[JitterbugPerfume]

11. Whether she acted alone

or under consent of her superiors she is a morally bankrupt person

she makes me sick

[Mithras61]

14. I agree, but...

I'm trying to evaluate the claims of the prosecution as relates to this case. Specifically, if the Court buys the "she was a lousy soldier with a history of violating orders" claim, which will incline them to stop at the level of the thugs who committed the attrocities instead of inclining them to find out who gave the authorization to use these methods.

The fact is that she did commit a crime. I'm not disputing that, but I'm more interested in finding out who gave the order than I am about if she's a turd or not. I think we all believe she is a turd, but many of us also believe that she wouldn't have done what she did without either explicit or implicit orders to do so. The fact that memos have surfaced from the Pentagon that indicate that Rummy authorized the torture tends to lend credence to the theory that she wasn't just one of "a few bad apples" as the Pentagon is claiming,

[janx]

19. Her lawyer is out to prove that she was in fact following orders.

They're starting at the bottom and working their way up, as with the Enron crimes.

It might take awhile.

[Solly Mack]

15. Exactly. Either way....she's a lousy human

She's in the wrong. Period.

[mojowork_n]

16. Yeah,

The actions that were depicted, not to mention the stupid idiotic grins of all of the American troops in the photos are pretty disgusting.

But that's why teen-agers and early 20-somethings are in the front lines. They're easily persuaded and manipulated. Look at the Red Guards in China, storm troopers, brownshirts and Hitler Jugend, all of the other mis-used youth.

[janx]

20. This is very true. And England came from a hardscrabble

background. The military was supposed to have been her ticket out of it.

[saskatoon]

36. morally bankrupt

Definitely but my god how horribly evil, I can't conceive of anyone let alone a young woman being so incredibly evil. It is scary.

[mojowork_n]

12. This is all I could find

"Miss England joined the army as a reservist after leaving high school. She left for Iraq in February 2003."

The article is from the BBC, May of this year:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3691753.stm

It says she's 21 years old, so she may have been 18 or 19 when she got out of school. Only going into the reserves isn't the same as signing up straight for boot camp, is it? I found other news articles that quoted a lot of support from among the other soldiers in her unit...

[Mithras61]

18. Good point...

My time lines are based on active duty service. I don't know for certain, but I think that Reserves run about 2x those timelines.

[atreides1]

21. Not Really

I knew a guy who made it out of basic and AIT, and who was Chaptered out after only 6 months with my unit.

Besides any NCO with brains can determine if a soldier will be good or lousy within 60 days after that soldier has been assigned to him/her.

Not sure if they do this anymore, but at one time supervisors had to evaluate their soldiers every 30 to 60 days. This would be done as counseling, and along with the verbal counseling was also a written sheet. This sheet pointed out where a soldier was making progress, and where they needed to show improvement. This would help in evaluating when a soldier was ready to be promoted.

My wife is active duty Air Force and she has to do EPR's on her troops every so often, not sure what the period of time is, but I do know that a good EPR can get an airman promoted quicker.

[Solly Mack]

24. Army still does PDC 's monthly

PDC= Periodic Developmental Counseling (for those who don't know)

And you're correct..NCO's can tag a bad soldier within days of arrival. I have also seen new soldiers chaptered within months of leaving AIT. My husband had one just recently...fresh out of AIT and up on multiple charges within days - to include arson and assault charges.

Said couselings can also be good enough to get a waiver for early promotions. A waiver for lifting the time restrictions...

[dryan]

28. I'm confused....

if she was that bad of a soldier why wasn't she cashiered. Also, why is she wearing fatigues instead of a regular uniform?

[louis-t]

30. If she was such a lousy soldier

what was she doing guarding prisoners? Asking for trouble.

[Solly Mack]

31. You would think but....

but I've seen cases where it's taken a couple of years to finally chapter out a soldier. I've often wondered just how some soldiers got chaptered so quickly and other cases dragged on and on...

Not sure what you mean by the BDU's verses "regular uniform"...as the BDU is the regular uniform. Do you mean Class A's? She could have worn Class A's to the actual hearing and was photographed later in BDU's. Though the pictures suggest otherwise... It could also be a case of not having maternity Class A's..and being granted a waiver to wear maternity BDU's. Maybe they allow BDU's at Article 32 hearings at Bragg.

In my husband's company, Class A's are required for any court appearances..to include Article 32 hearings.

[dryan]

39. Don't understand Army lingo....

but in a civilian court I think that a female defendant would wear a dress or a skirt and blouse. I have only been to a military court when a girlfriend of mine who was in the Naval Reserve had to give testimony (she asked me to go along for moral support) and she was told to wear her blue uniform.

There is a bigger issue her and that is to her performance. There is something fishy about this whole thing. I think the woman is going to be nailed to the wall.

[daleo]

32. She's a bad apple all right

But she fell from the Rumsfeld tree, which is connected to the Bush bush. Her crimes pale in comparison to theirs - a small cog in a big machine of evil.

[roguevalley]

33. I have no use for her but she's being scapegoated and that sucks.

Period.

Edit: She needs to fry right alongside of the ones who ordered,
condoned this. My original post didn't convey that, thus this
amend. I want them ALL To fry.

[Maeve]

34. A "rogue soldier" who just happens to do the same things they do in Gitmo

I don't believe there weren't orders involved in this fiasco. She was wrong, but she wasn't the only one, not by a looooong shot.

[fob]

35. What does this say about her superior officers then?

"One day we discovered that she was in bed with Corp. Graner," he added, referring to Spc. Charles Graner, who is also charged in the abuse scandal.

Oh that crazy Lynndie, she's late again, check Chuck's bunk. Do dee do dee do.

Duh gee, she's there, she said she'll be here when she's done banging Chuck. I guess since she's the lowest rank here we oughta just stand around with our thumbs up our asses til she gets here to mastermind our day. Hey Bolinger, did you pick up some more film for the cam-er-uh?

In her defense, if bush* can "be" president, I guess she can lead prison-wide abuse to soften targets for interrogation.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

38. Really? Unlike Bush she actually showed up for duty

and apparently also followed her orders.