[A-List] US military: recruitment sociology & war damage

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Pulled on a leash by tormentor from West Virginia trailer park
CAMERON SIMPSON
The Herald, May 07 2004

HELD like a dog with a leash around his neck, the Iraqi prisoner grimaces as
he lies helpless and in pain on the paper-strewn floor of Baghdad's Abu
Ghraib jail, his humiliation complete.

The tormentor is again Lynndie England, the American army private who
featured heavily in the first batch of abuse photographs that shocked the
coalition and shamed the White House.

In the previous photograph, the 21-year-old from a trailer home in West
Virginia was seen, cigarette in mouth, giving a thumbs-up sign and pointing
at a humiliated, naked, hooded Iraqi prisoner.

She has been dubbed the "anti-Jessica Lynch", and the demonisation is
expected to grow after the new pictures were published in the Washington
Post, which identified her as the guard holding a "leash" around the neck of
the naked detainee. Her involvement in the abuse scandal has shocked not
just her small-town community, but the world at large.

According to some reports, Ms England is engaged to, and carrying the baby
of, specialist Charles Graner, 35, who faces a possible court-martial on
charges of maltreatment and indecent acts along with five other members of
Private England's reserve unit, the 372nd Military Police Company. When a
reporter visited the England family trailer this week, her mother, Terrie
said: "Oh my God. I can't get over this."

Speaking at her home, which is festooned with red, white, and blue ribbons,
she said her daughter joined the military "to see the world and go to
college". But now "the government turned their back on her".

England was trained as "paper pusher" for the military police, her family
said. She was assigned to the prison, near Baghdad, to help process
prisoners.

Relatives argue that she must have been acting on orders when she took part
in the abuse and humiliation of the Iraqi detainees.

England grew up in a trailer down a dirt road behind a saloon in Fort Ashby,
a one-traffic-light town about 13 miles south of Cumberland.

A railroad worker's daughter, she liked hunting turkey or killing time with
her sister at the local Dairy Dip cafe.

She left high school early to enlist at 17 in the 372nd Company for college
money and the chance to widen her horizons. She wants to study to be a
meteorologist.
She is a cat-lover and sent money from her army pay for her two sisters'
newborn babies, her family said.

In December, England went home on leave. She told her family that service in
Iraq was tough. She had lost more than a stone in weight.

A family friend told how one night in December, when England was at home, a
thunderstorm swept over the town. "She jumped off the couch and started
talking about taking shelter because she thought we were being bombed," said
the friend, Destiny Goin.

In January, she gave her family the first inkling that something had gone
woefully wrong. "I just want you to know that there might be some trouble,"
she warned her mother in a phone call from Baghdad. "But I don't want you to
worry."

But worry is all the family has done since the scandal broke. "Whether she's
charged or not, I don't know," said Terrie England.

"She wanted to see the world and go to college. Now the government has
turned its back on her, and everything's a big joke."

She held photographs of her daughter in khakis, smiling atop a camel in
Iraq.

At most, the 372nd's alleged abuses of prisoners were "kid things - pranks,"
Mrs England said, her voice growing bitter.

"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?"

Everyone had been proud of Lynndie England. The Mineral County courthouse in
Keyser posts her picture and those of other local soldiers under a banner
that says: "We're hometown proud."

Now, Ms England is detained at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. She has been
demoted from the rank of specialist to private first class and a decision
will be taken later about whether she should face charges.