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By Pierre Marcelle

September 30, 2005

Liberation - Original Article (French)    

Lynndie England Led Away After the Verdict

Upon hearing the verdict imposed Tuesday on that symbol of torture, Lynndie England, to three years in prison, one longed to spontaneously whisper into the ears of magistrates at her Fort Hood court martial: you must not have seen what happened at Abu Ghraib. But this would have been to overlook the fact that there is nothing more blind than one that doesn’t wish to see, and that if eight soldiers like England are to be condemned for various "breaches of honor," it is clear that holding senior officers accountable for the aforesaid "honor" of the military (what a beautiful oxymoron! ...) was never intended.

Lynndie England In Her Most Infamous Photo

At the beginning of 2004, when those extraordinarily images of England humiliating Iraqi prisoners were discovered, one wondered what there was about the torturers that could have brought about, consciously or unconsciously, this culture of making war (or of obeying such orders). Eighteen months later, it has all been settled. Quite the opposite of the popular consensus, a few black sheep and scapegoats have been identified, “depraved” ordinary soldiers like England, who will have to face the music for their commanders.

The organization Human Rights Watch released a report on Monday regarding the torture practiced by the [U.S. Army] 82nd Airborne Division in 2003 and 2004. So it seems that the torturers have since spread far and wide. England is far too frail a shrub to conceal such a forest; the Pentagon nevertheless continues to hide its body behind this slender finger. One can thus see this Fort Hood verdict a confession of renunciation, which categorizes torture as an inevitability. Is there nothing new under the Iraqi sun, then? Yes there is.

On the Internet, and this was recounted on Thursday morning by Marc Kravetz in the  France Culture [section]: a site which, for $10, invites you to discover the naked charms of the soldiers. Free access to the familiar GIs, all clearly identified, in uniform and on location. But the uniform is enough. The horrors of war have been spontaneously replaced. The escalating digitized barbarity has taken its course. It has firmly established that there is, from now on, in Iraq and in U.S. uniform, thousands of Lynndie Englands.