Friday, May 07, 2004

The dark sister

To contrast with the blond, innocent (phony) heroine Jessica Lynch, our mythological liberation now has its dark, evil female role.

For weeks, the Mineral County courthouse has proudly displayed the photographs of local soldiers stationed in Iraq along the stairway at its front entrance. "We're hometown proud," the banner said.

But in the last few days, one photograph was taken down, that of Pfc. Lynndie R. England, whose face has become famous for a painfully different reason.
  NY Times article

As family and friends attempt to excuse her, naturally.

They are convinced that she would never have thought up anything so cruel on her own and that she must have been following orders.

Or are they?

At the dingy Corner Club Saloon they think she has done nothing wrong.

"A lot of people here think they ought to just blow up the whole of Iraq," Colleen Kesner said.

"To the country boys here, if you're a different nationality, a different race, you're sub-human. That's the way girls like Lynndie are raised.

"Tormenting Iraqis, in her mind, would be no different from shooting a turkey. Every season here you're hunting something. Over there, they're hunting Iraqis."

In Fort Ashby, in the isolated Appalachian mountains 260km west of Washington, the poor, barely-educated and almost all-white population talk openly about an active Ku Klux Klan presence.

There is little understanding of the issues in Iraq and less of why photographs showing soldiers from the 372nd Military Police Company, mostly from around Fort Ashby, abusing prisoners has caused a furore.

... A colleague of Lynndie's father said people in Fort Ashby were sick of the whingeing.

"We just had an 18-year-old from round here killed by the Iraqis," he said.

"We went there to help the jackasses and they started blowing us up. Lynndie didn't kill 'em, she didn't cut 'em up. She should have shot some of the suckers."
  Daily Telegraph article

In Fort Ashby, the Englands have kept their yellow ribbons that signify a soldier overseas pinned to their front stoop, though Private England is now in the United States.
  NY Times article

Pregnant at Fort Bragg, not charged like the others who were there, according to the NY Times article, but facing a courtmartial according to the Daily Telegraph article.

In high school, her parents said, she was a good student...she yearned to go to college, wanting to become a "stormchaser," the kind of meteorologist who does not simply study bad weather, but immerses herself in the middle of it.


Well, she got her desire.

The possible "good" to come out of this may be seen if it inclines the Supreme Court to decide in favor of the Guantanamo prisoners and against the presidiot's determination that they are not entitled to protection under the Geneva Conventions as prisoners of war. And hopefully his claim to designate anyone he wants an enemy noncombatant, thereby dissolving that person's legal rights, will be smacked down as well. Don't hold your breath.

There, that's my "personal interest story".

Back to your regularly scheduled news.

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