Lynndie England Interview: Public Still Not Sympathetic
Lynndie England made headlines in 2003 for her participation in prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib in Iraq. However, in a new interview she has revealed that she does not regret her actions, leading to a whirlwind of criticism for her comments.
In a new interview, she tells The Daily that the prisoners' lives are better because of their time at Abu Ghraib. "They got the better end of the deal. They weren't innocent. They're trying to kill us, and you want me to apologize to them? It's like saying sorry to the enemy."
The criticism was swift and widespread. "Wow! Remember Lynndie England? She thinks Abu Ghraib prisoners 'got the better end of the deal'," noted Rebecca Dana.
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While England does not speak about her influence on the inmates, she does express regret at costing Americans their lives. "I think about it all the time - indirect deaths that were my fault. Losing people on our side because of me coming out on a picture."
It was only three years ago that England began breaking her silence about the torture inflicted on prisoners held at Abu Ghraib. "Yeah, I thought it was weird," England told Marie Claire magazine in 2009. "We were told we were supposed to do those things. They [her superiors] said, 'Good job. Keep it up.'"
"Those things" included forcing inmates to strip and make human pyramids; letting guard dogs get up close to the inmates, who were often blindfolded; and forcing them into extreme, inhumane conditions.
The man thought to hold most responsibility for the abuse, Charles Garner, was her Commanding Officer at the prison. England offers this explanation of the naked human pyramid: "[Garner] said it was because it was a narrow corridor, and it would be better to put them all together and that it would keep them busy. He didn't tell us what he was going to do before he did it; he just told us as we were doing it," she told Marie Claire.
In 2009 England released her autobiography: Tortured: Lynndie England, Abu Ghraib and the Photographs That Shocked the World. She went on a national book tour in order to help her tarnished image, but it appears as though the damage had already been done.
""I would put out applications everywhere. I can't get McDonald's, Burger King," she said. "It's the felony they can't get past."
