© Birchum/Getty Images/Agence France PresseUS Army Private First Class Lynndie England arrives for the second day of her court-martial in the Abu Ghraib Prison scandal 03 May, 2005 at Fort Hood, Texas.
"Their lives are better. They got the better end of the deal," England said in an interview with The Daily referring to the Iraqi prisoners who were sexually and physically abused in the infamous prison near Baghdad. "They weren't innocent. They were trying to kill us and you want me to apologize to them? It's like saying sorry to the enemy."
Lynndie England, 29, became one of the symbols of the controversial 2003 US invasion of Iraq after photographs of her smiling while giving a thumbs-up in front of a pile of naked Iraqi detainees and pulling a man by a leash went public. The pictures sparked international outrage and shone a spotlight on the abuse and misconduct committed by US soldiers, fueling anti-American sentiments across the world.
"All the prisoners that were there were on the tier of high-priority. They were there for a reason. They had killed coalition forces or they were planning to," England told The Daily on Monday. "They had information about where insurgents were hiding."
Instead of feeling remorse, the former prison guard Lynndie England is more worried about the lives of fellow US soldiers who could have been endangered by the scandal. "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."
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England was among eleven military personnel convicted in 2005 in connection with the torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib. She was sentenced to three years in prison and dishonorably discharged from the military.
The Daily says Lynndie is now "virtually unemployable" and lives with her parents in rural West Virginia. She is raising her seven-year-old child whose father, accused Abu Ghraib ringleader Charles Graner, "didn't want anything to do with the baby."
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The latest interview by the infamous prison guard comes in the shadow of a chain of ill-fated actions by the American military. After a Koran-burning incident at a US base in Afghanistan sparked violent protests, a[n alleged lone] US soldier went on a bloody rampage in Kandahar Province, killing 16 Afghan civilians, among them children and women.
This behavior is totally degraded.
But I see signs that this girl was pushed into it. She's telling that reporter what she was told about who those prisoners were. But I don't think she's revealing everything.
This girl was set up to behave the way she did, and I am sure that many others, if put in her place, would have done the same or similar.
So, it's that mechanism we have to attack. On the ground, all this happens at a very personal level. If someone doesn't play along with some degraded game, an "accident" could happen to them. It gets difficult to resist at that level, yet if she, and others, had disagreed (and the taking of photos was, in some ways, an effort in that direction) it could have changed a lot of lives.
This time it was "some kid" from West Virginia. Next time, it could be you. If you were ordered to do something clearly immoral and degraded, on pain of social rejection or worse, what would your decision be?