Explaining Lynndie England

Basic human nature.

Some have wondered whether England, who came from a poor town in the hollows of West Virginia and lived for a time in a trailer, was the victim of a deprived or degraded socio-economic background. But her parents appear to have been loving and her childhood innocent. In any case, social and educational pedigree don't seem to have much to do with the proclivity to torture. In a famous study involving students pretending to be prison guards, most of the subjects were willing--even eager--to employ humiliation and extreme pain. The students in the study were from Stanford.

American pop culture.

The guards gave their prisoners innocent-sounding nicknames from TV. There was "Gilligan," a tiny, active guy, and "Mr. Clean," who bathed obsessively, and "Froggy" with Marty Feldman bulging eyes, and "Big Bird," who was tall. But then there was "S---boy" who smeared himself with excrement. He was the one forced to pose naked with a pair of panties over his head. The leering casualness of the humiliations seen in the photos has the feel of a reality TV show--"Fear Factor" for Iraqi inmates.

The final, and all encompassing, explanation is the nature of war. "War was once glorious and squalid," Winston Churchill said in 1946. "Now it is just squalid." Certainly at Abu Ghraib.

Julie Scelfo, Trent Gegax, and Pat Wingert

© 2004