Where are Lynndie England and Charles Garner Now?

The two most prominent faces in the photos of torture and abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq have served out their punishments in American prisons and are now attempting to regain some kind of normalcy in their lives. Lynndie England was released from prison in 2009 after serving half of a three year sentence and returned to her parent's home in Fort Ashby West Virginia, while Sergeant Charles Graner was released from Ft. Leavenworth Kansas after serving more than six and a half years of his ten year sentence. These two will forever be linked together not only because of the child which they share but because they are the face Abu Ghraib. The release of the photos in 2004 showing England and Graner enjoying the torture inflicted on the detainees at Abu Ghraib sealed their fate. If these photos were never released, they would have returned to America as proud heroes who had served their country and represented what was great about their homeland but instead they are a disgrace and are hated by a majority of the world because of what those photos represent. Graner had exercised a great amount of influence over the young England who was only 21 years old when she found herself in the hells of war. Graner was the ringleader encouraging England and the others seen in photographs to participate in his debauchery. Both Graner and England claim that the practices of stress positions, nudity, and humiliation were already being utilized by Military Intelligence at Abu Ghraib before their arrival in the fall of 2003.

As of 2009 England was desperate to find a job and every interview had ended the same way, she was virtually non-hirable because of the discomfort other potential co-workers expressed concerning her. She struggles daily with the reality of what she has done and the effects of war and her time in Iraq have taken their toll. Anti-depressants were prescribed to her and she takes the medications daily so that she can function with some small sense of normalcy. It is questionable whether or not she is remorseful for any of her actions because of her belief that things like that happen in war and that she was only performing what she was commanded to do from her presiding officers. The reception she receives in her hometown varies from those who despise what she did and the others who tell her that she should have done worse to those enemies that hated America.

During Garner's trial it was revealed that he was involved not only with England but also had a sexual relationship with Megan Ambuhl, who herself was a defendant in the Abu Ghraib cases. Garner and Ambuhl are married and England cares for the child that Garner fathered to her because of their relationship and wishes for him to have no contact with the child. Graner has been described as a manipulative bully who had a bad boy charm about him that drew the attention of younger, more impressionable soldiers in his company. Anonymity seems to be the desire of Graner who has declined interview requests and his location after his release from prison was withheld from the press. Funny how a man who never shied away from the cameras in the prison at Abu Ghraib is now seeking privacy at home. Who can blame him, many believe that Graner was cast as the scapegoat to take the fall for the higher ups of the Bush administration that were complicit in the atrocities at Abu Ghraib. This was an ugly and most unfortunate time in the prolific and honored history of the U.S. military and has forever changed that image forever in the minds of the world. England and Graner's images are eternally etched into our minds and those photos will haunt them for the rest of their lives.



 

The Senate Armed Services Committee Report on Treating of Detainees in December 2008

ABC News Report on Senate Report on Abu Ghraib

The Senate Armed Services Committee released their report on December 11, 2008, detailing the treatment of prisoners and detainees held within U.S. custody as well as revealing the findings of their investigation as to who was responsible for the lack of control and the abuse that had taken place. The report identifies top officials within the Bush administration, primarily Donald Rumsfeld as the key figures in creating the horrifying environments of Abu Ghraib Iraq and Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. This report was released by Senator Carl Levin, the Democratic chairman of the committee and Senator John McCain, a Republican from Arizona. The report also disagreed with the contention of the Bush administration that enhanced interrogation techniques had protected the U.S. and were required to protect American lives at home and in Iraq. This report seemed to reiterate the findings of Antonio Taguba's report which also shared that the abuse was not simply the results of bad decisions by a few "bad apples" but was a direct result of the failure of the U.S. leadership specifically the authority of Donald Rumsfeld. It concludes that officers in Iraq were following the orders under the instruction for these enhanced interrogation techniques which had been signed into place by Rumsfeld himself.

One of the most damning results of the abuses at Abu Ghraib was the loss of moral high ground for any American on foreign soil. The world believed that the U.S. and its leaders condoned the torture of detainees in military prisons the world over. Senator McCain said that it was inexcusable for the U.S. to implement and subject foreign detainees to the measures under the SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape) training that was used to train U.S. military personnel to endure what they may face if captured by foreign forces. McCain himself had suffered torture in a prison in North Vietnam himself and was a leading voice condemning the actions at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. The report also revealed the admission by C.I.A. agents that water boarding had been used in secret prisons housing known member of Al-Qaeda following the 9/11 attacks. It was irresponsible of the Bush administration and it was a direct effect of this administrations behavior that created the horror and culture of torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. These standards and behaviors would have to be cleaned up if America was ever to regain the respect of the world. Basic human rights had been trampled on by those attempting to spread democracy and freedom. The chain of responsibility linked from Abu Ghraib in Iraq back to our nation's capital and the leaders of our nation were complicit and needed to be held accountable.

Antonio Taguba and his report, May 2004

A blatant disregard for the rules of the Geneva Conventions and the lack of any effective leadership and control had created a veritable world of torture that was purposely manufactured directly by those within the Bush administration. There was no institutional control imposed at Abu Ghraib and all involved with the torture and abuse of Iraqi detainees needed to be held accountable. These were the findings of Antonio Taguba who was the deputy commanding general for support in Iraq. Taguba presented his findings to the Senate Armed Services Committee on May 11, 2004. Taguba recognized the impossible position he was in but he vowed to tell and reveal the truth of what had happened a t Abu Ghraib. Every company of soldiers from the 800th MP Brigade to the 320th MP Battalion were at fault and the "rampant lack of leadership" led to the unspeakable acts at Abu Ghraib. His report filed in March stated that there had been "numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses" committed against many detainees at Abu Ghraib. The ugly truth was revealed to the world with the release and publishing of the more than 100 images captured on the cameras of MPs within Abu Ghraib. The photos were astonishing and self-incriminating. Though all recognized that Abu Ghraib was a pressure cooker unlike any other in the world, this kind of behavior and abuse by American's would not be tolerated. Taguba's report showed that the MPs were severely under qualified and lacked any formal training as corrections officers or guards. This report also cited that the methods used at Abu Ghraib were not approved and the MIs and MPs who had collaborated and used these techniques had done so without the required authorizations of the proper authorities. Taguba also uncovered that Janis Karpinski had lied to him about her presence at Abu Ghraib as the commander of the 800th brigade, had not visited Abu Ghraib as often as she had claimed.

 

Taguba had noticed that Donald Rumsfeld was in denial. Rumsfeld was desperate to control the information that would be found in the many ongoing investigations into the abuse scandal but the proverbial cat was out of the bag. So the Bush administration was in total spin control mode. The hard truth was that Rumsfeld and everyone involved at Abu Ghraib knew exactly what they were getting at Abu Ghraib when Geoffrey Miller was brought in from Guantanamo Bay. Rumsfeld was so bold to claim that the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib had in no way violated the Geneva Conventions. His defense for this statement was the company line of the Bush administration in the war on terror, these enemy combatants had no protected status to claim under the guidelines of the Geneva Conventions. The world seemed to disagree with Rumsfeld as they believed the evil experiment at Abu Ghraib was filled with clear violations of humanitarian law. It was evidently clear to everyone that this was not the failure of a few "bad apples" within the U.S. military but was a designed effort by the U.S. military to purposefully and knowingly torture these detainees. Their orders had been given to them from someone higher up than them but when Senator John McCain questioned Rumsfeld with the simple question of "Who was in charge?" Rumsfeld would not give a straight answer. General Miller would claim to have cleaned up the interrogations at Abu Ghraib but it was too little too late. The damage had been done and those guilty of these atrocities would face criminal prosecutions for their crimes.

 

Taguba reported that he spoke with officer after officer asking them why they never did or said anything about the known abuse. The typical response was that they were only following orders and the blame would ultimately fall on the young MPs that had been exploited by the Military Intelligence officers and ultimately the Bush administration. As Taguba saw it, the U.S. military had plainly violated the Geneva Conventions and the laws pertaining to land warfare at Abu Ghraib. This would make Taguba unpopular, but finally someone had to do the right thing and it would be General Taguba. Taguba would define honor by the honesty and integrity of his report that further exposed the truth and disgusting behavior of U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib.  Warfare and conditions of war are no excuse for the torture that took place at Abu Ghraib. Consider this question, who are the REAL terrorists?

 

How did the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal become known and what was the immediate result?

The plight of Joe Darby

Lies, deception, and cover-up! This would be the response by those responsible for the inhumane treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. The photos were innocently discovered on a CD belonging to Sergeant Garner. The man who discovered the photos of torture was an MP named Joseph Darby. Darby was astounded and disgusted by what he saw in the photographs. He knew these were prisoners being not only mistreated but tortured and he turned over the CD to the CID and from there, despite efforts to destroy and allow amnesty for any other photos that soldiers had taken, the press got their hands on these unbelievable images. In the spring of 2004, the news broke with the New Yorker and 60 Minutes II publicly releasing the photos and videos that had been confiscated from Abu Ghraib. Investigation after investigation after investigation was performed and the great number of investigations led to the inability to clearly establish legally, who was at fault for the horrible scenes at Abu Ghraib. Darby was to remain anonymous but that quickly changed when Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld thanked Darby publicly for coming forward and informing the proper authorities of the torture that was taking place at Abu Ghraib. This was the first exposure of the man who had turned in the disk containing photos of the abuse at Abu Ghraib.

The official line of the Bush administration was that these tactics were disgusting and were contrived by a few MPs who had gotten out of control and had created themselves the sadistic environment present at Abu Ghraib. Bush and Rumsfeld condemned the torture of the Iraqi detainees but never acknowledged their roles and their authority in promoting the enhanced interrogation techniques. According to Rumsfeld, authorization for these behaviors was never given to anyone at Abu Ghraib. The MPs themselves would take the fall for what went on within the prison walls. They had taken authority on their own and developed these techniques and irresponsibly tortured the detainees. This would be the official stance of the Bush administration. But with just a little research, we can see that the tactics implemented by the MPs within Abu Ghraib were well executed and well known torture and interrogation techniques. Stress positions combined with the threat of electrocution along with sensory deprivation are well known interrogation techniques that were developed in Brazil by skilled military personnel. So it was severe misinformation to say and expect the world to believe that these MPs who had never been trained to guard prisoners or interrogate prisoners discovered these techniques by accident. This is what the Animal House on the night shift theory would require. Rumsfeld never answered the question of the chain of command and who was the authority at Abu Ghraib. And he couldn't because the chain of command would have come directly to him and then to the White House. The photos were damning and defined Americans all around the world. Instead of viewing America as a world power desiring democracy and peace, America had confirmed the accusation of the terrorist, that we were soldiers of terror. There was no goodwill for America within any element of Islam. America had been disgraced by these soldiers but also by the authorities that had commanded these tactics to take place because the intelligence was needed to continue to fight the War on Terror.

It is quite disturbing to see what human beings are capable of when they believe they are commanded to do something by someone who is placed in a legitimate seat of authority. This is exactly what happened at Abu Ghraib. In October 2006, President Bush would sign into law the Military Commissions Act which would serve to further destroy the rights of prisoners previously protected under the Geneva Conventions. Dehumanizing these detainees will cause great distress not only to the prisoners but also to those who had carried out the torture and these will haunt them for the rest of their lives.

 

What happened at Abu Ghraib?

Torture had become the normal and accepted behavior by MPs and MI officers inside of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.  So much so that dehumanizing acts were recorded and photographed by those performing the unbelievably sadistic techniques.  There seemed to be no shame or guilt on the faces of those of the 372nd Military Police Company such as Sergeant Graner as they smile arrogantly at the camera as male prisoners are laying nude piled one on top of another.  The power that Graner had been given had become uncontrollable.  Nudity, explicit sexual abuse, and physical abuse were taking place on a daily basis and no one seemed to be concerned with the violation of human rights of these Iraqi detainees.  These acts would have been humiliating for any human being but were especially horrifying for those of the Islamic religion.  The pictures only tell part of the story; MPs who had become numb to living in the midst of war detached themselves from their own personal human instincts and were doing anything that was ordered for them to do.  Photo after photo of detainees nude, bound, with hoods over their heads, as they are placed in sexually explicit positions have emerged which serve as evidence of the atrocities that took place at Abu Ghraib.  Prisoners were locked in their cells with little to no clothing, no toilet, no mattress, no blankets for up to three days at a time.  This was considered normal wartime behavior by the MPs of the 372nd because that is what these young soldiers were told by their commanding officers.  Detainees would never be the same after the torture and embarrassment that they endured at Abu Ghraib. 

In the Fall of 2003, a prison riot broke out at Abu Ghraib.  The rioters were bound and severely beaten by MPs because they were told that these detainees would be interrogated so the torture and abuse would be ok.  This riot would motivate the MPs to perform the most severe and embarrassing of the atrocities at Abu Ghraib.  These prisoners were in some cases handcuffed together, naked and made to crawl on their stomachs as they were interrogated and questioned by MI.  Staff Sergeant Chip Frederick recounts that the MPs were praised for their excellent work at Abu Ghraib by MI.  Intelligence was now flowing from prisoners at Abu Ghraib and when questions arose about the concerns of some of the MPs at the methods being used, Frederick claims that they were told, "Don't worry about it, we are getting exactly what we need."  Frederick shared his knowledge of at least one detainee who was killed during an interrogation as well.  Graner had been commended for the success as well.  It was communicated that the intelligence gathered because of Graner's abuses would be of great help in achieving the U.S. military's overall goals in Iraq and the Middle East.  With this confirmation, the tactics and abuse would get worse. 

Determining who was running Abu Ghraib became an impossible task.  The MPs who committed the horrible acts claimed that they were simply following the orders by their commanding officers, MI and the private intelligence contractors who had been brought in to Abu Ghraib to collect intelligence.  Though they individually may have questioned their own actions internally, they felt compelled to follow the orders that they had been given.  Later it was revealed that Janis Karpinski had requested higher security measures at the prison but failed to follow up on these reports and the dangerous environment at Abu Ghraib for MPs contributed to the resulting abuse of the detainees as well.  The integrity of the U.S. military was severely tarnished and many innocent civilians in Iraq housed at Abu Ghraib would suffer life altering consequences.  Abu Ghraib had become exactly what U.S. officials had desired it to be, another Guantanamo Bay. 

Military Police moved from Incarceration Staff and Placed under Military Intelligence (MI)

Janis Karpinski had been the head of Abu Ghraib prison in a very difficult time.  Intelligence was not being extracted from prisoners and their interrogations were conceived as totally ineffective.  With the arrival of General Miller from Gitmo, changes were swift.  The Military Police (MPs) were removed from incarceration duties, under the lead of Karpinski, and placed under the authority of the Military Intelligence (MI) division, their job description and responsibilities drastically changed.  Instead of guarding prisoners, they began to be used as the tools of torture under the authority of the MI.  In specific instances guards were instructed to "soften up" prisoners through the night that would be interrogated the next morning by the MI specialists.  This "softening up" process included using the enhanced interrogation techniques such as stress positioning, humiliation, nudity, and sleep depravation that had been brought to Abu Ghraib by General Miller and sanctioned by Rumsfeld.  Private security and intelligence contractors who answered to no one began directing MPs to torture the prisoners of Abu Ghraib with no conern of accountability. 

Psychological torture was now being used on the prisoners in the continued effort to extract detailed intelligence to be used to fight the insurgency in Iraq.  The devastating results from psychological torture are much more difficult to heal than the results of physical torture.  Sergeant Graner was chosen to lead the MPs guarding the prisoners held on Tier 1 because of his experience in civilian prisons.  Graner raised questions of the techniques being required by MI and OGA.  Graner felt that the specific things he was being asked to do were unethical and immoral, but he claimed that he had no choice but to follow the orders that were given to him.  The MPs were now the tools of torture in the hands of desperate MI division and the results of this move would be devastating and definitely inhumane.  Torture was now the accepted method of interrogation within Abu Ghraib. 

Major General Geoffrey Miller, Donald Rumsfeld, Ricardo Sanchez and Interrogation Techniques

Donald Rumsfeld believed that the terrorist prison camp at Guantanamo Bay Cuba was one of the "finest prisons in the world" and the success that had been found in the specific area of intelligence extraction needed to be replicated at the prison at Abu Ghraib in Iraq.  Because of the frustration of the intelligence agents at Abu Ghraib, Donald Rumsfeld, in the "Action Memo" of November 27, 2002, would approve of enhanced interrogation techniques.  In this memo Rumsfeld approved the most severe interrogation techniques that had ever been approved in the history of the U.S.  As chilling as it is to read these techniques on paper and know that U.S. officials were sanctioning such action couldn't compare to the impact of applying these techniques to actual human beings.  Techniques such as solitary confinement, use of intense sound and light, darkness, stress positions, and playing upon the phobias of the prisoners were implemented and signed off on by Rumsfeld himself.  Prisoners were subjected to nudity and placed in sexually compromising positions as a form of humiliation as well.  The desperate need for intelligence and the pressure from a mounting insurgency within Iraq brought swift change to the status quo in regards to the treatment of prisoners and the methods of interrogations at Abu Ghraib. 

Major General Geoffrey Miller who had implemented unconventional interrogation techniques at Gitmo was reassigned to bring these changes to Abu Ghraib in August of 2003.  Miller had been successful at obtaining critical intelligence at Guantanamo Bay with the philosophy of extracting information by "any means necessary".  The ends certainly justified the means in the eyes of Miller and Rumsfeld.  Miller believed the prisoners at Abu Ghraib had been treated too well and there was no way to get the intelligence needed without devolving the treatment to the level that he had been using at Guantanamo Bay.  Just weeks after Miller's arrival in Iraq, Ricardo Sanchez, the military commander on the ground in Iraq, in an official memo, signed off on the use of more aggressive interrogation techniques on the enemy combatants detained at Abu Ghraib.  Abu Ghraib would quickly resemble the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay.  Policies at the prison were rapidly changing and the military personnel struggled to keep up with what was ok and what was not.  It was very unclear on what techniques were allowed and what was not and these questions were never answered.  U.S. soldiers were seeing things that they had never seen before in regards to interrogation techniques, nudity, sexual abuse, and the shackling of prisoners became accepted and common place at Abu Ghraib.  Detainees were often placed in their cells with no bed, no blankets, no shoes, and no clothing.  Prisoners were treated more like animals than human beings but U.S. officials believed these techniques did not violate the Geneva Conventions or any other International Law that was in place.