Douglas Barbour wrote:
> Yeah, well, Ken, while I agree, I suspect you're right that it needs
> some tweaking, if ever to reach (if you want to) an audience that
> doesn't already agree with you. The problem, in a nutshell?
>
> Didn't you mean 'with official permission' to be 'without official
> permission'?
Yeah, one of my commoner proofreading lapses. Ironically the military
court would not accept Pvt. England's plea, so the prosecutors seem to
be back on Square One.
What I find difficult here, which is why the writing is a long way from
done (if I ever think it's important enough to do it over), is that
there is are indeed both volunteer and victim aspects of Lynndie England
that make her (in my mind) a seriously complex character who really is
worthy of some serious discussion, even if the study comes from Stanley
Milgram's ghost. I truly believe she and her buddies in the prison were
given free rein to do as they wished by implicit direction from On High,
but that this young woman had a gift for repellent behavior before she
ever put on the uniform. Who let up on the reins? Of course I do not
know. Yet I am not exactly shocked and awed that her defense either
wasn't allowed to or didn't try to subpoena Gen. Karpinski, the prison
governor; Ricardo Sanchez; or (this would be a stretch) Donald
Rumsfeld. Someone was stage-managing prisoner treatment at Abu Ghraib
and elsewhere and it wasn't a 20-year-old woman. I still recall the
comment attributed to some guy in Defense, that they purposely selected
people like Lynndie English for prison duty because they were stupid and
sadistic hillbillies. If not those words than close enough.
As for preaching to the choir, what else is there? I can't send this to
the American Century. Everyone has their house organs for their version
of dissent--either from right- or left-wing line--and there is no
cross-pollination. Which is why society south of the Canadian border
may not have too many bees but there isn't much honey either.
Ken
--
Kenneth Wolman
Proposal Development Department
Room SW334
Sarnoff Corporation
609-734-2538
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