Ouch

Richard Cohen's op-ed in today's Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/05/AR2005050501682.html) is one of the most brutally honest things I've read about the whole Lynndie England saga. He talks about her being an "odd, unlikely puppet on the strings of fate," noting that "[s]he is that rare genuine article, the cliche, the stereotype that turns out upon investigation to be true."

But it's the final paragraph that hits the hardest:

"How sad, how ironic, that this wee woman should have become the personification of supposed American arrogance. Like all those convicted for the abuses of Abu Ghraib, she is one of America's little people -- not an officer, not even regular Army, but one of a collection of nobodies just trying to get somewhere better. Lynndie England was one of them, and she is suffering for that -- officially for abusing prisoners, actually for being a loser. Whatever the outcome of her trial, the sentence will be life."

Damn.

Not a whole lot to add to that. Except to wonder what in god's name does Charles Graner exude to make himself so irresistible to women? He knocked England up, and while she was bringing their baby to full-term, he got his groove on with another woman in that unit. They got married last month, leaving England SOL. I've seen pictures of the guy. Not with a ten-foot pole. And to read about him, he seems like - to put it nicely - something of a bully. I'm just not seeing what the charm is there.

Of course, that isn't the most perplexing thing about all this. What is most incomprehensible is how none of the upper management types were found to be at all responsible, and none of the people in the Taguba report are going to have to answer for any of this. But that's a whole other story.