For all the tangled nudes, the hideous hoods, the dangling wires and the dog leash, perhaps the single most shocking thing about the images from Abu Ghraib prison is the woman in so many of the pictures: smiling broadly or giving a thumbs up or just standing casually in the demented scene as if posing in a college dorm. It's the all-American face of Private First Class Lynndie England. The girl next door, a Jessica Lynch gone wrong.
What forces, internal or external, could have brought this diminutive, 21-year-old woman and her six accused comrades to this appalling pass? There is no shortage of explanations. From the moment the atrocities at Abu Ghraib came to light, military commanders, members of the Administration and, indeed, the Commander in Chief were quick to label those implicated as "bad apples." As President Bush put it, they are an exceptional "few" whose actions "do not reflect the nature of the men and women who serve our country." The families and friends of the accused, of course, say the very opposite is true: these are normal, patriotic Americans who put their lives on the line to serve their country but went astray because they followed orders. Psychologists and historians who study torture give what is probably the most disturbing explanation of all: they are us. For under certain circumstances, almost anyone has the capacity to commit the atrocities seen in the photos that have shocked the world.
An Iraqi prison couldn't be further from home for those facing career-ending charges in the scandal. The 372nd Military Police Company, a unit of reservists based in a one-story brick building in Cresaptown, Md., draws most of its members from small, down-at-the-heels towns in the green valleys of Appalachia. Many sign on as teenagers, as England did, to get college benefits. Others, like Staff Sergeant Ivan (Chip) Frederick, are eager to see a bit of the world. Patriotism runs deep in this part of the country, and recruitment ads for the armed services constantly stream in on local radio.
Members of the 372nd were a tight-knit group that was deployed to Bosnia in 2001, according to Kerry Shoemaker-Davis of Fort Ashby, W.Va., who left the unit that year but whose husband remains with the 372nd in Iraq. After drills, she relates, members would head to the Big Claw bar near headquarters for beer, buffalo wings, karaoke and the raunchy jokes that the mostly male company loved to tell. "Oh, yeah, we would party," she says. "We would take the place over" and often shut it down at 2 a.m.
Shoemaker-Davis knows four of the people accused in the prisoner-abuse scandal, plus the whistle-blower, Joseph Darby. And, like other friends and acquaintances, she has trouble squaring the folks she knows with what she sees in the photos. "I think they were doing what they were told, but that doesn't excuse it," she says. "The people I knew would have said, 'No. Kiss my butt.'"