It smells

Pfc Lynndie England pleads guilty.

Abu Ghraib has smelled like mackeral in the moonlight since the day the first photo appeared on CBS (by the same 60 Minutes producer who would later be held responsible for the so-called "Rather-gate").

I've been reading Jon Ronson's alternately entertaining and nauseating The Men Who Stare at Goats.

On May 12, 2004, Lynndie England gave an interview to Denver-based TV reporter Brian Maas:

BRIAN MAAS: Did things happen in this prison to those Iraqi prisoners worse than what we've seen in these photographs?

LYNNDIE ENGLAND: Yes.

BRIAN MAAS: Can you tell me about that?

LYNNDIE ENGLAND: No.

BRIAN MAAS: What were you thinking when those photographs were taken?

LYNNDIE ENGLAND: I was thinking it was kind of weird... I didn't really, I mean, want to be in any pictures.

BRIAN MAAS: There's a photograph that was taken of you holding an Iraqi prisoner on a leash. How did that come about?

LYNNDIE ENGLAND: I was instructed by persons in higher rank to "stand there, hold this leash, and look at the camera." And they took a picture for PsyOps and that's all I know...I was told to stand there, give the thumbs-up, smile, stand behind all of the naked Iraqis in they pyramid [have my picture taken].

BRIAN MAAS: Who told you to do that?

LYNNDIE ENGLAND: Persons in my higher chain of command...They were for PsyOps reasons and the reasons worked. So to us, we were doing our job, which meant we were doing what we were told, and the outcome was what they wanted. They'd come back and they'd look at the pictures and they'd state, "Oh, that's a good tactic, keep it up. That's working. This is working. This is working. Keep doing it, it's getting what we need."

Lynndie England seemed to be saying that the photographs were nothing less than an elaborate piece of PsyOps theater. She said that the PsyOps people who told her to "keep doing it, it's getting what we need" did not wear name tags... Could it be that the acts captured in the photographs were not the point at all, and the photographs themselves were the thing? Were the photographs intended to be shown only to individual Iraqi prisoners to scare them into cooperating, rather than to get out and scare the whole world?

After I heard the interview with Lynndie England, I dug out my notes of my time at PsyOps. The unit had let me into their Fort Bragg headquarters to show me their CD collection in October 2003, the same month as the Abu Ghraib pictures had been taken. I skimmed through all the talk of "unfulfilled need" and "desired behavior" until I found my conversation with the friendly boffin in civilian clothing, the "senior cultural analyst" named Dave, who specializes in the Middle East.

[...]

Then Dave spoke about how the target audience for their "products" -- Iraqi forces or Iraq civilians or Iraqi detainees -- were not always the most willing customers.

It's not like selling Coke," he said. "Sometimes you're trying to sell someone something that you know they might not want in their hearts. So it causes ambiguities, and problems. And they have to think about it. It's more like selling someone vitamin D to drink. Something they may not want, but they need it to survive."

"Interesting," I said.

"It causes ambiguities."

And "ambiguities" usually cause a need for fallguys.

Like I said. Something smells.