ABSTRACT
On April 28, 2004, the CBS news program 60 Minutes II broke the story of prisoner torture at the American-controlled Iraqi prison of Abu Ghraib. Photographic images broadcast by the program showed naked Iraqi male prisoners being subjected to a variety of physical abuses and humiliations, many of them clearly in violation of numerous anti-torture treaties and conventions and Muslim sexual taboos. Posed in a number of the photographs were American servicemen and -women smiling into the camera, and in some cases giving cheerful thumbs-up. The photographic evidence from Abu Ghraib suggested that representatives of the liberating force in Iraq were torturing imprisoned Iraqis with seeming impunity. Condemnation by government and press representatives for the actions of those labeled as “the few” was swift. President Bush spoke publicly from the White House on April 30th saying, “I share deep disgust that those prisoners were treated the way they were treated. Their treatment does not refl ect the nature of the American people. That’s not the way we do things in America.”3 Less than a year later, stories began to be circulated in news media that prisoners were being abused by interrogators at the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Although no photographs accompanied the reports, vivid verbal descriptions portrayed scenes of interrogations that walked right up to the line of torture and, in the view of many, crossed it. Media and political discourses about Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay did not focus solely on the violations of American ethos and military honor perpetrated by the offending soldiers. Headlines that fl ooded major newspapers across the country suggested that the gender of some of the perpetrators was of particular relevance to the crime. Lynndie England, a woman soldier who appeared in several of the most notorious Abu Ghraib photographs, was quickly singled out for media attention. “Leasher Gal Lashed with Abuse Rap,”4 read one headline. “Military Charges Female Reservist,”5 “Leash Gal’s Sex Pix,”6 “A Woman Apart,”7-these headlines are representative of notice drawn to England’s identity as a woman. Another article that singled out the offending women soldiers was entitled simply “Shameless.”8
