Gary Younge (Guardian Utd): Blame the white trash

[Jack Rabbit]

From the Guardian Unlimited (UK)
Dated Monday May 17

Blame the white trash
The Abu Ghraib torturers are vile, but they are being scapegoated for crimes that are the fruit of occupation
By Gary Younge

Two young women have achieved iconic status in US President George Bush's battle between good and evil currently touring Iraq. And if the administration's propaganda machine is to be believed, one of them is good and the other one is evil.
One the side of good there is Jessica Lynch. When we first met her, in April last year, she was the plucky soldier who had been captured after a "valiant gunfight", slapped around and then rescued on camera in a "midnight ballet" by a daring posse.
Representing evil is Lynndie England. When we first met her she was smoking a cigarette and giving a thumbs up while pointing at the genitals of a naked, hooded Iraqi prisoner. She appears to be laughing; he appears to be masturbating . . . .
Lynch and England are real people - both young working-class women from West Virginia, one of the poorest states in the union. But in the hands of the Pentagon spinmeisters they are also constructs, rooted in gender and class. Lynch, we now know, never fired a shot and was well cared for while held captive. Of the Pentagon's spin machine she complained: "They used me as a way to symbolise all this stuff ... I'm not about to take credit for something I didn't do."

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[izzie]

1. He hit that right on th head. Every one I know wonder how-----

these kids could dream this out. It will not be pretty if they have to take blame. You know a 3000 dollar suit only makes you rich white trash. It is mind thing not a money thing. Rich people often forget that.