Blaberings of an American Army sociopath

In a sworn statement to investigators, Pfc. Lynndie England explained the mystery of why soldiers at Abu Ghraib took pictures of detainees masturbating and piled naked with plastic sandbags over their heads by saying, "We thought it looked funny, so pictures were taken."

England's statement, made May 5, narrates the photos now at the center of the prison abuse scandal in specific detail and a matter-of-fact tone, describing the abuse as routine and sometimes amusing, but almost never, to her mind, out of bounds.

She explains how she put a strap around a detainee's neck and forced him and others to run and crawl down a hallway for "approximately four to six hours"; how one soldier would regularly throw a Nerf football at detainees with bags over their heads "to scare them"; how one soldier would kick detainees and cause open wounds, then "would personally stitch detainees if the wound weren't too bad," according to a copy of her statement given to the New York Times.

Asked if she ever physically abused a detainee, England said, "Yes, I stepped on some of them, push them or pull them, but nothing extreme."