Sivits Your Life

‘IN what the Guardian calls an “Oprah Winfrey moment”, Jeremy Sivits became the first US soldier to stand trial for the revolting events in the Abu Ghraib jail.

‘And welcome to the Jerry Sivits Show…’

Despite the tears and remorse (“I’ve let everybody down. I love the army. I love the flag. All I wanted to be was a US soldier”), Sivits was given the maximum sentence permissible by US military law, and was jailed for one year and dishonourably discharged from the army.

It’d be fitting if that year-long incarceration took Sivits, the man who took the photos of Americans piling up prisoners into a naked human pyramid, to the Abu Ghraib jail, where he’d be cared for by some Iraqi prison guards.

But the American way is about justice, not revenge, isn’t it? And, as such, Sivits will need to hang around to testify against other soldiers implicated in the scandal.

Soldiers like Staff Sgt Ivan Frederick, who Sivits saw punching a prisoner hard in the chest; Cpl Charles Graner, who Sivits watched punch a captive in the temple; and the as yet unnamed woman jailer who scrawled the word “rapist” on an Iraqi’s leg.

And then there’s Lynndie England, the most easy-to-despise of all the disgraced soldiers, who, the Times hears Sivits say, “stomped” on the toes of prisoners, “commenting on the size of their penises” as she posed for those hellish pictures.

Taking a look at the protagonists, Sivits’ weeping confession might be akin to what passes for entertainment on the Oprah Winfrey show, but it’s all surely more Jerry Springer fodder.

Although, maybe not that highbrow…’

Posted: 20th, May 2004 | In: Broadsheets Comment | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink