Lynndie England "Rumsfeld knew"

A desaster for US foreign policy: Soldiers laugh while abusing Iraqi detainees inside Abu Ghraib prison© EPA

Thousands of Americans?

Both. I guess after the picture came out the insurgency picked up and Iraqis attacked the Americans and the British and they attacked in return and they were just killing each other. I felt bad about it, ... no, I felt pissed off. If the media hadn't exposed the pictures to that extent then thousands of lives would have been saved.

How can you blame the media? If you hadn't committed the crimes in the first place, we would have no reason to report on it.

The government had the pictures in December but they didn't come out till the end of April.

But you took the photos.

Yeah, I took the photos but I didn't make it worldwide. Yes, I was in five or six pictures and I took some pictures, and those pictures were shameful and degrading to the Iraqis and to our government. And I feel sorry and wrong about what I did. But it would not have escalated to what it did all over the world if it wouldn't have been for someone leaking it to the media. Hell, I was at Fort Bragg when the pictures came out and I had no idea.

Can you tell us about the day you heard the pictures had been made public?

The pictures came out on a Thursday, April 27 or 28. I called my Mom on Saturday. I was pregnant at the time, I didn't have a car, I didn't get the newspaper, I didn't have a TV, I didn't have a radio. I called my Mom from a payphone and she said, "There's a hundred reporters out in the front yard. You're all over the news, your face is in the papers, on CNN." I just said, "What are you talking about?" I didn't believe it. She started talking about the pictures and describing them. And I'm like, "Oh shit, how did they get out?"

Were you scared when you realized the pictures were out there?

I didn't really believe it. It was kind of like I was still in shock. I was like "No, me?"

But you knew at that stage that the investigation had been underway since January?

Yeah, but I didn't know it was so public with America, or even the world. So I went to this buddy I knew in the barracks, and I looked it up on the Internet and thought, "Oh my God." I couldn't believe it. And then I started getting paranoid. I was really getting scared at that point and thinking somebody's gonna beat the shit out of me. And I was only three months pregnant and I wasn't showing so they could beat the hell out of me and I could have lost the baby. I was pretty much alone, and I was scared. I couldn't trust anybody. It was crazy.

Did you feel ashamed when you saw the pictures in public for the first time?

At the chow hall they had these two huge big-screen-TVs so you could watch while you were eating. I was sitting there eating and there was this big TV in front of me and they started showing the pictures of me, and everybody in the room turned and looked at me. So I left and went back to my room.

So you did feel shame?

I was scared, I thought "Man, I'm gonna get the shit kicked out of me."

Any shame, any guilt?

Yeah, I thought, "These people are gonna think I'm horrible and, you know, I am horrible for doing this and getting into that." But somewhere in my mind I was thinking, you know they don't really understand the whole story.