Naked men stacked in pyramids, others with bags over their heads, tied to leashes.

These are the pictures that made the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq infamous. Those U.S. soldiers in the pictures have either served or are still serving jail time for participating in those snapshots. Among them is Lynndie England of Fort Ashby, West Virginia.

The then 23-year-old Army Reservist was court martialed for taking part in the humiliation of the prisoners. But, she claims she was a scapegoat.

“I was only in a handful of pictures out of the 1,300,” England told WAJR-AM’s Morgantown AM Friday. “And they decided to pick the small woman that’s in maybe a handful of these to put out there.”

England pleaded guilty to abuse charges in a plea deal that resulted in a one year sentence.

“At the time I had a six month old baby and in my mind with a plea deal, I was going to get less time. I was looking at 16 years with all the charges added up and I was like, no, no way.”

So she’s served her time and now she is speaking out in a book written by Gary Winkler, entitled “Tortured: Lynndie England, Abu Ghraib and the photographs that shocked the world.”

“[I just wanted] to get my story out there because so many people had the wrong opinion [of me] and I just wanted to set the story straight,” said England.

England still claims that the prisoner abuse was orchestrated by her superiors, including her then-boyfriend Corporal Charles Graner who is still serving a ten year sentence. She says that she did not want to be in the pictures and was only doing it out of her love for Graner.

“I really did not want to be in the pictures. At all. Especially some of the more explicit pictures. I voiced my opinion [that] I did not want to be in those,” said England. “In my mind, at the time, I was in a foreign country, in the middle of a war and I was in love and to me he was my protector, my safe zone and if he wanted me to stand here and do this [I did]. And then he [says to me], ‘if you love me you will do this’ and in my mind I’m thinking ‘I don’t want him to leave me, I don’t want to lose this protection.’”

But, according to England, it didn’t stop with Graner. She says the abuse of prisoners was well-known in the prison and encouraged by her superiors and those in the FBI, CIA and NSA.

“At the time it was going on everyone within the walls of that prison knew what was happening,” said England. “If you had a computer or a camera in that prison you had at least one copy of some kind of picture.”

“As much as people would like to believe, it was going on before our unit got there. I witnessed [Graner] telling his platoon sergeant and platoon leader. He was showing them the pictures, [telling them] ‘look what MI (military intelligence) is making us do’ and I heard them say ‘keep it up, do whatever MI says.’”

England claims that their duty was to “soften up” the prisoners for interrogation, through tactics like, “exhaustion, sleep deprivation, wear them down physically and mentally with stress positions.”

While England was never present for the interrogations she believed that whatever they were doing was working because they were encouraged to continue.

Eventually someone in the Pentagon caught wind of what was going on at Abu Ghraib and an investigation was launched. It had been going on for several months before the pictures leaked to the media and the firestorm ensured.

“It would not have been blown out of proportion had it not been in the media, I think.” Said England.