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Gen. Karpinski: Still Deciding if She Was Responsible for her Command
Brig Gen Janis Karpinski told the BBC she was being made a "convenient scapegoat" for abuse ordered by others. Top US commander for Iraq, Gen Ricardo Sanchez, should be asked what he knew about the abuse, she told BBC Radio 4âs On The Ropes programme. One soldier has been sentenced and six others are awaiting courts martial for abuses committed at Abu Ghraib jail. Gen Karpinski said more damaging information was likely to emerge at those trials.Gen. Karpinski, your remarks to the leftist press is doing itâs own damage. You should resign your commission. Now. Gen Karpinski was in charge of the military police unit that ran Abu Ghraib and other prisons when the abuses were committed. She has been suspended but not charged. And that is far as it should go. Karpinskiâs crime was one of passivity in her command. A serious matter in a war zone. Photographs showing naked Iraqi detainees being humiliated and maltreated first started to surface in April, sparking shock and anger across the world. I was neither shocked nor angered. I thought it hilarious what we saw was considered anything to get upset about. The brutal beheading of Americans should have sparked even more shock and anger, but not to the Beeb. We know which side they are on. And Gen. Karpinski. You are talking to the Beeb, arenât you. Gen Karpinski said military intelligence took over part of the Abu Ghraib jail to "Gitmoize" their interrogations - make them more like what was happening in the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which is nicknamed "Gitmo". She said current Iraqi prisons chief Maj Gen Geoffrey Miller - who was in charge at Guantanamo Bay - visited her in Baghdad and said: "At Guantanamo Bay we learned that the prisoners have to earn every single thing that they have. He said they are like dogs and if you allow them to believe at any point that they are more than a dog then youâve lost control of them." An insult to dogs everywhere.
But, elsewhere in this exchange you say you knew elements of your own command. Either you knew or you didnât, Gen. Karpinski. Or did you know before you didnât know? Top commander Ricardo Sanchez must be asked serious questions about what he knew about the abuse and when, she said. Gen Sanchez said in May that he took a personal responsibility for the abuse by soldiers at Abu Ghraib jail. But he denied authorising interrogation techniques such as sleep deprivation, stress positions or sensory deprivation. Last week, he asked to be excused from any role in reviewing the results of an investigation into the abuses. He requested that a higher-ranking general take on that task, Pentagon officials said. A US general who has investigated the abuse has blamed the soldiers - and found no evidence "of a policy or a direct order given to these soldiers to conduct what they did". Thatâs coz Gen. Karpinski was much more concerned about being a general in the US Army than actually being a general in the US Army. But Gen Karpinski believes the soldiers had not taken the pictures of their own accord. You said you didnât know, Gen. Karpinski. Which is the lie? "I know that the MP [military police] unit that these soldiers belonged to hadnât been in Abu Ghraib long enough to be so confident that one night or early morning they were going to take detainees out of their cells, pile them up and photograph themselves in various positions with these detainees." Which is it? Either you knew about what was going on or you didnât. Or did you just know enough about the possible tendencies of elements in your command to make this statement? And you failed to monitor them. "How it happened or why those photographs came to the Criminal Investigation Divisionâs attention in January I think will probably come out very clearly at each individualâs court martial." No question it will come out, but not at trial and not publicly, Gen. Karpinski. You just screwed yourself as a military officer for the allies. Have a nice life. You shoulda shut up and let events take their course; sorta like what you did at Aby Ghraib. Posted by: badanov 2004-06-20 |
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