Janice Karpinski

From dKosopedia

Categories: US Military figures | Abu Ghraib scandal

Background

Col. Janice Karpinski is a lifelong Army officer with extensive experience in the Middle East. After 9/11, she was promoted to Brig. General, and given command of the 800th MP Brigade in Iraq where she oversaw a network of prisons, including Abu Ghraib. The Taguba report on abuses at Abu Ghraib found that she had shown a "lack of leadership" and recommended that she be reprimanded; eventually she was relieved of command and demoted to Colonel, and she remains the highest ranking officer that has been punished for those abuses.

There are several facts in Col. Karpinski's defense. She was apparently doing a good job before her prisons were overwhelmed by a surge of new detainees after the death of Saddam Hussein's sons. Serious abuses didn't begin in earnest until Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller arrived to introduce new interrogation techniques from Guantanamo Bay, and the worst abuses occured in cellblocks 1A and 1B, which were under the control of military intelligence officers, not Karpinski.

Source: The American Prospect, March 2006.

Rumsfeld

In an interview with the Spanish newspaper El Pais, Karpinski said that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld personally instructed her to mistreat prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Sources:Rumsfeld okayed abuses says former U.S. general, Rumsfeld autorizó las torturas en Irak.

Books

• One Woman's Army: The Commanding General of Abu Ghraib Tells Her Story - by Janice Karpinski, ISBN 1401352472