You may recall the unimpressive Brig. Gen. Janet Karpinski, who was demoted to Colonel after the Army found her negligent in the Abu Ghraib case. CNN took up her cause yesterday with an exceptionally empty-headed article, claiming that the recently released Bybee memo vindicated Karpinsky:
She said she was a scapegoat. She said she was just following orders. She said she was demoted unfairly.
Now, retired Army Col. Janis Karpinski can say: I told you so.
…
“I will tell you that when I read those memorandums, when they were first released a few days ago, I did — I did feel this sense of being able to exhale after five years,” Karpinski said.
The fact that she is taking this tack on this story tells you all you need to know about her character. Here’s why:
- The Bybee memos had nothing to do with her orders – they were a legal opinion created to give guidance to the administration. They don’t constitute new information in h er case: her orders and how well she followed them constituted the entirety of her court-martial. The appearance of the Bybee memos does not suddenly mean she did a better job commanding her group.
- Janet Karpinski was not demoted for following the Bybee memo. She was demoted for allowing her people to run rampant and abuse prisoners. In all cases where harsh interrogation techniques were authorized, careful monitoring and control were supposed to be in place. Not so much under Janet’s lax command.
- The fact remains that all of the Iraqi prisons received the same orders and guidance from on high. Only Janet’s interpreted those orders to mean that the guards should be running around the halls playing Naked Arab Jenga.™
Why CNN would believe that this changed anything at all about her situation is hard to understand, if you start with the presumption that their staff is neutral and logical. If you start with the observation that after her discharge she became a liberal cause celebré, however, CNN’s attempt to use her as a tool to indict the administration is no surprise at all.
May 15, 2009 at 10:09 pm
Your opinion is obviously obtained from sitting at a desk. I was not offered a Courts Martial. I never saw one person in my chain of command. They simply pointed a finger and got away with it, temporarily. They needed a scapegoat and they found one. The memos show the truth — the administration crafted and implemented the policies to do exactly what the Soldiers were instructed to do, as seen in the photographs. You remind me of an idiot JAG Officer who was sucking up to Sanchez for the entire time he was in Iraq, looking for a longer tour because he had a good income. He salivated at the thought of directling blame towards me. He, of course, was wrong too.
When were you in Iraq? Never? I thought so.
May 16, 2009 at 6:43 am
If you’re really Janis Karpinski, you’ve done an outstanding job of making my point about your character. Reread your comment and note that there is not a single point that actually defends your record: it’s all blame-casting and personal attacks.
If you’re not Janis Karpinski, then you shouldn’t be maligning her like that.
May 16, 2009 at 8:23 am
Man, geoff always gets the best trolls.
May 21, 2009 at 10:40 pm
As a former Intelligence Sergeant of the 290th Military Police Brigade (deactivated in Oct. 1985), the predecessor of the 800th Military Police Brigade, (Karpinski’s unit) I believe that the Bush-era memos had nothing to do with the sophomoric behavior of the soldiers at Abu Ghraib. The chain of command in such a unit is very short: An Intelligence Sergeant, his supervisor, the G-2 Intelligence Officer and his superior, the commanding General. Karpinski said “The soldiers were receiving instructions from people who obviously had experience at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, or Bagram Air Force Base, or somewhere in between.” Regardless of who else may have been attached or assigned to her unit, she failed in the proper command of her unit and is making excuses for her own ineptness and incompetence. She got off lightly with only a reduction in rank.