Posted on 08/27/2005 7:11:46 AM PDT by Valin
Iraqi prisoners could lift their cell doors right off their hinges. One senior sergeant whiled away his evenings blasting grazing sheep with a guard-tower machine gun. U.S. commanders didn't bother telling their troops they'd be stuck in Iraq for months more than advertised. The only woman commanding general in the war zone, Abu Ghraib prison chief Janis Karpinski, has written a memoir of her fateful year there, a candid portrait of an often dysfunctional U.S. Army - of "Sergeant Bilko meets Catch 22," as she puts it.
The book, "One Woman's Army," published by Hyperion, sheds little new light on the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, in which Karpinski, an Army Reserve brigadier general, was the highest-ranking officer punished, being relieved of her command, reprimanded and demoted to colonel.
Karpinski maintains she didn't know about the detainee torture and humiliation, that higher-ups encouraged the cruel treatment, and that male Army "Regulars" made her a scapegoat as a woman and a reservist.
She presses those points in her 209-page book and notes that events since have shown that abuse extended far beyond her 800th Military Police Brigade, to U.S. detention centers in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
But it's her vignettes of an American army at war, of the hot, dusty and snafu-filled world in which her "patched-together, under-trained, overextended, poorly supported" brigade landed, that opens windows on the reality of Iraq.
It began soon after she took command in June 2003. Within weeks, just before her Reserve unit was to return to the States, she learned the Army had cut orders back in May to extend the brigade's time in Iraq by six months. "No one had bothered to tell me," she writes.
Bungling next plagued the hurry-up efforts to rebuild Iraq's ransacked prisons to hold thousands of suspected Iraqi insurgents.
One day, she recounts, panicked Iraqi guards fled a Baghdad lockup, and when her MPs entered they found the prisoners milling around outside their cells. The contractor had installed the door hinges on the inside of the cells, and the inmates had simply lifted the pins out and walked free.
Visiting the U.S. occupation office responsible for prisons, Karpinski was amazed at the "anarchic accounting" and "carefree spending" in its cash-only operations. Two civilians there "had photos taken of themselves holding fists full of U.S. dollars, with more bills sticking out of their pockets," she writes.
At times the quality of her troops also disturbed her. She tells of a sergeant major, "more like a wild animal than a leader," who would climb Abu Ghraib's towers at night "and unload a .50-caliber machine gun on any sheep or dogs that came in range."
The most dispiriting "Catch 22," Karpinski says, involved the prickly Reserve-Regular relationship, and her dealings with "CJTF7," the Baghdad command.
"Because we were Reserves, we had to go through CJTF7 to order spare parts, and CJTF7 would not supply us because we were Reserves." It got to the point where most of her unit's vehicles on the road should not have been, she says.
When insurgent mortars knocked out water-pump power at Abu Ghraib, CJTF7 commanders told her to get her own new generator in Kuwait. But she didn't have supply trucks. "Figure it out, Janis," she says she was told. The dismal prison went without running water for two months.
Who cares a washed-out General has to say?
How many submarine captains go public saying they were scapegoated when their submarine gets grounded on a reef and they get relieved of command?
Sounds like the lady brigadier got promoted on the military's unofficial affirmative action for women program. She's not fit for command. If she was any kind of leader, she would have taken it upon herself to make things right instead of whining that her superiors didn't do it for her. When you have stars on the lapel, you're expected to make things happen, not sit around and bitch that somebody else isn't doing it for you.
The Peter Principle strikes again.
She knew nothing about the abuse, yet she knows the cruelty was encouraged by higher-ups. And if you think that makes sense, buy the book.
I predict she will join the Cindy tour any day now.
""Karpinski maintains she didn't know about the detainee torture and humiliation, that higher-ups encouraged the cruel treatment,"
Blatant contradiction. She didn't know that it was happening, but she new that it was the higher-ups that were encouraging it? That's a CYA lie if I've ever seen one.
Critical thinking 101.
Can anyone say dereliction of duty? This woman is one
sick puppy.
I use to have privates that knew more about commanding than she did.
Of course if her senior NCO's knew there stuff instead of being PA WV prison guards none of the crap would have occurred, but like the captain of the ship, you should know what you are doing.
Michael Moore? Of course that begs the question, who care what Michael Moore says.
No General, you were the unit's commander, and the buck stops with you. Despite the confusion and need to adapt and overcome in wartime, you failed to do so. You're finished. Go peddle your woe-is-me-the-female-general story to the MSM.
They deserve each other.
I don't think Karpinginski is going to make it.
It's Bush's fault.
I'll bet she blubbered when she lost her star.
I think she didn't get what she wanted out of the military, threw a tantrum and then tried to blow in the CIA and MI in a scandal. Of course, she got screwed. LOL
So this slug non-leader in a general's uniform insists she didn't know about the "cruel" treatment of the prisoners, but she knows that the higher ups encouraged it. Better get your story straight, Janis. Too late, the book is out. What a moron.
At a Superwalmart where I worked we had a store manager with over 20 years service to the company fired. His crime was a new cashier sold alcohol to an undercover agent.
Luckly this General doesn't represent most Army leaders because if she did I would suggest turning things over to Walmart.
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