Posted on 08/27/2005 7:11:46 AM PDT by Valin
This affirmative action general was promoted based upon her sex and failed due to her sheer incompetence. Blaming your troops for the failings of your command is REVOLTING and utterly at odds with a commander's responsibility to suffer the results of her unit's failings. Feh!
>>One senior sergeant whiled away his evenings blasting grazing sheep with a guard-tower machine gun.
Umm, Janis was the commander over that. If this sort of thing was going on, it was because she didn't have control over her command.
Good riddance to a Clinton-era female affirmative action promotion.
Did she forget that she was a general and commander of the installation? Why didn't she take action to correct the person's behavior and/or have him removed?
Karpinski talks like she was a buck private that couldn't do anything about any of this. A commander that sees this, does nothing about it, and complains later is a total loser in my book.
"Figure it out, Janis," she says she was told. The dismal prison went without running water for two months.
There's initiative that I like to see in a general. < /sarcasm > As a commander, Karpinski must have expected to sit around a plush office sipping cognac and hitting the officer's club around 2:00 every day.
It appears that Karpinski forgot that she was responsible for keeping running water going. If her people aren't trained properly, it's her responsibility to get them trained right. Karpinski must have moved up the ranks in do-nothing jobs and when she was put in command of a field unit, she didn't have a clue how to run any aspect of it. All she does is complain that others weren't doing it for her. Her lack of discipline, lack of initiative, and sense of futility appears to have been picked up quickly by people under her. 'If the commander doesn't care, why should I?'
She probably spent her whole career proof-reading policy memos and fetching coffee for various commanders. I'm betting she expected to get a do-nothing job in the Pentagon and being home by 2:00 every day. When she was expected to go command a field unit, she was totally out of her element. The Army should be very embarrassed by promoting Karpinski past the rank of captain.
No joke. This wench isn't worthy to shine the bannisters in the Pentagon.
Front-runner for Line of the Day.
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.
proof she had ZERO clout and ZERO friends... to say a GENERAL couldn't get a pump in less than two months on her own initiative is proof she wasn't up to the job!!!
the silly cow could of ordered one from the USA and had it shipped over there in less than a week if she really wanted to get it done. and it still didn't say is SHE figured it out of if somebody else did... what a POS.
I'm thinking she might have been out of her element as soon as she got to 1st Lt. She was a freakin' GENERAL and had that little command over her troops?? Gimme a break. (My chief would have put a quick end to any of that crap before the ensign even knew it happened.)
As to your Catch 22:
"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."
WOW 'general', that is some Catch 22. Almost as good as the 'real one'. But I suspect you're a lying skank as no other Reserve Commander seemed to have your singular problem with supplies. Now why would that be?!?
And I wonder 'general', did you ever even read Joseph Heller's classic? Or just hear about at the 'LOC' (Lesbian Officers Club). And if you did read it, which I doubt, I suspect you think you're Yossarian don't you? Where you were constantly tormented at every turn and frustrated by seemingly nonsensical regulations and insane orders and that everyone was trying to kill you. But you better watch out 'general', because as Yossarian found out, 'they' can and will "disappear you" if you cause trouble.
That being said, as Catch 22 goes, instead of Yossarian, you remind me more of "Nately's Whore".
A Navy storekeeper on the other hand... :=)
could have probably have 'acquired' one in two days (as long as you're not too particular where it came from)
Janis Karpinski would have us believe that her junior officers and enlisted people were screwing off, shooting machine guns, and skylarking right in front of her like they didn't even know she was there. Yeah, right!
This loser wouldn't have made it as a lieutenant, much less a general. How pathetic.
I have a certain amount of sympathy for this female general. I suspect that the military scapegoated every person they prosecuted in the Abu Ghraib scandal. Seems it was all done to accommodate the PC crowd.
As a retired E8, I can say with some authority that this "General" Officer appears to have spent her career (at least that portion in Iraq) sitting around thinking up ways to pass-the-buck and dream up excuses for being so incompetant. Neither she nor her Officers nor her senior Enlisted, it appears, ever inspected her command. Neither she nor her Officers executed command authority over their "misfits" and thugs masquerading as soldiers and, according to various reports and her own admissions, they were either ignorant of misdeeds, or simply ignored them, i.e.:the Sgt who got entertainment by frequently killing local animals with a tower-mounted .50cal, as well as others since made public. She displayed her serious and grievious lack of responsibility, leadership and command ability by whining and crying over failure of other commands to perform functions and decisions and directives that were specifically and militarily hers. This "Officer" deserved and should have been courts-martialed, reduced in rank and/or drummed out of the Service.
She screws up, gets demoted, and now writes a book to tell how it was all everyone else's fault. I would expect better from a brigadier general.
Absolutely... 8^)
You got that right, this is pathetic. I don't know what jobs she had in her career, but she appears to be somebody who had do-nothing jobs her whole career and had no idea how to do anything when she got into a command job. The Army should be straight-up embarrassed to the point that they are re-writing the officer training and promotion criteria as we speak. This is unacceptable. Karpinski, her 4-star, and the Secy. of the Army should be standing in front of Congress in public hearings for this.
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