---Who hired her? Who kept her in a position of control, if she is as you want to make her out to be, an alcoholic?---
I brought up alcoholism because Karpinski reminds me of a 1st Sergeant I had at the Presidio of SF. This 1st Sergeant had been stationed there for a number of years prior to a 1 year assignment in Korea, and was returned to the choice Presidio post right after. Within six months she had been pulled over by the MP's 3 times for DUI. By regulation she should have been sent to the Drug and Alcohol people for an evaluation after the first incident, but that never happened. This was a time when the Army was cracking down hard too.
Furthermore, one day she shows up sporting a cast on her arm. It turns out she had broken her arm in a brawl in a downtown bar. She had been scheduled for the Sergeant Major's Academy before all this and last I saw she was packing to go there. She was a very intelligent, energetic, and capable person and a drunk. At the time E-5's and below were being processed for instant discharges for DUIs.
Somewhere along the line this person had cultivated the patronage of powerful people. Karpinski is just a dead ringer for that 1st Sergeant, only now with her patronage pulled, she's reacting with the full over-dramatic range of denial and finger pointing that is typical of alcoholics once their denial mechanism starts to crumble.