Posted on 08/19/2004 3:59:13 AM PDT by Leroy S. Mort
WASHINGTON (AP) - Two dozen people will be blamed by an Army investigation into the abuse of inmates at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, says a senior defense official.
The official, who spoke Wednesday on condition of anonymity, provided no details of the report. Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, would say only that the report was nearing completion.
However, The New York Times reported the inquiry found no evidence of direct blame above the rank of the colonel who commanded the military intelligence unit at the prison.
Photos of the prisoner abuse, which included beatings and sexual humiliation, created a worldwide scandal when they were published in April.
The Times reported in Thursday's editions that the inquiry found that senior American commanders created conditions that allowed abuses to occur at the prison because they failed to provide leadership and sufficient resources.
The report also will cite military medical personnel who saw or learned of abuse when treating injured detainees but failed to report it up the chain of command, the Times said.
Maj. Gen. George R. Fay opened the inquiry, which will blame military intelligence personnel, civilian contractors and Central Intelligence Agency officers, the newspaper reported. The report will be thousands of pages long.
Senior officers in Baghdad and in Washington were not found to have played a role in ordering or allowing the abuse, according to the Times report of the inquiry.
``There was no direct policy directives out of the Pentagon that caused this,'' said an unidentified official quoted by the Times. The official said that Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the former top commander in Iraq, did not issue orders to abuse detainees.
However, the report will say that inadequate oversight and discipline created an environment in which changing guidelines for supervising and questioning 45,000 detainees throughout Iraq could be ignored.
Another official said the report found there were two kinds of abuse: violent or sexual abuse that was intentional and abuse that was a result of misinterpretation of changing procedures.
Seven military police soldiers have been charged, and one pleaded guilty in exchange for his testimony against the others.
So Karpinsky gets a pass?
Maybe not. Note that they said "direct blame." That leaves open the option of Karpinski getting hit for her leadership failures and ineptitude. It just means she didn't go out there and say, "Hey, Private Englund, leash up that towelhead and take some pictures of you pointing at his weiner"...but it does mean that she created the climate that made it possible, because she was a lousy officer.
I doubt ol' Janis will see the inside of Leavenworth for this, but I would guess that her career is toast.
}:-)4
Abu Ghraib is nothing compared to what most countries practice. They were just adept in hiding it.
Yep, ol' 24, Jeff Gordon did it.
They wanted Rumsfeld's head in a dirty bucket.
So Karpinsky gets a pass?
Loks like it. At least offically, she can howevever kiss her career goodbye. Her next posting will be Adak counting trees.
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