Man! She looks like Rummy in this pic.
Posted on 11/11/2006 4:46:06 AM PST by mcg2000
(CBS) An American general caught up in the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal is now at the center of a new controversy involving allegations about her past, but she's calling it a smear campaign.
Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, who claims she has been made a scapegoat for the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, is the subject of an investigation by the Army Inspector General involving an alleged shoplifting incident in October of 2002, one year before the abuses began, reports CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin.
According to military sources, Karpinski was caught shoplifting a $22 bottle of perfume from a military department store — or PX — at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida.
When CBS News asked her about it, she said it never happened.
When CBS' Martin asked if Karpinski denied she was ever arrested or picked up in the MacDill Air Force Base store for shoplifting, she responded, "That's correct."
Sources say an Air Force report details the shoplifting incident, but Pentagon officials refuse all comment, saying that would violate Karpinski's rights under the Privacy Act.
Karpinski says if such a document exists, it's a forgery designed to discredit her for speaking out.
Karpinski was a colonel at the time of the alleged shoplifting, but when she showed Defense Secretary Rumsfeld around Abu Ghraib, she was wearing the one star of a brigadier general.
The Army is investigating how — despite the shoplifting report — she was promoted and placed in command of all the prisons in Iraq.
Sources say Karpinski was able to go into counseling and do community service because she was a first-time offender and the dollar amount was so small. That apparently kept the incident out of court records and her service file.
But Army officers say it still should have surfaced in the course of background checks that normally include questionnaires asking if you've been arrested in the past seven years. Whether that lapse was the Army's fault or Karpinski's is now under investigation. Her attorney promises she will cooperate fully in any investigation.
©MMIV, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Looks like the payback is working two ways, however. The woman is delusional if she thought that conniving generals in glass barracks could throw stones unchallenged.
How coincidental that her history should surface now, hah.
Madam, don't mess with Texas (or the equivalent).
Leni
Read the article again. You will see that for some reason, the incident was kept out of her records. The other point is that she was a USAR officer. Promotion to Brigadier General for USAR and ARNG officers is an entirely different kettle of fish than promotion for Regular Army officers.
No.
Is she going to testify against Rumsfeld?
Man! She looks like Rummy in this pic.
About 25 years ago I used to do criminal defense work, as many attorneys did early in their career, and I practiced in an area near quite a few military bases. Shoplifters at the PX were tried in the Federal Magistrate's Court -- the same place where Sandy Berger entered his guilty plea -- and, over the years, and with unsettling frequency, I represented military wives who were accused of shoplifting at the PX. These cases always fell into the same pattern. The defendant was a middle-aged woman, typically of plain appearance, and one who showed (what to me were) clear signs of depression. Her husband was always at one of those critical career junctures, on the cusp of either being promoted to the next rank, or forced out. The items she was accused of shoplifting/ concealing were typically luxury items, and often perfume, as in this case. Oddly, there was no financial stress in the family, and, thus, no need to shoplift an item that could easily have been purchased.
The initial interview always went the same way. The client was deeply ashamed and quick to criticize and/or degrade herself for what she had done, although she could never give any coherent reason for having done it. However -- and this is the point, I think -- she usually never asked about the consequences to herself, but rather, first and foremost, she worried about the effect all this would have on her husband's career. She was not necessarily sorry for having shoplifted -- she hardly knew why she did it anyway -- but she way tremendously alert to the effect it would have on her husband.
I probably represented more than a dozen women who fell into this exact pattern, and the similarity of these cases has always impressed me. If I had to speculate, I'd say that they felt overlooked, and neglected in favor of their husband career in the military, and this was perhaps their way of drawing attention back to themselves -- albeit in a very destructive way.
Probably lifted Old Spice. :-)
Good grief. I thought negligence, incompetence, and dereliction of duty were bad enough, but she couldn't stop there.
Thanks for that very interesting post.
Very insightful ... thank you for taking the time.
A male, Yes! Not only would they not have made Colonel they'd be gone from the service, but remember she was protected/helped along by DACOWITS, so the normal rules didn't apply.
Sure they would. They cover up for women pilots when they crash, and they lower physical standards across the spectrum to meet politically correct quotas.
Uh, I would say she's a flat-out pathological liar.
I recall the prison incident, someone mentioned she is a friend of #97.
I think Togo West had already retired and was appointed by x42 to be Sec of the Army.
and yes, I think he resigned his appointed position because of the theivery.
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