Abu Ghraib Continues

Demoted Abu Ghraib General Karpinski speaks out:

"All the way up to the top of the Pentagon, they have a long-standing mindset about reservists and National Guard soldiers, and we are considered disposable," Karpinski said in an exclusive interview with ABC News' "Nightline." "We go back to our lives as civilians once we're released from active duty."

It has been a year since photos became public depicting U.S. soldiers posing with Iraqi detainees in humiliating and abusive situations. The images shocked the world and shed light on the military investigation into conditions at the facility. The soldiers involved say they were following orders, while the Pentagon maintains they were a rogue group acting for their own amusement.

Only two members of the military brass have been disciplined so far, most prominently Karpinski, who was commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade and was in charge of military prisons in Iraq — despite never having run a prison system. She was reprimanded, demoted to colonel and relieved of her duties, but the U.S. military did not bring criminal charges against her. [Note: it has been discovered that this information may be very misleading. Karpinski's demotion may have been pinned to other, previous outlying behaviour but may not have been directly related to her service at Abu Ghraib. This is, of course, a significant indicator on the military's ability to holdinganybody accountable for these crimes.]

In the "Nightline" interview, Karpinski said the events at Abu Ghraib took place when she no longer was in direct control of the prison. She also said blaming her is "convenient" for the military, especially given what she sees as the Army's disdain for the reservists.

"And I think it goes a long way toward explaining why we were not well received by Gen. [Ricardo] Sanchez or his entire staff," she said of the former commander of U.S. forces in Iraq. "They didn't want to acknowledge that they needed a reserve brigade, especially when commanded by a female general officer, to do this critical mission."

Fascinating infighting in the military, potentially with sexist base. All of this seems very reasonable to me: Sanchez' role in the abuses cannot be understated. They began when he stepped in and pulled Karpinski away from a more active role, confused the hierarchy, and left a vacuum of responsibility.

The Tugubu report does, of course, hilight Karpinski's failures in leadership as promoting an atmosphere condusive to these horrible events, so she is certainly not without blame.

Karpinski goes on to say that it is possible abuses are still occuring in Abu Ghraib and other prisons.

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UPDATE
Karpinski claims she was vindicated for the "shop lifting incident," and that the D.O.D. resurrected it and reconstituted it in order to demote her.

This brings up an interesting question of our D.O.D. - Karpinski, no matter what happened, clearly was singled out as the fall-guy among the military brass concerning Abu Ghraib, despite the evidence that she did not institute the precedent for abuse, like Gen. Miller. So, our D.O.D. wants to demote and punish those "responsible," while refusing to punish them for the actual crime they committed (in Karpinski's case, criminal negligence comes to mind).

They will, however, reconstruct immoral previous behaviour which has little to no bearing on events at hand in order to justify the punishment. Then, they will create the PR that insinuates this punishment was the culmination of their investigation for this systematic abuse, and pretend as though Karpinski was demoted for her role in Abu Ghraib.

This is really damned complicated! Why all these unneccesary steps of punishment?

Why? Because they D.O.D. does not want criminal charges brought to light in Abu Ghraib, because they know an investigation will yield a criminal system implicating all the way to the top. All this punishment construction that they have to do is a way of guarding their own asses, while creating the image of actual reconciliation.

The world demands actual reconciliation and justice. And the D.O.D. refuses.