Rumsfeld "ordered torture"
10/27/2005 3:30:00 PM GMT
"This was the command of Donald Rumsfeld himself?" - YES
Speaking to 'Democracy Now', Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, former
military police commander at the centre of the Iraqi prisoner scandal,
published a book, "One Woman's Army: The Commanding General of Abu
Ghraib Tells Her Story", in which she described her experience at the
Iraqi prison.
Karpinski, the highest-ranking officer demoted in connection with the
abuse scandal, has admitted she violated the Geneva Conventions,
however she said that part of the blame "Goes All the Way to The Top",
stated democracynow.org.
The abuse scandal first broke out in April 2004, when photographs
depicting the sexual abuse and torture of naked Iraqi detainees were
released by the world media, sparking outrage worldwide.
Karpinski said that military intelligence took over part of the Abu
Ghraib jail to "Gitmoize" their interrogations, in other words,
applying methods and tactics used at the U.S. detention center at
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Karpinski, who said she was being made a "convenient scapegoat" for
abuse ordered by top-ranking officials, called on holding Donald
Rumsfeld, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, Alberto Gonzalez and Maj. Gen.
Geoffrey Miller accountable for what happened.
AMY GOODMAN: "Today, Janis Karpinski joins us for the hour here on
Democracy Now! And she has just published a book about her experience.
It's called One Woman's Army: The Commanding General of Abu Ghraib
Tells Her Story. Colonel Janis Karpinski, welcome to Democracy Now!"
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: "Good morning. Glad to be here. "
AMY GOODMAN: "It's good to have you with us. How did you end up at Abu
Ghraib?"
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: "Abu Ghraib was one of 17 prison facilities that
we were responsible for in Iraq. The units deployed from January
throughout 2003 up 'til about April of 2003 to conduct a prisoner of
war mission. The units are trained to do prisoner of war operations,
and a prisoner of war camp was established in Iraq, very close to the
Kuwait border. So, the units -- the unit members, the soldiers, all
believed that they were going to come home after victory was declared
on the First of May when the President arrived on the aircraft carrier.
They allowed me to deploy to Iraq to join my units, to take command of
the units, although I was told that the majority of the units, the
soldiers, would be coming back home because the mission was complete. "
"When I arrived in Kuwait, I was told that the units were going to be
staying for an additional two months, because we were assigned a new
mission for prison restoration and training, assisting the prison's
experts up at Ambassador Bremer's headquarters in Baghdad, with
training Iraqi guards to conduct prison and detention operations. So we
relocated. There was never any discussion about whether we were
properly equipped or prepared to take on this mission. It was simply
assigned to us, and very quickly the two-month extension became a
four-month extension, and then it became 365 days, boots on the ground,
for all of the units that were deployed. "
"So, soldiers were sent to war with the full expectations that they
would be home in six months or less, as they were repeatedly told at
the mobilization stations in the United States, and once they were
there, they couldn't get out. The extension took them six additional
months, tremendous impact on reserve and National Guard soldiers, in
particular, but nonetheless, this was the mission. They went forward to
different locations in Iraq and took on this new detention operation --
mission. "
"Abu Ghraib was the largest of our facilities. It was located in the
Sunni Triangle. It was never a good location for any kind of detention
operations, let alone the largest detention operation and then,
subsequently, the interrogation center for Iraq. We were being mortared
every night at that location. We received no combat support for force
protection to prevent any of those attacks from occurring, and the unit
that was out there doing that mission, that particular mission at Abu
Ghraib, was not equipped with any kind of combat platforms to give
adequate protection to prisoners or soldiers."
AMY GOODMAN: "How many M.P.s, military police, were under your command?
"
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: 3,400 soldiers were under the 800th Military
Police Brigade, and probably 2,400 of them, 2,500 of them were military
police personnel. "
AMY GOODMAN: "And how many prisoners were there? "
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: "At Abu Ghraib alone, the prisoner population did
reach over 7,000 by the end of -- nearing the end of 2003, but we
processed over 40,000 prisoners during the course of the time that the
800th M.P. Brigade was responsible for prisoner operations."
AMY GOODMAN: "Talk about General Miller. Who is he?"
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: "General Miller was sent to visit Iraq by
Secretary Rumsfeld and the Undersecretary Cambone. And they came --
General Miller came to visit from Guantanamo Bay. He was the commander
of detention operations at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and he was sent to
assist the military intelligence interrogators with enhancing their
techniques. And he brought with him the techniques that were tested and
in use at Guantanamo Bay. And he brought a team of about 20 people, 22
people with him to discuss all aspects of interrogation operations, and
actually, he did an in-brief. I was invited to participate or to attend
to listen to his in-brief, because he was working almost exclusively
with the military intelligence people and the military intelligence
interrogators while he was there."
"But we owned the locations that he was going to visit, and he
ultimately selected Abu Ghraib to be the focus of his efforts, and he
told me that he was going to make it the interrogation center for Iraq.
He used the term, he was going to "Gitmo-ize" the operation and use the
M.P.s to assist the interrogators to enhance interrogations and to
obtain more actionable intelligence. "
AMY GOODMAN: "What about the dogs? Is that when the dogs were
introduced? "
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: Shortly after his visit, he -- again, he was
spending most of his time with the commander of the Military
Intelligence Brigade, Colonel Pappas. In his in-brief, his introduction
when he first arrived there with his team, he responded to one of the
interrogators, the military interrogator's question, and he was
listening to the comments, the criticisms that they were doing these
interviews and they were not obtaining really valuable information, so
he was there to assist them with different -- implementing different
techniques to get more actionable intelligence.
And one of the interrogators just asked the question about what he
would recommend that they could do immediately, because they thought
that they were doing a pretty good job with identifying the people who
may have additional value or more military intelligence value, and
General Miller said -- his first observation was that they were not --
they were being too nice to them. They were not being aggressive
enough. And he used the example at Guantanamo Bay that the prisoners
there, when they're brought in, that they're handled by two military
policemen. They're escorted everywhere they go -- belly chains, leg
irons, hand irons -- and he said, "You have to treat them like dogs."
AMY GOODMAN: "Now, Colonel Pappas ran the prison within the prison, is
that right? He ran something called the "hard site"?"
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: "He ran the interrogation operations within the
prison, that's correct. And it was -- Cell Block 1A and 1B were the two
maximum security wings of the hard site, and during General Miller's
visit, either at his order or at his request, General Miller told --
instructed Colonel Pappas to get control of Cell Block 1A. "
AMY GOODMAN: "Treat the prisoners like dogs. That explains the leashes
and making prisoners bark?"
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: "It seems to be consistent with those
photographs, yes, with the dog collar, the dog leash and un-muzzled
dogs. And, in fact, those techniques have appeared in several
memorandums that have been signed by senior people."
AMY GOODMAN: "When did you start to understand what was happening?"
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: "About the situation at Abu Ghraib, I was first
informed by an email that I received on classified - what they call
"classified traffic." I opened it up late one night on the 12th of
January of 2004. And it was from the commander of the Criminal
Investigation Division. He sent me an email and said, "Ma'am, I just
want to make you aware, I'm going in to brief the C.G.," meaning
General Sanchez, "on the progress of the investigation at Abu Ghraib.
This involves the allegations of abuse and the photographs." That was
the first I heard of it. "
"I did not receive that email or phone call or a message from General
Sanchez himself, who would ultimately attempt to hold me fully
responsible for this, but from the C.I.D. Commander. And I was alarmed
at just that short email. I was not in Baghdad at the time. I was at
another location very close to the Iranian border, so we made
arrangements to leave at the crack of dawn to drive down to Abu Ghraib
to see what we could find out about this ongoing investigation and went
through the battalion over to Cell Block 1A. The people who would
normally be working on any shift were not working. The sergeant that I
spoke to said that their records had been seized by the investigators,
and they started a new log to account for prisoners, make sure that
their meals were on time, those kind of things, and he pointed out a
memo that was posted on a column just outside of their small
administrative office. And the memorandum was signed by the Secretary
of Defense, and -
AMY GOODMAN: "By Donald Rumsfeld."
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: "By Donald Rumsfeld. And said - it discussed
interrogation techniques that were authorized. It was one page. It
talked about stress positions, noise and light discipline, the use of
music, disrupting sleep patterns, those kind of techniques. But there
was a handwritten note out to the side. And this was a copy. It was a
photocopy of the original, I would imagine. But it was unusual that an
interrogation memorandum would be posted inside of a detention cell
block, because interrogations were not conducted in the cell block."
AMY GOODMAN: "This was the command of Donald Rumsfeld himself?"
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: "Yes. "
AMY GOODMAN: "Talking about the techniques?"
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: "The techniques that were allowed. And there was
a note - handwritten note out to the side of where the list of tactics,
interrogation tactics were. It said, "Make sure this happens." And it
seemed to be in the same handwriting as the signature. That's what I
could say about the memorandum."
AMY GOODMAN: "People understood it to be from Rumsfeld?"
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: "Yes, they certainly did. And I never heard a
word - I did - certainly did see the reference to photographs in the
original email, but when I asked the soldier, when I asked the
sergeant, when I asked the commanders out at Abu Ghraib, what did they
know about, they knew nothing about it. They had heard that there were
some photographs, but they did not know any specifics."
AMY GOODMAN: The Geneva - the ghost detainees, is this the only time
you believe you broke the Geneva Conventions?
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: Well, I will tell you that all of the prison
facilities were right on the line, not in terms of how the prisoners
were being treated, but the conditions were very austere. We were
keeping prisoners in the outside camps only for as long as we needed to
because the temperatures were 120 degrees, 140 degrees by noontime, so
I would say that we were very close to being in violation of fair
treatment and humane treatment of detainees.
AMY GOODMAN: Did you ever speak directly to Donald Rumsfeld?
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: "No, I - Yes, he came to visit, and I expressed
my concerns about the conditions in the prisons. I spoke directly to
Ambassador Bremer nearly every week. I spoke to General Sanchez at
least once every week, reported it in the updates and the night time
briefings to General Wojdakowski, who was the deputy at CJTF-7, about
the lack of funding, even the basic supplies: a basin for washing, a
change of clothing, and the funding that was supposed to come from the
prisons department at Ambassador Bremer's
headquarters. We never saw one-tenth of the funds that we were supposed
to receive. "
I said bark like a dog.
--
If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to
worry about answers. - Thomas Pynchon
"If evidence of a fact is clear, positive, uncontradicted and of such
nature it cannot rationally be disbelieved, the court must instruct
that fact has been established as a matter of law." Roberts v. Del
Monte Properties Co., 111 CA2d. 69 (1952).
They will do whatever we let them get away with. - Joseph Heller
When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however
improbable, must be the truth. - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
