Abu Ghraib Head: Bush Administration Scapegoated Us

CBS:

Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, who ran Iraq prisons in 2003, including the notorious Abu Ghraib prison was insistent that all orders on interrogation practices came from the top down during the Bush administration on CBS News' The Early Show this morning.

Read the whole story: CBS

Comments

[BabblingBrooks]

Just the way OJ Simpson was scapegoated...have you noticed that NOBODY IN PRISON IS GUILTY? They were all railroaded by evil prosecutors!

[LinkSync]

Dear General Janis Karpinski,

The "Following orders" defense has been tried in the past.
It can not apply in matters or treason or others of similar weight.
Ask Lt. Kelly.

Each citizen has a duty to act honorably even when it is difficult or dangerous to do so.
Our elected officials and our military forces have that duty explicitly called forth in their oaths of service and so even more, we expect honorable behavior from them.

I am sorry for you and your underlings as I am willing to acknowledge you are all fine people.

However the fact remains that actions were taken in our Nations name that are more than just illegal or immoral, they are the acts of traitors in my view.
If those acts took place while following orders, that only means the order givers need also to be held to account.
The fact that circumstances were difficult has no bearing.
In my view you all got off very lightly; you should have been hanged, and so should those that ordered or enabled torture also be hanged.
Again, this is only my own, perhaps to you, harsh view.
Honor is a harsh mistress though, as you well know.

We will get it right now, and so you may die in peace whenever you do die, knowing your Nation which you so love is healthy and free and brave once again.

Perhaps small comfort for you but maybe worth everything?

[JISantiago]

Gen Karpinski says the guidelines on interrogation practices came from the very top. Can the very top mean Donald Rumsfeld?

Or is it higher than that, perhaps George W Bush?

The world is waiting for a clear answer. Only the US Congress can help get us to the truth, the real truth!

[enriquecaliente]

I'm sorry, but as a Brigadier General, she and all of the Senior staff knew it was wrong in the first place.
The proper thing for them to have done was resign. But they didn't have the onions to do so. As a private in the USMC we were schooled in the Military Code of Conduct as well as the Geneva conventions. I'm sorry, but they will have to live with what they allowed to be done under their watch.

[LinkSync]

Thank you, and I agree with you.

This is not a matter of politics but one of fundemental National Honor.
It is about who and what we each are and what America is.

All the other arguments being fomented on the news are just distractions and meaningless.

Inalienable rights means something or it doesn't.
Somehow I think most would choose not to serve a Nation that abjures those rights.

[Gidster]

She may not have been allowed to resign, stop loss and all.....

[getoffmedz]

Brigadier General Janis Karpinski is not alone. The Bush/Cheney mess scapegoated every American citizen while it ran the country into the ground, lied about everything, distracted whilst billion$ of taxpayers dollars became mysteriously "missing," instituted unAmerican policy, invaded a sovereign country without actual cause resulting in huge amounts of death, displacement, cost and wanton destruction greatly diminishing the U.S. in the eyes of the world for squandering their 9/11 empathy and generally boosting terrorists numbers while all the time behaving arrogant and outside the law.

We have all been made to be their fools.

yep

[inthewind]

If only we'd listened to Alex Jones 5 years ago before he drove himself loonie

[timberdoodle]

Send your young people off to a foreign country on a fool's errand to be killed, maimed or convicted of following orders of the superiors. Only in America you say.

[jeremyemilio]

Why isn't this on the front page?

[Ergon]

The soldiers were directed by private defense department contractors.