I Cogitate

*** On September 20, 2003, cell blocks 1A and 1B at Abu Ghraib were removed from the command of Army Reserve Brigidier General Janice Karpinski.by Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez.

*** Karpinski told Sanchez she opposed Red Cross restrictions on visiting cell blocks 1A and 1B at Abu Ghraib.

*** Colonel Thomas Pappas and Lt. Steve Jordan, who reported to Ricardo Sanchez, were placed in control. On November 19, 2003, Sanchez made all of Abu Ghraib under the command of Pappas.

*** Sanchez's intelligence chief General Barbara Fast told Karpinski at one point: "We're going to run interrogations the way we want to run them run."

*** January 13, 2004 was when Spc. Joseph Darby submitted the photos of Abu Ghraib abuse.

*** January 17, 2004, right after the photos surfaced, Ricardo Sanchez pinned the blame on Janice Karpinski.

*** Karpinski believed the photos were staged  -- "She did not see 'six or seven bad apples' among her MPs but 'six or seven who may have been individually selected.'"

*** Eventually convicted of abuse, MP Ivan Frederick said he was given a list of detainees that he was supposed to soften up for the dog handlers.

*** General Antonio Taguba's inquiry into the abuse at Abu Ghraib stated the military interrogators and CIA interrogators actively requested that the MP guards "set physical and mental conditions for favorable interrogations."
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*** "A U.S. Army general dispatched by senior Pentagon officials to bolster the collection of intelligence from prisoners in Iraq last fall inspired and promoted the use of guard dogs there to frighten the Iraqis, according to sworn testimony by the top U.S. intelligence officer at the Abu Ghraib prison.

According to the officer, Col. Thomas Pappas, the idea came from Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, who at the time commanded the U.S. military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and was implemented under a policy approved by Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the top U.S. military official in Iraq.

"It was a technique I had personally discussed with General Miller, when he was here" visiting the prison, testified Pappas, head of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade and the officer placed in charge of the cellblocks at Abu Ghraib prison where abuses occurred in the wake of Miller's visit to Baghdad between Aug. 30 and Sept. 9, 2003...

...Taguba never interviewed Miller or any officer above Karpinski's rank for his report. Nor did he conduct a detailed probe of the actions of military intelligence officials. But he said he suspected that Pappas and several of his colleagues were "either directly or indirectly responsible for the abuses at Abu Ghraib..." -- R. Jeffrey Smith, Washington Post, May 26, 2004.

"A high-level Army investigation has cleared four of the five top Army officers overseeing prison policies and operations in Iraq of responsibility for the abuse of detainees there, Congressional and administration officials said Friday.

Among the officers was Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, who was the top commander in Iraq from June 2003 to July 2004. He was the highest-ranking officer to face allegations of leadership failure in connection with the scandal, but he was not accused of criminal misconduct...

...Only one of the top five officers, whose roles the Senate Armed Services Committee had asked the Army to review, has received any punishment. That officer, Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, an Army Reserve officer who commanded the military police unit at the Abu Ghraib prison, was relieved of her command and given a written reprimand. She has repeatedly said she was made the scapegoat for the failures of superiors...

...An independent panel led by former Defense Secretary James R. Schlesinger concluded last August that General Sanchez had failed to make sure that his staff was dealing with Abu Ghraib's problems. A separate Army investigation, called the Kern-Fay-Jones report, found that at one point General Sanchez approved the use of severe interrogation practices that led indirectly to some of the abuses.

The Schlesinger inquiry last summer also determined that General Sanchez's deputy, Maj. Gen. Walter Wojdakowski, failed to act quickly enough to make urgent requests to higher levels for more troops at the understaffed prison.

But those inquiries were not empowered to impose any punishments; that was left up to the Army.

The new review, by the Army inspector general, Lt. Gen. Stanley E. Green, exonerated General Sanchez and General Wojdakowski of the allegations that were included in one or more of the 10 major investigations over the past year into detainee abuse.

It also found to be "unsubstantiated" allegations against Maj. Gen. Barbara G. Fast, the former chief intelligence officer in Iraq who oversaw the interrogation center at Abu Ghraib, and Col. Marc Warren, the command's top legal officer. The Schlesinger panel said Colonel Warren had failed to report prisoner abuses witnessed by the Red Cross to his boss for more than a month, and that General Fast had failed to advise General Sanchez properly about the management of interrogations at the prison.

While General Sanchez and the other top officers may not have done everything right, the inquiry said, their failures came as they struggled to combat a fast-growing insurgency and a booming prison population, all with an understaffed headquarters..." -- Eric Schmitt, New York Times, April 23, 2005.

"An Army inspector general's report has cleared senior Army officers of wrongdoing in the abuse of military prisoners in Iraq and elsewhere, government officials familiar with the findings said yesterday.

The only Army general officer recommended for punishment for the failures that led to abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison and other facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan is Brig. Gen. Janis L. Karpinski, who was in charge of U.S. prison facilities in Iraq as commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade in late 2003 and early 2004. Several sources said Karpinski is expected to receive an administrative reprimand for dereliction of duty...

... Previous inquiries have addressed the roles of distinct military disciplines at the prisons. Some of the probes identified senior leadership as being indirectly responsible for the climate that led to abuses but made no findings on culpability. Responsibility for such findings was given to the Army inspector general.

A comprehensive report about Abu Ghraib by Maj. Gen. George R. Fay concluded that there were failures at the highest levels, mainly in oversight lapses. He found that Sanchez and his deputy "failed to ensure proper staff oversight of detention and interrogation operations" and "reacted inadequately" to warnings that abuse was occurring.

Sanchez's top intelligence adviser, Maj. Gen. Barbara Fast, learned of abuses in late 2003 after commissioning an independent investigation, but the Abu Ghraib abuses did not get command attention until January 2004, when a soldier turned over digital photographs of some of the abuses.

Fast, who recently assumed command of the Army's intelligence center at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., also was cleared of wrongdoing.

An overarching, independent analysis of the abuses by James R. Schlesinger said senior leadership should bear responsibility. "Commanders are responsible for all their units do or fail to do, and should be held accountable for their action or inaction..." -- Josh White, Washington Post, April 23, 2005

"...you have to go back to the memorandum that was authored by our now-Attorney-General, Alberto Gonzalez, and John Yoo, from out in California, who was with the current administration at the time, and they did a memorandum, authorising departures from the Geneva Convention."

    "The memorandum, which was certainly discussed at length with the Secretary of Defence and the Vice-President, according to sworn statements by people who were there when those conversations took place, that authorised the initial departure [from the Geneva Convention]. And yes, there was a memorandum that was posted at Abu Ghraib prison, that I only became aware of, after I heard of this ongoing investigation out at Abu Ghraib, and it was signed by the Secretary of Defence."

    "...the signature on the memorandum was over the signature block of the Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, and the ink that was used to sign appeared to be the same ink used for this handwritten note in the margin, "make sure this happens", and it was a list of interrogation techniques that were approved, so he obviously had knowledge of those [interrogation] techniques."

    "When the Secretary of Defence, when General Miller, when General Sanchez, when General Taguba, when they testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee, they were very careful to say, in response to a question about the photographs, that they knew nothing about the photographs. However, nobody on the Senate Armed Services Committee asked them "Did you know anything about the actions depicted in those photographs?" Because they would have had to give a truthful answer and the answer would have been yes, in fact they authorised the actions depicted in those photographs. The Secretary of Defence authorised it, in conversations with General Miller, his Under-Secretary for Intelligence not only authorised those actions but was staying on top of the progress of those actions and those activities..." -- Janice Karpinski, March 8, 2006, Dateline, Australian SBS network

about the Taguba Report: "...when they do an investigation with that kind of potential, the rules are very clear, you have to identify an impartial person to do the investigation and General Taguba did not serve one day in Iraq, he spent his deployment time in the safety of Kuwait. And he was, as it came out afterwards, a good friend of General Sanchez. So if General Sanchez gave the investigating officer specific instructions on what he wanted to see in the conclusions, General Taguba was able and determined to provide and conclude what General Sanchez wanted to see. And he did exactly that. The findings in the report have been largely discredited because he was not an impartial party and because so much more information has come out. -- Janice Karpinski, March 8, 2006, Dateline, Australian SBS network

 "...It is Pat’s birthday on November 6, and elections are the day after. It gets me thinking about a conversation I had with Pat before we joined the military. He spoke about the risks with signing the papers. How once we committed, we were at the mercy of the American leadership and the American people. How we could be thrown in a direction not of our volition. How fighting as a soldier would leave us without a voice…until we got out..."

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