Col. Janis Karpinski 'vindicated' by Senate report

April 22, 2009
Army officer 'vindicated' by Senate report


WASHINGTON (AP) - An Army Reserve colonel demoted from brigadier general because of prisoner abuses at the Abu Ghraib facility in Iraq said Wednesday a new Senate report supports her contention that uniformed military people were made scapegoats for Bush administration policies.

Col. Janis Karpinski said that "from the beginning, I've been saying these soldiers did not design these techniques on their own."

Karpinski said she felt vindicated and said she thought it had taken "far too long" for the information about the history of the interrogation policy to surface publicly.

Eleven U.S. soldiers have been convicted and five officers, including Karpinski, have been disciplined in the Abu Ghraib scandal. Karpinski was demoted to colonel for alleged dereliction of duty - a charge she has vehemently denied. The only soldier still imprisoned for Abu Ghraib is former Cpl. Charles Graner Jr., who received a 10-year sentence for assault, battery, conspiracy, maltreatment, indecent acts and dereliction of duty.

Army documents released in May 2005 substantiated Karpinski's assertions that she was innocent of two principal allegations lodged against her by officer who initially investigated abuses at Abu Ghraib.

The 232-page Senate report released late Tuesday found that the brutal treatment of terror detainees and prisoners by members of the U.S. military, both at Abu Ghraib and the Guantanamo prison facility, wasn't simply the work of "a few bad apples"
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Army officer 'vindicated' by Senate report

Policy of torture killed US Forces in Iraq

I've heard all the arguments in support of torture. The one that beats them all is "well they do it" but this one makes no sense at all. They play by their own rules and we used to do the same. That's what made us different. We were also smart enough to know that you cannot convert people into thinking your way by showing them why they should not. That's what torture does.

During the Salem Witchcraft Trials, we saw what this practice does. It gets innocent people to say they are guilty and that's just about it. When you torture someone, you get them to say anything you want them to say because they want you to stop. Innocent people were tortured and killed. No one got the truth out of them. Isn't getting the truth the point of interrogation?

What we managed to do is support all the claims the Al-Qaeda thugs made against the US. Outside people wanted revenge and they got it but they got it by killing our troops. How many would have lived if the administration did not decide that they had the right to do this? Read this and then try to answer that question.

I'm Still Tortured by What I Saw in Iraq - washingtonpost.com
Until we renounce the sorts of abuses that have stained our national honor, al- Qaeda will be winning.

By Matthew Alexander
Sunday, November 30, 2008; Page B01

I should have felt triumphant when I returned from Iraq in August 2006. Instead, I was worried and exhausted. My team of interrogators had successfully hunted down one of the most notorious mass murderers of our generation, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq and the mastermind of the campaign of suicide bombings that had helped plunge Iraq into civil war. But instead of celebrating our success, my mind was consumed with the unfinished business of our mission: fixing the deeply flawed, ineffective and un-American way the U.S. military conducts interrogations in Iraq. I'm still alarmed about that today.

I'm not some ivory-tower type; I served for 14 years in the U.S. Air Force, began my career as a Special Operations pilot flying helicopters, saw combat in Bosnia and Kosovo, became an Air Force counterintelligence agent, then volunteered to go to Iraq to work as a senior interrogator. What I saw in Iraq still rattles me -- both because it betrays our traditions and because it just doesn't work.

Violence was at its peak during my five-month tour in Iraq. In February 2006, the month before I arrived, Zarqawi's forces (members of Iraq's Sunni minority) blew up the golden-domed Askariya mosque in Samarra, a shrine revered by Iraq's majority Shiites, and unleashed a wave of sectarian bloodshed. Reprisal killings became a daily occurrence, and suicide bombings were as common as car accidents. It felt as if the whole country was being blown to bits.

I know the counter-argument well -- that we need the rough stuff for the truly hard cases, such as battle-hardened core leaders of al-Qaeda, not just run-of-the-mill Iraqi insurgents. But that's not always true: We turned several hard cases, including some foreign fighters, by using our new techniques. A few of them never abandoned the jihadist cause but still gave up critical information. One actually told me, "I thought you would torture me, and when you didn't, I decided that everything I was told about Americans was wrong. That's why I decided to cooperate."

Torture and abuse are against my moral fabric. The cliche still bears repeating: Such outrages are inconsistent with American principles. And then there's the pragmatic side: Torture and abuse cost American lives.

I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It's no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me -- unless you don't count American soldiers as Americans. click link above for more

Torture erodes U.S. values, military leaders say

Torture erodes U.S. values, military leaders say
Jay Hamburg | Sentinel Staff Writer
October 16, 2008
Retired Army Col. Lawrence Wilkerson understands why some think torture should be used to gain vital information to keep us safe, but the Vietnam veteran said it is morally wrong and, ultimately, counterproductive.

"It's the struggle between our security and our soul," Wilkerson said.

The one-time chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell thinks torture injures the nation's security and its moral standing.

Wilkerson and other military leaders will take part in a forum tonight to highlight a national campaign to ban torture.

They will be joined by local religious leaders, including the Rev. Joel Hunter, pastor of Longwood-based Northland, A Church Distributed; and Bishop Thomas Wenski of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orlando.

Wilkerson said his concern started in 2004 when Powell asked him to investigate abuse of Iraqi detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison.

He came to the conclusion that torture was being tolerated by some along the chain of command.
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Military interrogator testifies about Iraq abuses

Military interrogator testifies about Iraq abuses
By PAMELA HESS Associated Press
Sept. 25, 2008, 12:45PM

WASHINGTON — A military interrogation expert, Air Force Col. Steven Kleinman, told Congress today that prior to the abuses at Abu Ghraib, he witnessed interrogations of Iraqi detainees that he considers violations of the Geneva Conventions.

One of those interrogations was conducted by an Air Force civilian and a contractor employed by the same organization, the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency, which had sent a small team to Iraq in September 2003 to help a special forces task force make its interrogations of stubborn prisoners more effective.
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http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/nation/6022272.html