On Wed, 5 May 2004 16:58:23 -0500, Dan Minette <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I read the report that is the source of most information and didn't see any > indication that she wasn't allowed in that part of the prison. I certainly > got the impression that she didn't practice management by walking around, > but nothing, including her statements, that indicated that she would have > been stopped from entering. That she wasn't in charge, yes; but not that > she wasn't allowed in.
I can't find that exact wording right now. I was sure that was the impression she conveyed when I saw her.on Nightline I believe. Here is another TV appearance where she says that section was "under the control of military intelligence commanders." The wording from the Baltimore Sun is: In an interview on ABC's Good Morning America, Karpinski, a business consultant when not in uniform, said yesterday that she had no knowledge of the abuses and would have reacted "very quickly" if she had. She said the sections of Abu Ghraib where the abuses took place, cellblocks 1A and 1B, were under the control of military intelligence commanders, who encouraged military police to soften up the detainees for interrogations. "It was not an MP, military police, leadership issue," Karpinski said. "This was an interrogation and isolation procedure issue, and that was run and orchestrated by a separate command from the military police brigade." She told Army investigators that the military intelligence officers had given her troops "'ideas that led to the detainee abuse," according to Taguba. A very troubling report: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bal-te.leadership04may04,0,4756527.story?coll=bal-home-headlines Here is another report that that section "discouraged" her from entering and tried to cover-up and exclude conditions from the Red Cross. Maybe they should have asked Saddam for tips. "The former head of US military prisons in Iraq, Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, who was relieved of her command earlier this year, yesterday alleged that military intelligence officers discouraged her from entering the cell block at Abu Ghraib where they interrogated prisoners. They also went "to great lengths to try to exclude" the International Red Cross from their prison wing." A US military investigation, carried out by Major General Antonio Taguba, uncovered evidence of war crimes against the inmates, including: breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; pouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape; sodomising a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick. The New Yorker magazine, which obtained a complete copy of the report, observed: "General Taguba saved his harshest words for the military intelligence officers and private contractors." "The prison, and that particular cell block where the events took place, were under the control of the MI [military intelligence] command," she said. She conceded that she "probably should have been more aggressive" about visiting the cell block, particularly after military intelligence officers went "to great lengths to try to exclude the ICRC (International Committee for the Red Cross) from access to that interrogation wing". http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1208332,00.html Let's get someone else as well as the general talking about that section: A soldier accused of abusing prisoners at the Abu Ghraib facility wrote to his family last December that military intelligence officers encouraged the mistreatment, according to correspondence provided by the soldier's family. "We have had a very high rate with our style of getting them to break," the soldier, Staff Sgt. Ivan L. "Chip" Frederick II, wrote in a Dec. 18 e-mail released by Frederick's uncle. "They usually end up breaking within hours." Frederick also wrote that he questioned some of the abuses. "I questioned this and the answer I got was: This is how military intelligence wants it done," he wrote. The Army Reserve commander who oversaw the prison said that military intelligence, rather than the military police, dictated the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. "The prison, and that particular cellblock where the events took place, were under the control of the MI command," Brig. Gen. Janis L. Karpinski said in a telephone interview Saturday night from her home in Hilton Head, S.C. Karpinski, who commanded the 800th Military Police Brigade, also described a high-pressure atmosphere that prized successful interrogations. A month before the alleged abuses occurred, she said, a team of military intelligence officers from the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, came to Abu Ghraib last year. "Their main and specific mission was to get the interrogators -- give them new techniques to get more information from detainees," she said. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59750-2004May1.html For those like Mike Lee saying this was just hazing, BLITZER: As far as you know, no one was killed at Abu Ghraib, is that what you're saying? HERSH: No, that's not true. There were people killed, yes, but not by the soldiers, not by the reservists. There were people killed -- I can tell you specifically about one case. One of the horrible photos is a man packed in ice. You want to hear it? I'll tell it to you. They killed him -- either civilians, the private guards, or the CIA or the military killed him during an interrogation. They were worried about it. They packed him in ice. They killed him in evening. They packed him in ice for 24 hours, put him in a body bag, and eventually at a certain time -- don't forget, now, the prison has a lot of other Army units about it, and they didn't want to be seen with a dead body. So they packed him in ice until it was the appropriate time. They put him on a trolley, like a hospital gurney, and they put a fake IV into him, and they walked out as if he was getting an IV. Walked him out, got him in an ambulance, drove him off, dumped the body somewhere. http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0405/02/le.00.html Slight change of subject - Bush's new ambassador to Iraq will feel right at home. they don't have happy memories of him in Honduras. "John Negroponte was ambassador to Honduras from 1981-1985. As such he supported and carried out a US-sponsored policy of violations to human rights and international law. Among other things he supervised the creation of the El Aguacate air base, where the US trained Nicaraguan Contras during the 1980's. The base was used as a secret detention and torture center, in August 2001 excavations at the base discovered the first of the corpses of the 185 people, including two Americans, who are thought to have been killed and buried at this base. "During his ambassadorship, human rights violations in Honduras became systematic. The infamous Battalion 316, trained by the CIA and Argentine military, kidnaped, tortured and killed hundreds of people. Negroponte knew about these human rights violations and yet continued to collaborate with them, while lying to Congress. " http://www.derechos.org/nizkor/negroponte/eng.html A Nun knows Negroponte: ...Sister Laetitia Bordes, a nun who worked in Central America during the 1980s and the 1990s. She has written a book entitled 'Our Hearts Were Broken.' Sister Bordes describes Honduras and Ambassador Negroponte in words we all need to hear: "My mind went back to May 1982 and I saw myself facing Negroponte in his office at the US Embassy in Tegucigalpa. I had gone to Honduras on a fact-finding delegation. We were looking for answers. Thirty-two women had fled the death squads of El Salvador after the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero in 1980 to take refuge in Honduras. One of them had been Romero's secretary. "Some months after their arrival, these women were forcibly taken from their living quarters in Tegucigalpa, pushed into a van and disappeared. Our delegation was in Honduras to find out what had happened to these women. John Negroponte listened to us as we exposed the facts. There had been eyewitnesses to the capture and we were well read on the documentation that previous delegations had gathered. "Negroponte denied any knowledge of the whereabouts of these women. He insisted that the US Embassy did not interfere in the affairs of the Honduran government and it would be to our advantage to discuss the matter with the latter. "In 1994, the Honduran Human Rights Commission outlined the torture and disappearance of at least 184 political opponents. It also specifically accused John Negroponte of a number of human rights violations. Yet, back in his office that day in 1982, John Negroponte assured us that he had no idea what had happened to the women we were looking for. "I had to wait 13 years to find out. In an interview with the Baltimore Sun in 1996, Jack Binns, Negroponte's predecessor as US ambassador in Honduras, told how a group of Salvadorans, among whom were the women we had been looking for, were captured on April 22, 1981, and savagely tortured by the DNI, the Honduran Secret Police, before being placed in helicopters of the Salvadoran military. After take off from the airport in Tegucigalpa, the victims were thrown out of the helicopters. Four children had been captured with the women. "They were turned over to the Salvadoran military and their whereabouts are unknown. Binns told the Baltimore Sun that the North American authorities were well aware of what had happened and that it was a grave violation of human rights. But it was seen as part of Ronald Reagan's counterinsurgency policy." http://www.americanpolitics.com/20010727Negroponte.html Negroponte denies having knowledge of any wrongdoing. "To this day, I do not believe that death squads were operating in Honduras." Under Reagan at least it wasn't American Army boys actually softening up the prisoners before interrogation, though. #1 on google for Easter Lemming too _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
