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Janis Karpinski: The Former General Speaks Out
May 12, 2005
For many -- in any career -- making it into the senior ranks, that special group of highly successful people, is an important goal. And in the military, one could argue, it's even more important. So, getting your first star -- brigadier general -- is the first step into that elite group. As a woman in the military, that's an even a bigger deal. Former Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, former commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade at Abu Ghraib, got into those ranks, but lost her star last week. She's now a colonel. She's mad about it and tonight, in her first interview since she lost that star, she tells her story exclusively to Ted Koppel.
I was traveling overseas about two months ago in Europe (Old Europe, Germany, in fact) and I was struck by how much the photos of abuse, torture and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners resonate with people there. So much has happened since that scandal, I thought it would have just washed away with the rest of the news. But that gallery of photos, coupled with the current U.S. policy at Guantanamo Bay are the two prisms through which our country is viewed and judged these days. Fairly or unfairly, that's what the people I met wanted to talk about. It's a mixture of disappointment and anger. To some of the people I spoke with, it reinforces the perception that America, the leader of the free world, isn't exactly a paragon when it comes to human rights. So, you can imagine what they're thinking when they look at the various investigations surrounding the Abu Ghraib scandal.
One of the soldiers in those infamous photos is being tried as we speak, and several are serving time for their roles, but the managers seem to have gotten off easily. With the exception of Janis Karpinski. She's the highest level military official to be reprimanded in the Abu Ghraib scandal. But what about all the others above her -- Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez, the former commander of forces on the ground in Iraq, or Maj. General Geoffrey Miller, the deputy commander for detention operations in Iraq, or even Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld himself? How could everyone else in the chain of command above her go unscathed? Well, Karpinski has a lot to say about all of this. She sat down with Ted Koppel for an extended interview yesterday and she had some really interesting things to say about her role, the sequence of events that led to the change in interrogation techniques and what she has to say about those above her.
We hope you'll join us.
Gerry Holmes & the "Nightline" staff Senior Producer ABC News Washington Bureau
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