Treating
Prisoners Like Dogs
16 June, 2004
Associated Press
The
American general who was in charge of Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison said
she was being made a scapegoat for the abuse of detainees and claimed
her counterpart at Guantanamo Bay once told her that prisoners were
``like dogs.''
In an interview
with British Broadcasting Corp. radio that was broadcast Tuesday, Brig.
Gen. Janis Karpinski said Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller told her prisoners
``are like dogs, and if you allow them to believe at any point that
they are more than a dog then you've lost control of them.''
Miller was in charge
of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba and now oversees U.S. prisons
in Iraq.
Karpinski was suspended
last month from command of the 800th Military Police Brigade after she
and other officers were faulted by Army investigators for paying too
little attention to the prison's day-to-day operations and not acting
strongly enough to discipline soldiers for violating standard procedures.
Several soldiers
are facing courts-martial over abuse allegations at the jail, which
flared when pictures of troops abusing and humiliating Iraqi detainees
were published in the media.
In her defense,
Karpinski has said that interrogations at the prison were not under
her command but were run by a military intelligence unit.
``I believe that
I was a convenient scapegoat,'' she said.
``The interrogation
operation was directed, it was under a separate command and there was
no reason for me to go out to look at Abu Ghraib at cell block 1a or
1b or visit the interrogation facilities.''