When In Charge, Frag Your Next Higher??

Brig. General Janis Karpinski sets an appalling example for no one to follow. She commanded Abu Gahraib prison in Iraq and awful things happened on her watch. This, in and of itself, didn't make her an absolute failure. It was how she responded, that made her an unrestricted loser.

The time for Janis Karpinski to protect her career was before the abuses took place. She ran the prison, she should have controlled, observed and documented everything that General Fast and General Sanchez did inside the prison.

Instead, she stood aside and was not even on site when many of the prison abuses that the army reported took place their occurred. She abdicated her authority and let outside organizations, in this case MI interrogators, run her AO.

What Karpinski should have done was admit responsibility and resign her command. She should have humbly displayed contrition and left the army. She should have apologized to every American soldier who didn't torture the enemy and then apologized to every Iraqi citizen who ever suffered torture while she was in charge.

This would not have made everything OK again. Nothing does in a case like this. However, it would have shown grace under pressure and salvaged the honor of both Karpinski and the soldiers who served at Abu Gahraib and weren't in the sordid business of toture and sadism.

What Karpinski did instead was allege a conspiracy of silence and a cover up by Generals Sanchez and Fast . The conspiracy of silence should add an additional member, Karpinski. Sanchez and Fast are done for. Their careers are over after this, and I don't hear either one of them whinging. Karpinski's sob stories are pathetic.

The next time she feels like playing the cry baby, she ought to think about how a few of those Iraqi prisoners felt.