Karpinski's sharp elbows and garden variety bungling

An interesting sidenote from the tailend of Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski's interview (PDF) is when she lays out the notion that she had not been given the resources (manpower, physical facilities etc) she needed to do her job. In a sense it's likely that some of the specifics of Abu Ghraib could have been avoided if there were not the overcrowding of the prisons. She mentions a small exchange with General Sanchez that exposes the kind of plain corruption and incompetence in the Coalition Protection Agency (which never provided funds to build, expand and refurbish the overstretched prison system). I rather believe that the torture policy was systemic and that having resources in place would only have delayed things: the intial flaw of the Americans reaction to the insurgency was that they gathered up lots of people who didn't have any intelligence value - this was compunded by their practice of rounding up people as hostages (say someone's wife and kid) - something the human rights groups point out is contrary to the Geneva conventions; i.e illegal and counterproductive with the results we know.

Her take is somewhat self-serving but is also the mark of a bureaucratic insider who won't be made a scapegoat for her considerable leadership failings. What it reveals is emblematic of the kind of disaster that constitutes the entire Iraq enterprise (garden variety bungling, corruption with the contracters etc). If it's not that funds are largely unspent, there is the kind of contractor backscratching and overcharging ; it's plain incompetence. And that's what interests me here:

When I briefed General Sanchez on the condition of the civilian jails and why the progress was so slow. He turns on me, and he says, "What's wrong with you Karpinkski, you were briefing me just a month ago... that, you know, they were going to be on track and we were going to have capacity for 3,100 by now" And I said, "Sir, because the constructin is not taking place. And I've been to every one of the facilities and I see no evidence of appropriate expenditure of funds; millions of dollars.' I said, "I'm not a contractor, but I know what $25,000 worth of work should look like, and I know what $2 million worth of work should look like. And there's no evidence of it anywhere." "And what have you done?" "I went to the finance office at CPA. I looked for the IG's office at CPA. I looked for the GAO office at CPA. I talked to finance officer at Arifjan at the 377^th. I talked to Colonel Warren. I talked to General Wodjakowski." "Well what happened to the money?" I said, "I don't know, sir. It was a cash operation and I suspect that the two subject matter experts borrowed some of it permanently." "Are you suggesting that they misappropriated funds?"

"Yes sir, I am. If the evidence of the construction of the facilities is-- is what I have to go by, because there is no GAO and there's no IG at CPA. And they wouldn't show me the contracts that they let for all these places. But I do know that the only place were construction is taking place is at Abu Ghraib, because my MPs are there. They're not the contracting officer representatives." And her turned to his SJA and said, "Since this has been dumped in my lap, tell me the next step I take." He never came back and asked for information. He never came back and asked for the information I had, or the evidence I had accumulated. Nobody ever came back to me and said this is what took place. As a matter of fact, Colonel Warren said to me, "You want to steer clear of the issue." I'm not blaming General Sanchez or General Wodjakowski. I just want them to take responsibility for what they didn't do. And I don't ever expect a person like General Sanchez to change his personality or his way of thinking or his way of succeedeing or anything else. I have only ever asked for a fair chance. And no sir did not give it me or anybody in the 800^th MP brigade.

File under: war, iraq, torture, politics, abu ghraib

More Abu Ghraib

The Abu Ghraib story (again more precisely the Iraq torture story) continues to depress. Reading some of the documents from the Taguba report that were somehow not released earlier is not what you want to cheer you in the morning and yet it is something that needs to be done. US News has a story summarizing some of it, what they term 'Shining a light in a real dark place'.

Despite the rather dry and formal military language (chain of command, standard operating procedures, officer in charge, rules of engagment and the overload of acronyms, this is gripping reading (I suppose the military is the ultimate bureacracy although working at IBM has exposed me to the facelessness of process - see. Kafka, Orwell, Dilbert?). I can imagine the kind of horror that General Taguba must have felt as he investigated the morass and conducted his interviews. Even though he kept to his brief and didn't follow up many things that I'm sure he would have liked to; the way he wrote it made it impossible for the scandal to be avoided. (Taguba's background of course is ideal for this given that his father 'was captured by the Japanese in April 42 and forced on the ensuing death march'; prisoner abuse would lie very close to his heart. it must have been despairing to him that the whole military leadership were at the very least willing to turn a blind eye (I'm sure he'd have some choice words for General Miller and his Gitmo-izing if he could).

At a certain level I can understand the context in which the soldiers operated, but that doesn't mitigate my disgust. (Things like this might serve to reinforce my prejudices since I continue to have a low regard for the military - regarding the institution as at best necessary evil, certainly one requiring constant scrutiny: I point to the disastrous effect of the military in Africa and Latin America - maybe this is worth expanding on later since there's personal history there).

Of course the real villains have to be the civilians in the pentagon (Rumsfield, Cambone et. al) and the generals and intelligence who implemented their wants (and of course Bush) who deserve to be fired and bear a heavy responsibility.

There's almost too much to absorb in the Taguba Report but one shouldn't flinch from its insights. There's bureacratic bungling, incompetence, corruption, pettiness, evil; no one comes off good.

General Sanchez seems to have an ego and certainly didn't care about niceties for prisoners only about being caught. Again put in context, he was facing an insurgency that was heating up, and certainly took the admonition to take the gloves off and cut corners or look the other way, ostensibly to protect the men under his command getting blown up every day - and of course the mission. But that's were the corruption lies: there should not be any grey areas about torture; plainly put, it is a slippery slope to hell.

File under: war, iraq, torture, politics, abu-ghraib