Janis Karpinski Speaks Out on Bush's Failure in Iraq

“We haven’t learned the lessons and we haven’t found solutions,” she said of U.S. abuse of war prisoners. “We have to admit to our failures before we can find solutions." [...]

"We (the U.S.) were known as the champion for human rights. This war and these violations and these policies have become our failure... If there is ever another war, who will stand beside us? We cannot condemn those (human-rights abusers) because we are doing the same and worse.”

(From Total Buzz)

That was former Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, speaking at Chapman University in Orange today about the grand failure that is Bush's war on Iraq. Now if you forgot already, Karpinski was the military officer in charge of the fifteen detention facilities in Iraq when the news about Abu Ghraib broke. Now Karpinski claims that she had no knowledge of the abuses at the time, and was being scapegoated to protect superiors. Perhaps she's lying to protect herself, but then again why should anyone believe the Bush Administration about anything? If they've been caught lying about everything else, then why should we believe their denial that they weren't orchestrating all these abuses?

Well anyways, back to Karpinski:

“(We put) soldiers in untenable and unwinnable situations,” she said. “We placed soldiers in situations where they would (subsequently) live lives of remorse and regret. …”

“(U.S.) soldiers are schooled and trained in the uniform code of military justice – except in this war, (where) sometimes the rules apply and sometimes they don’t. We failed our soldiers in this war.”

She called Abu Ghraib “the tragic result of this lawless environment.”

She recalled a soldier involved in the abuses telling her, “’We knew what we were doing was wrong. We wanted to complain to our superiors, but when we turned around, they were standing there watching (approvingly).”

She agreed with an earlier speaker, prominent human-rights attorney Scott Horton, that responsibility led directly to the Bush Administration.

“This is a time of too much trust in those who we should be able to trust,” she said.

Ah, when will be able to trust our own government again? When will we be able to trust our own elected officials again? When will be be able to have trust in the goodness of this nation again? When will we be able to trust our commitment to human rights again? When?