Janis Leigh Karpinski Quotes

• We need to fix this. It hasn’t been done yet because there’s still a reluctance to admit that there was even a problem – anywhere above seven rogue soldiers who got out of control on the night shift.

  Janis Leigh Karpinski

• They transfer the prison, and all of a sudden all this money cuts loose, all these people cut loose.

  Janis Leigh Karpinski

• There was a military police brigade with over 3,400 soldiers getting ready to go home because their mission – prisoner-of-war operations – was finished.

  Janis Leigh Karpinski

• The vast majority of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, even after interrogation, had no further intel value whatsoever.

  Janis Leigh Karpinski

• The mission statement was ordered, and it sent the 800th MP Brigade, effective the first of July, up to Baghdad. I joined my brigade to take command at the end of June.

  Janis Leigh Karpinski

• The day after the prison was transferred to the military intelligence command, they had an entire battalion – 1,200, 1,500 soldiers – arrive at Abu Ghraib just for force protection alone.

  Janis Leigh Karpinski

• That policy was abandoned very quickly, and the military police were tagged with the responsibility of conducting training, which they did. We were not equipped or set up with personnel to recruit new Iraqi guards.

  Janis Leigh Karpinski

• Shortly after we arrived in Baghdad, we had another conversation with the ambassador. He said that he wanted us to give him the timeline, because we had 90 days to get these prisons operational and transfer responsibility back to the Iraqis.

  Janis Leigh Karpinski

• Military police know what to do, they know the Geneva Conventions, and their objective is to provide a safe, secure, fair environment for prisoners under their control.

  Janis Leigh Karpinski

• Military intelligence interrogators, however, their goal is to get information, to save lives, to stop the war, to find Saddam – whatever the information is going to be used for, at whatever cost.

  Janis Leigh Karpinski

• It’s hard to be happy when you are facing 120 to 140 degree temperatures and nothing seems to be moving in a direction that you think or they think or you’ve been told it’s supposed to be moving in.

  Janis Leigh Karpinski

• In November, they transferred control of Abu Ghraib to the military intelligence command completely; it was, after all, the center for interrogations for Iraq.

  Janis Leigh Karpinski

• If you are charged with this responsibility of enhancing interrogations, or using soldiers to enhance interrogations to find Saddam, and you’re above the law for all practical purposes, you might try some unusual techniques. Now we know that, in fact, they did.

  Janis Leigh Karpinski

• If they conducted a raid in this room, you’d all be policed up. They’d take all of you to Abu Ghraib and turn you over to the soldiers. Maybe there’s only one or two of you in this group who was a known associate or had any piece of information that they are trying to exploit.

  Janis Leigh Karpinski

• I was ordered not to go out to Abu Ghraib after dark early on, because Abu Ghraib was extremely dangerous.

  Janis Leigh Karpinski

• I thought that that mission and the mission of taking care of those soldiers were my priorities, and I stand by the same today. There wasn’t a lot of support for those soldiers.

  Janis Leigh Karpinski

• I knew how many MPs I had assigned to the brigade, how many military prison operations I would be running, but we needed to evaluate how many criminal prison operations we could support.

  Janis Leigh Karpinski

• I joined the 800th MP Brigade when they were already deployed.

  Janis Leigh Karpinski

• I had 16 other prisons that I needed to pay attention to, and we did. And I had 3,400 soldiers who were depending on me to take care of them, and I did.

  Janis Leigh Karpinski

• At that time, about July 5, we had no Iraqi corrections officers working for us. It was a responsibility of the CPA, with contractors, to set up a training program.

  Janis Leigh Karpinski

Janis Leigh Karpinski (22)

Birth:	25th May, 1953
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Army Officer

About

Janis Leigh Karpinski was born in Rahway, New Jersey, USA. She is an American former army officer. She is notable for having commanded the forces that operated Abu Ghraib and other prisons in Iraq in 2003 and 2004, at the time of the scandal related to torture and prisoner abuse. In October 2005, she published an account of her experiences, One Woman's Army, in which she claims that the abuses were done by contract employees trained in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, and sent to Abu Ghraib under orders from the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. She earned a BA degree in English and secondary education from Kean University, an MA degree in aviation management from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, and an MA degree in strategic studies from the U.S. Army War College. She received many awards, including Bronze Star Medal, Meritorious Service Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal, and Global War on Terrorism Service Medal.

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