[Marinir] BBC News : Reprimands for US senior officers

[Hong Gie]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3680025.stm

Last Updated: Monday, 3 May, 2004, 12:11 GMT 13:11 UK
Reprimands for US senior officers

Abu Ghraib prison was much feared in Saddam Hussein's era
Six senior US officers have been reprimanded for allowing the abuse of Iraqi
prisoners held at Abu Ghraib jail in Baghdad.
The reprimands could lead to them being thrown out of the army. The abuses,
which occurred in late 2003, are said to have involved about 20 prisoners.
Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, who headed the 800th Military Police
Brigade, is reportedly among the six.
Another six soldiers at the jail are already under criminal investigation.
The six officers have received a General Office Memorandum Reprimand, which
prohibits any further promotion and paves the way for dismissal from the
army.
A seventh person has been given a "letter of admonishment", a lesser form of
reprimand.
All seven are now appealing against the rulings, which were issued last
month, but only made public on Monday.
'Blame-shifting'
The abuse at Abu Ghraib came to light on Thursday, when CBS TV showed photos
of Iraqi prisoners being subjected to humiliation and abuse.
In one picture, two Iraqis were forced to simulate oral sex, while observed
by laughing guards, while another inmate was connected to wires and told he
would be electrocuted if he fell off a box.
Suspected Saddam Hussein loyalists are held at the prison
In an interview on Sunday, Gen Karpinski - a reserve officer - said she was
"sickened" by the images from the Baghdad jail.
She told the New York Times that military intelligence officers had been in
and out of the high-security cells "24 hours a day".
She said she believed military commanders were trying to shift the blame
onto her and other reservists - and away from the intelligence officers
still at work in the prison.
"We're disposable," she said. "Why would they want the active-duty people to
take the blame?"
Internal report
Gen Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Sunday
that US Army intelligence was looking into allegations that intelligence
personnel may have encouraged, or pressurised, soldiers to abuse prisoners
as part of interrogations.
He spoke after the New Yorker magazine said it had obtained an internal US
Army report documenting "sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses of
Iraqi prisoners", including beatings and sodomy.
Gen Karpinski said she did not defend the actions of the reservists who are
alleged to have taken part in the abuses.
The general added that CIA employees often took part in the interrogations
at the prison complex.
US President George W Bush said on Friday he was deeply disgusted by the
alleged abuses, but that only a "few people" were to blame.
A British newspaper has also published pictures that it said showed British
soldiers apparently urinating on a shackled Iraqi prisoner.
But sources close to the regiment say aspects of the photographs do not seem
authentic.