Globe & Mail: Abu Ghraib scandal convulses U.S. military

"Internecine warfare over the widening Iraq prison-abuse scandal is threatening to explode within the U.S. military, pitting brass against low-ranking grunts, regulars against reserves and unit against unit.
Top Pentagon officials want to paint the abuse at Abu Ghraib as an isolated case of ill-trained, war-weary soldiers brutalizing prisoners. But lawyers for at least some of the lower-ranking soldiers facing courts-martial want to trace the trail of responsibility all the way up the ladder to Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, perhaps even to the Oval Office.
The general who was in charge of the now notorious prison, meanwhile, said in an interview broadcast yesterday that she knew nothing of the abuse and complained of being turned into a "convenient scapegoat."
Brigadier-General Janis Karpinski, who was relieved of command of the 800th Military Police Brigade, the reserve unit that guarded all U.S.-run prisons in Iraq, has not been charged in the scandal. But she has been taking potshots at other units and at Lieutenant-General Ricardo Sanchez, the soon-to-be-replaced commander of all occupation forces in Iraq.
With her latest salvo, Gen. Karpinski took aim at the former commander of the special prison built at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to house suspected terrorists beyond the jurisdiction of U.S. law.
"They are like dogs, and if you allow them to believe at any point that they are more than a dog, you've lost control of them," Gen. Karpinski said, quoting Major-General Geoffrey Miller, who was sent to Iraq from Guantanamo last summer to give advice on extracting information from detainees.
Gen. Miller, who has told congressional hearings under oath that no torture was ever used at Guantanamo, flatly denied Gen. Karpinski's accusations.
A skein of disturbing reports and leaking letters from human-rights groups and the International Committee of the Red Cross point to a wider pattern of abuse. From Cuba to Afghanistan, released detainees have told of beatings, sleep deprivation and worse.
Already the probes are climbing through the ranks.
Gen. Sanchez has asked that a four-star general head one of them, so that even top commanders can be questioned. Gen. Sanchez, who insists he acted immediately on hearing allegations of abuse in January, himself faces questions about what he knew and whether he authorized special treatment of detainees."