Abu Ghraib Revisited - Janis Karpinski and Lynndie England Meet for the First Time Since the Scandal Broke

On Wednesday January 14, 2009, five years to the day after the infamous Abu Ghraib photographs were turned over to military investigators, the highest and lowest ranking reservists tainted by the scandal met in Cumberland, Maryland for the first time since the prisoner abuse images were made public.
Brigadier General Janis Karpinski (Ret.) was commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade in Iraq and oversaw the prisoner detainee system at the time of the incident. PFC Lynndie England, a resident of Fort Ashby, West Virginia, was an Admin connected with the 372nd Military Police Company stationed at the Abu Ghraib prison. But even though their lives were separated by rank and the fog of war, Karpinski and England had a chance meeting at Abu Ghraib in the fall of 2003.
“I remember seeing this youthful looking soldier at the prison,” says the general. “She couldn’t have been more than five feet tall. I just couldn’t imagine her being in a place like that.”
“Another soldier and I were waiting at a checkpoint in the prison when General Karpinski showed up for a tour of the facility,” recalls England. “She spoke with us and was very friendly.”
Much has transpired since their first encounter. Following the public debut of the prisoner abuse photos in April of 2004, General Karpinski was demoted and relieved of her command. For her part, PFC England was court martialed and sentenced to three years in a military prison. But Janis Karpinski never forgot Lynndie England; nor could she forget the other reservists whose lives were ruined by the scandal.
“This happened on my watch, these were my soldiers,” says Karpinski, a tall, elegant woman on a mission. “These young people were scapegoats and we have to make this right.”
The meeting between Karpinski and England, which took place at a Best Western Motel not far from England’s home, comes on the heels of the release of the Senate Armed Services Committee report, in which the bi-partisan members concluded that “the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 was not simply the result of a few soldiers acting on their own”. Citing the fact that water-boarding, forced nudity, sexual humiliation and other harsh interrogation techniques had been approved in writing by then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and that a deliberate attempt was made by the Bush Administration to circumvent the Geneva Conventions, the committee report further stated that what happened at Abu Ghraib was not initiated by the soldiers connected with the 372nd MP Company or BG Janis Karpinski, but originated much higher up the Chain of Command.
“Given this new information, we hope that people will have a better understanding of what took place at Abu Ghraib,” says Roy T. Hardy, Lynndie England’s attorney and personal spokesman. “Ms. England just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and in love with the wrong guy (Charles Graner). Stupidity is not a crime. Simply posing in a picture is not a crime, especially since what was depicted in those photographs was condoned by the Bush Administration.”
The controversy over what happened at Abu Ghraib is not over. Indeed, according to many in both Washington and elsewhere around the globe, the incoming Obama administration will have to face the torture question as it seeks to bolster America’s standing with the rest of the world. “You have 155 countries, of which the United States is one, that are party to the convention against torture,” says John Dean, former White House Counsel in the Nixon Administration. “There is a moral obligation on all those countries to investigate torture when it occurs. And so, if the United States passes on their moral obligation to investigate this, other countries are likely to step in, and this is going to be a huge embarrassment for the Obama administration.”
Lynndie England doesn’t have an opinion when it comes to such weighty political matters; but her attorney, who has seen the devastating impact the scandal has had on her life, is aware that the Senate Armed Services Committee report proves what his client has been saying all along.
“I would just like to see that Lynndie is given the chance to get on with her life,” says Roy Hardy. “She and the others don’t deserve to have their lives ruined, especially if those who put the torture plans in motion are allowed to avoid prosecution.”
Janis Karpinski will continue to reconnect with those Reservists tainted by the Abu Ghraib incident and insists that recent developments such as the SASC report warrant a reexamination of the cases against the soldiers implicated in the scandal.
“It’s the right thing to do,” says Karpinski.