June 15, 2004 – Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, the former commander of military police at Abu Ghraib prison, says she was told by a higher-ranking military intelligence commander that Iraqi prisoners should be treated "like dogs." In an interview with the BBC, Karpinski said Major General Geoffrey Miller -- who ran the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and is now in charge of prisons in Iraq -- told her, "they are like dogs, and if you allow them to believe at any point they are more than a dog then you've lost control of them." According to Karpinski, Miller told her he wanted to "Gitmo-ize" the treatment of Iraqi prisoners, making reference to interrogation techniques used at Guantanamo Bay. Karpinski, who has been suspended of her command but not charged with any crime, said she and other military police officers are being used as scapegoats for the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. She said her soldiers would not have participated in incidents of torture and abuse depicted in hundreds of photographs unless they had been ordered to do so by military intelligence. Karpinski claims she was unaware of Iraqis being tortured in Abu Ghraib’s interrogation facilities because those areas were run by military intelligence and not directly under her command.
