Wednesday, October 12, 2005 Abu Ghraib Accountability? Not Bloody Likely We will never know the exact role and what level of responsibility former Army Gen Janis Karpinski played in the Abu Ghraib scandal, but her Guardian UK excerpt from her upcoming book, called One Woman's Army,which is a memoir of being made the Abu Ghraib scapegoat, does shed some light on a well rehearsed Bush theme of blaming the lil guy: "All of my career, I had wanted nothing but to serve as a soldier, yet time and again I found myself singled out not as a rising officer, but as a woman. There had to be a prominent scapegoat, and how could I have not seen who it would be? Following Maj Gen Taguba's investigation, I was formally relieved of my command. But Pres Bush delivered a blow I had not expected at all - vacating my promotion to general and demoting me to colonel." And it is refreshing to see journalists in the UK ask questions about our abusive behavior that are never posed here: "As bloodshed mounts each day in Iraq, what prospect is there that Brit ministers will be held accountable for the illegal invasion/ occupation that triggered this carnage? If past precedents are anything to go by, not much. But the likelihood is that, as in London earlier this summer, it will be we who pay the price for that failure to hold our leaders to account." |