Abu Ghraib: we haven't heard the end

The Bush administration is desperate to put the story of Abu Ghraib (أبو غريب) prison behind it. On Thursday's Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Brigadier General Janis Karpinski told her story of Abu Ghraib prison. She was the commander of the facility during the period that produced the infamous photographs of detainee abuse.

We were holding thousands of prisoners successfully, Iraqi detainees, treating them humanely and fairly, and then the military intelligence interrogators stepped in. The prisoner population exploded, they took control of interrogations and of the detention facility at Abu Ghraib, and everything kind of crashed to the ground following those photographs that were taken there. — BGen. Janis Karpinksi, 2005-10-27

General Karpinski goes on to point to the Bush administration, and particularly Alberto Gonzales, as having authorized the unprecedented departure from the spirit of the Geneva Conventions.

Janis Karpinski has a new biography, One Woman's Army, which covers many other aspects of her remarkable career as well as Abu Ghraib.