Torture Memos Bear Me Out: Abu Ghraib Boss

A retired colonel who helped run Abu Ghraib prison long asserted that she and her troops were just following orders in the prisoner interrogations that sparked a global outcry. Now, Janis Karpinski tells CNN, the release of torture memos has finally proven her case. “When they were first released a few days ago, I did feel this sense of being able to exhale after 5 years,” she said.

“That is what we have been saying from the very beginning, that, wait a minute, why are you inside pointing the finger at me, why are you pointing the fingers at the soldiers here?” she said. “The outrage was over the photographs, because the photographs were living color of what those top-secret memorandums authorized.” Though some of the weight is now off her shoulders, she says, escaping years of humiliation will be difficult.
(More Abu Ghraib stories.)