Janis Karpinski

Military intelligence interrogators, however, their goal is to get information, to save lives, to stop the war, to find Saddam - whatever the information is going to be used for, at whatever cost.

The day after the prison was transferred to the military intelligence command, they had an entire battalion - 1,200, 1,500 soldiers - arrive at Abu Ghraib just for force protection alone.

In November, they transferred control of Abu Ghraib to the military intelligence command completely; it was, after all, the center for interrogations for Iraq.

I knew how many MPs I had assigned to the brigade, how many military prison operations I would be running, but we needed to evaluate how many criminal prison operations we could support.

There was a military police brigade with over 3,400 soldiers getting ready to go home because their mission - prisoner-of-war operations - was finished.

The war was declared over - the end of major combat operations - in May 2003. Release procedures got under way immediately; reducing the population from 8,000 to just over 300, of course, requires fewer military police soldiers.

Military police know what to do, they know the Geneva Conventions, and their objective is to provide a safe, secure, fair environment for prisoners under their control.

They transfer the prison, and all of a sudden all this money cuts loose, all these people cut loose.

If you are charged with this responsibility of enhancing interrogations, or using soldiers to enhance interrogations to find Saddam, and you're above the law for all practical purposes, you might try some unusual techniques. Now we know that, in fact, they did.

I thought that that mission and the mission of taking care of those soldiers were my priorities, and I stand by the same today. There wasn't a lot of support for those soldiers.

The vast majority of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, even after interrogation, had no further intel value whatsoever.

It's hard to be happy when you are facing 120 to 140 degree temperatures and nothing seems to be moving in a direction that you think or they think or you've been told it's supposed to be moving in.