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MC: And General Geoffrey Miller was the one who was supposed to transplant those interrogation and torture techniques from Guantánamo to Abu Ghraib?

JK: That's correct. There are sworn statements, not only from the interrogators and the FBI personnel down at Guantánamo Bay prior to even a thought of using Abu Ghraib for a prison location. These torture techniques were being implemented and used down at Guantánamo Bay and, of course, now we have lots of statements that say they were used in Afghanistan as well.

In late August and September of 2003, Miller comes to visit, then everything starts to change, to include transferring the responsibility for Abu Ghraib over to the Military Intelligence people altogether. And it's been substantiated through an investigation that these torture practices were developed and implemented down in Guantánamo Bay and then they were imported to Abu Ghraib.

They're holding these soldiers responsible for one time on the night shift coming up with these pranks. Give me a break! It's so unfair to continue to blame those soldiers. You know, I would be the first one to say to anybody that Graner and Fredericks, as noncommissioned officers - they crossed the line. Graner punched a prisoner in the chest so hard, to get him under control, the guy passed out. Fredericks stepped on feet and hands and everything else. And they didn't report what they knew were violations of the Geneva Conventions. They didn't report those things to the chain of command.

Now I've been held accountable for that, but never once, Marjorie, never once have I had an opportunity to speak to any of those soldiers, because before I was even aware that there was an investigation going on or that there were photographs or anything else, those soldiers were removed from their positions at Abu Ghraib and taken away to Sanchez's headquarters. And I was never allowed to speak to them. Never once.

MC: Why do you think you're the highest officer who's been punished?

JK: Well, I don't know how else to say it, but I think I check a lot of blocks. Before the war got underway, before 9/11, Rumsfeld's plan was to downsize the military - fewer, faster, more trained in Special Operations, never have to fight on two fronts again. He wanted to downsize the overall military. He wanted to return control of the military to the civilian sector. And the division commanders, at least in the Army, were opposed to that. And there were very selfish reasons for their opposition. If you were a division commander, you could pay back favors that were done for you, perhaps, to get you promoted or to put you into positions. You repay other graduates of the military academy - those kinds of things - by appointing them to command positions in your own division. So the more toys you have to play with, the bigger your division and the more likely that you're going to be at the front of the pack when your promotion comes up. So that's history.

Rumsfeld wanted to downsize the military, and the component chiefs were opposed to it. He sent them all back to their offices, and said, "Find a way to do this." The only component that came up with a solution was the Marine Corps. Then he sent the Air Force, the Navy and the Army back to the drawing board, and then 9/11 happened. So they got a reprieve. And it was up to them to prove how important it was that they still needed big divisions and lots of equipment and all that other stuff.

Here's Shinseki briefing Rumsfeld that he can't win this war, if they insist on invading Iraq, he can't win this war with less than 300,000 soldiers. I wasn't there to hear it, but allegedly Rumsfeld said to Shinseki: go back and find a way to do this with 125,000 to 150,000. Well, Shinseki came back again and said: Mr. Secretary we can't do it with that number. You need 300,000.

What did Rumsfeld do? If you can't agree with me, I'm going to find somebody who can. He made Shinseki a lame duck, for all practical purposes, and brought in Schoomaker. And Schoomaker got it. He said, "Oh yes sir, we can do this with 125,000."

Well, none of them had to go fight the war. None of them had to deploy and manage this small number. And everybody was under the impression that this war was going to be over very quickly. So there was no sustainment plan. And I'm selected for Brigadier General. I had a choice: I could either wait for my unit to come back to the United States and join the men, or I could deploy. I wanted to be with my unit in the field. I thought it would be a great opportunity to see how they would operate under field conditions in a theater of war.

When I got there, there was a completely different story than what we were being told in the United States. It was out of control. There weren't enough soldiers. Nobody had the right equipment. They were driving around in unarmored vehicles, some of them without doors. Some of the soldiers didn't even have protective vests. And I kept hearing the same excuse for reservists, for National Guard units: the active component was taking the equipment as a priority. We can't get it over here.

And then layer on top of that, there was no personnel replacement system for the Reserves and the National Guard. So if I lost a soldier to an illness, a nervous breakdown, a battle injury, whatever it might be, I operated one short, or ten short, or thirty short, or sixty short. I didn't mobilize these units. I didn't deploy these units. I joined them in theater. The responsibility for how those units were deployed and how they were ill-prepared rests with the senior level of leadership in the military.

MC: And when you say "senior level," who do you mean?

JK: I mean the Chief of the Army Reserves, the Chief of the National Guard here, who is the only general officer in all of this who has admitted that they had no idea. I think it was General Bloom, he's a three-star. I don't even know if he still is Chief of the National Guard. But he admitted that they had no idea that the units were going to be deployed for anything, the length of time that it started to appear that they were going to be deployed. So they pushed them out of the mobilization stations, because they knew that the units would somehow manage once they got into Iraq. So, knowing that they were ill-equipped and ill-prepared, they pushed them out anyway, because those two three-stars wanted their fifteen minutes of fame, I suppose.

But Bloom, at least, stepped up to the plate and took responsibility. Helmsley, who allowed these units to deploy, who came up with this harebrained scheme about cross-welling soldiers and serving with complete strangers - he has never taken responsibility for anything. And neither has the Pentagon.

More than a year ago, that brave soldier stood up and said to Rumsfeld, "Why don't we have the right equipment? Why are we still going out with unarmored vehicles?" Rumsfeld made that infamous comment that was: you go to war with the units that you have, not necessarily the ones you want. Well, how about a slap in the face? But he's never been held accountable for that.

And the man, the officer who stopped requests for armored vehicles and stopped requests for protective vests to be prioritized is now the Chief of Staff of the Army, General Cody. He's a four-star. He was a three-star. He was in charge of logistics, and he disapproved any additional requests for vehicles or protective equipment for our soldiers. He was promoted. He is a four-star, and he is the Chief of Staff of the Army today.

That's how Rumsfeld and the Pentagon reward people who are in agreement with them. I don't know how else to say it. Shinseki, who was telling Rumsfeld the truth - he was retired.

Anybody who confronts this Administration or Rumsfeld or the Pentagon with a true assessment, they find themselves either out of a job, out of their positions, fired, relieved or chastised. Their career comes to an end.

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