I joined the 800th MP Brigade when they were already deployed.
From Janis Karpinski
The mission statement was ordered, and it sent the 800th MP Brigade, effective the first of July, up to Baghdad. I joined my brigade to take command at the end of June.
The vast majority of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, even after interrogation, had no further intel value whatsoever.
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.
They transfer the prison, and all of a sudden all this money cuts loose, all these people cut loose.
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.
At that time, about July 5, we had no Iraqi corrections officers working for us. It was a responsibility of the CPA, with contractors, to set up a training program.
Shortly after we arrived in Baghdad, we had another conversation with the ambassador. He said that he wanted us to give him the timeline, because we had 90 days to get these prisons operational and transfer responsibility back to the Iraqis.
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.
In November, they transferred control of Abu Ghraib to the military intelligence command completely; it was, after all, the center for interrogations for Iraq.
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