I was told to treat prisoners like dogs, claims army chief

THE American general who was in charge of Iraq’s notorious Abu Ghraib was yesterday involved in an astonishing war of words with her superiors after she said the commander of the Guantanamo Bay detention centre told her to treat the prisoners “like dogs”.

Brigadier General Janis Karpinski prison claimed in a BBC radio interview she was being made a scapegoat for the abuse of inmates and said her successor once told her prisoners should be treated "like dogs".

She said Major General Geoffrey Miller who was in charge of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and now oversees US prisons in Iraq told her last autumn that prisoners "are like dogs, and if you allow them to believe at any point that they are more than a dog then you've lost control of them".