Andrew Sullivan on Abu Ghraib Andrew Sullivan on Abu Ghraib

A recent article in www.AndrewSullivan.com - Daily Dish about Abu Ghraib is of interest today because Dan Rather and company yesterday were apparently getting an award for reporting on the prison scandal. This was, of course, the same crew who tried to perpetuate RaTHerGate, trying to pass off Word 97 or higher documents as having been created thirty five years ago. The Sullivan article was in response to Instapundit.com articles on the current Newsweek scandal.

The absurdity of the Abu Ghraib awards is that it was a non-scandal made into a scandal by the MSM. It concerned less than ten of the 125,000 or so soldiers and marines we had in Iraq at the time - or less than .01%, or less than 1%% (thanks to Eugene Volokh for this nomenclature). In other words, less than de minimis. I also understand that the BG (O-7) in charge of the prison was demoted to COL (O-6) and retired.

And as importantly, the army had been investigating the prison for months at that time. My understanding was that it was already somewhere around the divsion or corp level at that time. And since then, most of the perps have gone to prison for rather long prison terms as a result. The only exception being one of the ringleaders, PFC England, whose plea deal was recently rejected by the court.

We have no reason to believe that absent the MSM "discovering" this scandal, that these people would not have been caught and punished. At best, the MSM involvement may, just may, have resulted in increased prison time. But, they were already on their way to jail at the time.