Graham Ambushed By Ex-Abu Ghraib CO

Elanor Clift, fresh from calling global warming deniers akin to holocaust deniers, jumped at the opportunity to attend the opening of the Kennedy-Krafted (Rory, RFK's daughter, born six months after his assassination) film "Ghosts of Abu Ghraib." I amost didn't read the article ... but I was in the mood for a little righteous indignation at leftyscribes. I had a couple pleasant surprises.

After the usual Clift-clatter ...

The administration’s war policies are like a Band-Aid slowly being pulled off. The lies, the faulty intelligence, the recriminations, and now—thanks to a new documentary by filmmaker Rory Kennedy, “The Ghosts of Abu Ghraib”—the spotlight is back on the infamous prison where revelations of abuse and sexual humiliation destroyed what was left of America’s moral high ground.

... came this very interesting passage:

[Ted] Kennedy called the investigations into what happened at Abu Ghraib “a basic whitewash” because no high-ranking officials were held accountable. [Lindsey] Graham said the abuses were not systemic, that this was “sadism on the night shift,” and it was up to the commander on the ground to keep the young soldiers in line.

To Graham’s evident surprise, the commander was in the audience. Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski rose to her feet to challenge Graham’s assertion that she should have been court-martialed. With her gray hair pulled tight into a bun and wearing a soft-gray knit suit, she lit into Graham, saying, “I asked for a court-martial. They didn’t want me in a courtroom because they didn’t want to hear the truth.”

Karpinski was demoted in rank but did not serve jail time. In the film, she talks about “begging” for resources to handle what had become “a huge mass of humanity thrown into a mud pit.” Abu Ghraib, by September 2003, housed 6,000 prisoners and had only 300 military police guarding them.

Graham sputtered a bit at being sandbagged, but was unmoved.

What a moment that must have been! I don't have a lot of sympathy for Karpinski, but putting a self-aggrandizing old coot like Graham on the spot ... well, bully for her.

Clift also actually put some decent perspective in this piece, noting:

Thirty thousand people were executed at Abu Ghraib during Saddam Hussein’s regime, most of them hung from huge meat hooks. The hooks are still there in the film; pictures of Saddam still adorn the walls. Wild dogs roam the grounds trying to dig up the dead.

Thirty-thousand dead -- mostly the victims of political murders or ethnic cleansing -- in just one popular Saddam venue, and the Left howls about the unrighteousness of our cause, including writers like Clift.

hat-tip: Real Clear Politics