Abu Ghraib: What Really Matters

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made a telling admission to the Senate committee on Friday. Yes, he knew about the abuses and had told President Bush about the investigation on a checklist of eight to fifteen items last winter. But he hadn't mentioned the pictures and that's what pushed the President over the edge. The White House told reporters that the President chastised Rummy not for the abuses, but for failing to alert him to the pictures.

In the interview on 60 Minutes II, General Mark Kimmit told CBS News Anchor Dan Rather "It's reprehensible that anybody would be taking a picture of that situation." Rather asked the telling question "What about the situation itself?" Kimmit then said, almost as an afterthought, that we didn't know all the facts and of course it is terrible and is being investigated. But the situation itself seemed secondary to the images of it.

Is it the reality of the abuses – or the pictures of them - that is so troubling? The administration has gone out of its way to block the pictures of the flag-draped caskets returning from Iraq claiming they are a violation of the soldiers and families privacy. But, the politics behind this policy is blatant.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/05/10/opinion/lynch/main616424.shtml