Screening

Ganked in its entirety from the Washington Post:

Some Loaded Comments at Abu Ghraib Screening

When the lights go up after most documentary screenings, you usually can expect a politely snoozy lovefest at the “panel discussion to follow.” So the folks who turned out for the preview of HBO's Ghosts of Abu Ghraib at the Ronald Reagan Building last night were unusually lucky.

Among the VIPs on hand to discuss the Rory Kennedy project (set to air Feb. 22) were Uncle Ted Kennedy and Sen. Lindsey Graham. The latter livened things up in a big way when he denounced Army Col. Janis Karpinski, who was demoted from brigadier general after the prison torture scandal.

“Karpinski should have been court-martialed,” said the South Carolina Republican, who sits on the Armed Services Committee. “She was not a good commander.”

Awkward! For who was in the audience but Karpinski herself. “I consider you as cowardly as [Lt. Gen. Ricardo] Sanchez or [Donald] Rumsfeld or [former Guantanamo Bay commander Geoffrey] Miller,” she shot back. “You're saying I should be court-martialed—they didn't want me in a courtroom because I would tell” the truth. Graham sputtered clumsily until moderator Jeffrey Toobin jumped in.

Afterward, Karpinski told our colleague Michael Cavna: “Ninety-nine percent of the story is still covered up .... Miller and Sanchez and Rumsfeld should be in those cells” with the Army guards who were found guilty.

If the style of this story seems strangely breezy, that's because it's from a celebrities-and-politicians column also featuring dish about Teri Hatcher baking cookies for George H. W. Bush, observations about cooking from the First Lady, and a possible sighting of LL Cool J in Washington, DC. Yeah. Because that's exactly where quotes from the commander of Abu Ghraib describing an ongoing coverup and calling Don Rumsfeld a war criminal belong, it seems.

Brad DeLong is constantly harping on the catastrophically bad editorial standards at the Post, and this is a good sign that he's on target.