Not making excuses....but, this does provide context

While it appears quite clear several guards at Abu Ghraib went over the line, both in terms of stuff that should never happen, and that which I actually don't morally have a problem with, but, wouldn't have had done, due to the bad PR associated with it. Certainly not in the days of cameras and the Internet. They should have been aware of the speed at which stuff like that gets around and adjusted their actions accordingly.

Anyway, read the linked story and see if that changes your feelings about the firestorm going on in the media about the prisoner abuse. It is so obvious the media wants this abuse fiasco to keep going, to hurt Bush. Even if every bad photo that existed was in the media's hands, they wouldn't release them now, as it would eventually blow over. They want little bits of it to come out every few days or weeks to give them impression that it is 'rampant' behavior and is a pattern of abuse. To have it possibly have been actually a reasonabily isolated time frame in response to a particularly violent enemy uprising wouldn't get the same traction. The media wants legs on stories that hurt Bush (prisoner abuse) and wants those that would hurt the enemy (Nick Berg) to be one day wonders.

Don't expect much to be made of this possible revelation of November 8th being an outlier.