Moments in Great Leadership

Lesson for Sen. Lindsey Graham: next time you bash a ghost, make sure she’s not in the audience.

Monday night, the South Carolina Republican joined Sen. Edward Kennedy (D., Mass.) for a panel discussion following a Washington screening of “Ghosts of Abu Ghraib,” an HBO documentary made by Kennedy’s niece, Rory Kennedy, about the 2004 abuse scandal in the Iraqi prison run by U.S. forces. As a veteran Air Force lawyer, Graham has spoken with authority on military law issues, and seemingly sought to navigate a course between President Bush’s claims of absolute power over enemy prisoners and humanitarian law concerns over compliance with the Geneva Conventions, the Convention Against Torture and other treaties.

Kennedy
Kennedy complained that low-ranking soldiers took the fall for Abu Ghraib, while high-level officials got a pass. Graham wouldn’t go that far, but he did take credit for blocking Bush’s nomination of an architect of the prisoner policy, Pentagon General Counsel William J. Haynes II, to a federal appeals court. And he added that the military police commander in Baghdad, Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, got off easy with a demotion to colonel. She should have faced a court-martial, he declared.
Apparently unbeknownst to Graham — he arrived a few minutes after formal introductions pointed her out — Karpinski, who is interviewed in the documentary, was a guest at the screening. And moderator Jeffrey Toobin, the New Yorker magazine’s legal correspondent, invited her to reply.

“Sen. Graham…I consider you as cowardly as Rumsfeld, as Sanchez, and Miller and all of them,” said Karpinski, who has long claimed to be a scapegoat for superiors including former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez and Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller.

Graham replied that those higher-ups deserved a share of the blame, but “this was going on unchecked for weeks and months, and Rumsfeld was in Washington and you were on the ground, so I stand by my statement.” Noting that Karpinski happens to reside in South Carolina, he acknowledged, “I’ve probably lost your vote.” –Jess Bravin

Link.

And the victim herself says:

Tuesday night's private screening of Rory Kennedy's Ghosts of Abu Ghraib in Washington may serve to haunt Senator Lindsey Graham for many days to come. It was such a great opportunity and Senator Graham was such a great target, but he has only himself to thank. It is so sad and unfortunate for him to say the things he said, not so much because he thought he could simply say what he did against me not knowing I was there, but because it made everybody painfully aware of his inability to comprehend what he saw in the movie and his ignorance of the big picture.

He condemns the complicity of Miller, Sanchez, Rumsfeld et al., including a remark against the President, but sidesteps his responsibility in pinning medals on each one of them and letting them retire.
His first comment was about me -- his dismay over not having the chance to court martial me. Did he read even one page of all of the investigations, or perhaps not even bother because he was well aware it was a sham and a farce from the get go. The movie is so good at tying all of the parts and the real evidence together. He just refuses to get it, or maybe he is just not intelligent enough to get any of it.

I stand by my remarks about him being a coward. A coward condemns people in public ONLY when he believes there will be no opposition. What a pitiful example of a Senator. At one point, he was acknowledging the need for torture and told us we did not even want us to know what all of what they did to Khalid Shiek Mohammed because it was just so awful, but he assured us Khalid Sheik Mohammed provided "really great" information. Then, unbelievably, he tried desperately to assure us "most Americans think this is an unfortunate necessity in the global war on terrorism." Where is he taking the survey??

I am a resident of South Carolina and I do not like Senator Graham. He is a fake and a fraud and claims he has military experience so he has the right to condemn military actions and/or failures. He is and always was, a JAG Officer -- a lawyer, spending his military time in a plush office somewhere and never seeing harm's way anywhere, but never hesitating to send Soldiers into harm's way -- ill equipped, ill informed and ill prepared to face hostile actions every hour of every day of their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is an understatement to say, as he did, "Well then, I guess I lost your vote."

Other attendees were great afterwards and generously supportive. It is my experience American people are far more intelligent and perceptive than the likes of Senator Lindsey Graham gives them credit for being. They understood the movie and they are annoyed with the idiotic comments he made. More importantly, they are annoyed with him and the Administration he represents. When Ghosts of Abu Ghraib is broadcast across the country next week, I hope Americans are so annoyed and angry from watching the movie, it stimulates a renewal of demands for the truth and an independent commission to review the facts and render truthful conclusions.