Why hasn't the media ever asked Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. any followup questions about this?

Published on Sunday, May 9, 2004 by the Sunday Herald
How Much Did They Know?
Rumsfeld knew about the torture of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. So did the US governor in Iraq, Paul Bremer. Even the British Ministry of Defence knew. Can we really believe that Bush and Blair didn’t?

But the question of who knew what – and when – is far more complicated and potentially far more damaging than Rumsfeld’s version of events suggests.

Even before the war against Iraq, the US had been told by Amnesty International of the abuse of prisoners in Afghanistan. Reports have been delivered from the Red Cross to coalition leaders almost every month since the official end of hostilities detailing similar abuses. Another Amnesty report making those same points was handed to Paul Bremer, the US ambassador heading the coalition provisional authority in Iraq, back in June 2003.

The Ministry of Defence in London also received Amnesty reports on abuse in the months immediately after the war.

The Rumsfeld version of events would have us believe that none of these complaints got to Bush before he briefed him on January 16 ... and even then the defence secretary “never gave the President a briefing with the impact that one would have had, had you seen the photographs or the videos”. Bush himself is insistent that the “first time I saw or heard about pictures,” was on TV.

The extent of Prime Minister Tony Blair’s knowledge is equally hazy. The MoD insists that the US report into the abuses in January was not officially sent to it but confirms he was aware of the contents. A spokesman told the Sunday Herald “it would have been logical” that the MoD would have seen the previous reports by Amnesty and the Red Cross. It’s not clear when Blair was made aware of the impending crisis, although he certainly did not refer to it publicly until the first, awful pictures from Abu Ghraib prison were in the public realm.