Instapundit Watch

An Andrew Sullivan e-mailer ran the numbers on Glenn Reynolds' coverage of "the press's Abu Ghraib" versus the actual Abu Ghraib and here's what he found:

The Newsweek story was the subject of 22 of the 40 posts/updates, all of which expressed admonishment. In contrast, the sample of 40 posts from the Abu Ghraib weeks contained only 2 expressing admonishment of the abuse (and even there, it is qualified), while the 12 other posts/updates on the abuse scandal either: A) Attempted to minimize its moral and practical significance, or B) Tried to discredit the evidence as fake or exaggerated by anti-troop, liberal media bias.

A huge surprise, of course. Now, let us suppose that the torture of detainees could be directly linked to attacks on Americans and innocent Iraqis. Whom would Reynolds blame for provoking the attacks: A) the torturers and their enablers/immunizers in the administration; or B) the press for reporting the torture? Sort of answers itself, doesn't it, and belies Reynolds' risible claim to be a defender of freedom of the press. If I were unscrupulous enough to borrow a certain someone's rhetorical trope, I'd say that anybody who considers the botching of a story about what is in all likelihood a Gettier-truth anyway (and if not, has been exceeded in cruelty by documentable atrocities) a ranker offense than torture is on the other side in this war for liberal civilization.