I think Nicholas Stix nails Abu Gharib in this rant:

In case you think that by my defiant tone I seek to diminish the significance of Abu Ghraib … you’re right. While the abuses at Abu Ghraib are unacceptable, the notion that America owes the Arab world an apology is ludicrous. Abu Ghraib was not Auschwitz, it was not German soldiers shooting allied POWs in the Ardennes during the Battle of the Bulge, it was not My Lai, it certainly wasn’t people being shredded alive, and it wasn’t Hussein’s Abu Ghraib. And it wasn’t Nick Berg getting his head sawed off, in the slowest, most excruciatingly painful manner possible, for the benefit of a worldwide audience. Abu Ghraib was regrettable, and those who engaged in misconduct should be court-martialed and punished under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, but that is it. Compared to Arab prisons, Abu Ghraib was the Waldorf Astoria. No one should lose a moment’s sleep over the matter.

A nation that would wallow in remorse over an Abu Ghraib, is a nation that is unfit to defend itself. America is in a world war for its very existence, a war Sulzberger and Co. are doing everything in their power to cause us to lose. Abu Ghraib functions for them as just one more of an endless string of “October surprises,” which now occur every month of the year. That is nothing short of treasonous, and that is what we should be concerned about.

The real Abu Ghraib story isn’t how an Abu Ghraib could have happened, but how the sort of one-sided, dishonest reporting and editorializing on Abu Ghraib could have happened. Journalists in America and abroad have distorted Abu Ghraib in much the way that in April, 2002, anti-Semitic journalists and UN officials fabricated out of Israel’s battle for Jenin, a tale of (non-existent) Israeli “atrocities.”

Find the problems and fix them. Deal with the perpetrators. Then get back to the mission.