Lee Casey of the famous Casey-Rivkin team:

Dear Kathryn,
I hate hockey, but I must nevertheless offer a brief reply to Jonah Goldberg’s correspondent:
Every conservative I know of who has supported the Administration’s detainee policies was shocked and angered by the abuses which took place at Abu Ghraib. Those with access to the media have said so publicly. The men and women who perpetrated those abuses behaved in an unacceptable and criminal manner, outrageously mistreating men for whose welfare they were, at least at that time and place, responsible. Further, they did great harm to their country’s interests in time of war. Their punishments should be harsh, and there is every reason to believe that this will be the case. The same is true of others who have abused prisoners in Iraq and elsewhere, including deaths in custody. In fact, the U.S. has a very elaborate and efficient military justice system designed to address just such problems during wartime, and it is working.
If these points do not get a lot of discussion among conservatives, it is because they are not in issue — they are agreed. Beginning every discussion with, “I abhor torture” or “I abhor Abu Ghraib” is just politically correct pablum and a waste of pulp. You don’t need to say everything you know in everything you write, and, usually, it’s better not to.
What the reader really appears to be saying, however, is that the revelation of these abuses should have changed our minds with respect to the Administration’s detainee policies. Well, they might well have done exactly that if there was any evidence that it was the policies which caused the abuse. There is none. It is only if you accept the proposition that the policies themselves, denying Geneva POW status to unlawful combatants and using stress methods of interrogation, are inherently abusive that some sort of connection appears — and most of the Administration’s supporters simply do not accept that proposition. My guess is that what is really so scary to this individual is that there are people out here who do not tow the “progressive” line, and who cannot be intimidated into silence by the kinds of ridiculous ranting that Judge Gonzales has had to endure today. That should be scary to the Left.
Best,
Lee Casey