Robert Gibbs got all huffy about it today, but please keep in mind that he, as White House Press Secretary, is a professional obfuscater.

So. Major General Antonio Taguba, who conducted the Abu Ghraib investigation, acknowledged the existence of a couple specific photos of sexual abuse and rape. "Allegations of rape and abuse were included in his 2004 report but the fact there were photographs was never revealed," the Telegraph reported. But hey, is that actually true? Salon posted a lot of additional Abu Ghraib photos back in 2006 and Larisa Alexandrovna just reposted two (NSFW, disturbing) that might represent some of the specific photos of sexual abuse that the Telegraph describes?

In other words, the denial might be factually true, because these photos were already released, while the administration sits on the rest of them, which don't show those specific abuses.

Or, maybe, the Pentagon and Gibbs are lying. Because frankly we believe Taguba before them.

The Dreams and Daemons blog claims that Harnden sent them a copy of the story as originally filed. It's written in journalistic future tense, i.e. "Saddam Hussein will spend his last moments hooded" etc. The barely unstated accusation turns round on Telegraph editorial, making it seem as though they rehabbed Harnden's article into authoritative past tense, complete with inaccurate headline ("Humiliated and hooded, the tyrant faces his fate on the steel scaffold"). Rather than answer resulting questions, the Telegraph instead issued a memo instructing staff not to blog about the paper or their jobs. Unfortunate memo phraseology alert: "Think carefully before blogging about journalistic 'tricks of the trade'." It's a little gauche to file a forward-looking "this will happen thus" story just to beat a deadline, but it's naive to think yanking an "incriminating" in-house blog post looks any less contemptible than yanking the actual news story that spawned it.

Humiliated and hooded, the tyrant faces his fate on the steel scaffold [Telegraph]
Telegraph executes Saddam blog [Guardian]
What Toby Harnden actually said.... [Dreams and Daemons]
Telegraph gets tough with bloggers [Guardian]

• So, important election results: Which anchor won? The general consensus seems to be Charlie Gibson, although Tom Shales gives it to Brian Williams, with Katie Couric getting an "affably in command." Meanwhile, the kids at Fox News were kinda bummed. [WaPo]
  
• All the Dean Baquet news you need, plus a gratuitous shot at Jeff Jarvis. [NYO]
  
• Who's gonna replace the 'Toos? Keith Kelly hears Amy Goldwasser. [NYP]
  
• Speaking of the 'Toos, our favorite line in the coverage of her departure: "Rubenstein's open cultivation of Hearst president Cathleen Black — grating on other editors with her cloying toasts to her boss at gatherings, taking Black's children to concerts, naming Black her hero on Rubenstein's MySpace blog — only went so far." [WWD]
  
• The U.K.'s Telegraph group posted a loss of 12 million. We're talking New York Post numbers here. [Guardian]