STANLEY CROUCH $700M question: Did Iraq get a jump-start?

I for one have grown very tired of this hysteria and fake shock about the treatment of Iraqi prisoners because, however terrible it might look to the naive among us, that is a very small story when compared with what we should be focusing on.
There is, without a doubt, a much more important story. I say that because of what Bob Woodward states in his book, "Plan of Attack" -- that the Bush administration diverted $700 million to jump-start the invasion of Iraq without knowledge of Congress.
Some in Congress have reacted and demanded answers, but in this Jerry Springer age, it's the stories that have something to do with torture and sex that have staying power.
Is the humiliation and roughing up of prisoners by the military a truly big story? Actually, it doesn't have the dimensions of the videotape made by some soldiers of jihad who wanted the world to see them saw off Nick Berg's head. But the Berg murder has not had the sustained media presence the prisoner abuse has.
Our country is addicted to scandal because scandal is possible -- something that is only possible with a free press. Sustained scandals of the sort surrounding the military treatment of prisoners do not happen in countries run by men such as Saddam Hussein, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot or Fidel Castro.
For all of that, we find ourselves in a situation in which the very biggest story of the war takes a back seat to naked men in a pyramid. That is absolutely ridiculous.
Then there is always talk of how we have lost the "moral edge" because of it.
"What moral edge?" one might ask.
Hatred
The United States is roundly hated in the Islamic Middle East, as is proved by Shirin Ebadi of Iran, who won the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize. She attacks America as she makes her rounds in the United States, yet keeps largely silent on women's rights in Iran.
We will come through this, perhaps proven foolish, arrogant and naive before it is all over. But we need not accept the talk-show obsessions pushed into news media when a high crisis in federal conduct is there to be investigated.
It is about time for the media to pull its eyes back from the keyhole and get up off its knees. It is time to get an explanation about the diverting of the $700 million around the Congress.
If true, that sleeping dog of a story is rabid.
XStanley Crouch is a columnist for the New York Daily News. Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.