L-3 Communications, through its parent company Engility Holdings Inc, has disclosed in an SEC filing that it has paid over $5 million to victims of torture at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq during the U.S occupation.

The fight over Chuck Hagel’s appointment as Secretary Of Defense has ventured into truly unfortunate terrain with assertions of prejudice and bigotry by Hagel’s opponents.

The Obama administration has just recommended that the U.S. Supreme Court not hear a case brought by torture victims of Abu Ghraib and other detention centers in Iraq – a recommendation that leaves the Iraqi torture victims without any redress or accountability for those responsible for their torture. Through their case, Saleh v. Titan, these Iraqi civilians, many of whom still suffer from the effects of the physical and psychological harm done to them, seek to hold the two U.S. corporations implicated in their torture – CACI International and L-3 Services (formerly Titan Corporation) – accountable in a U.S. courthouse, and have their case heard by an American jury. The Obama administration has just recommended that the U.S. Supreme Court not hear a case brought by torture victims of Abu Ghraib and other detention centers in Iraq.

Apart from aiming for another Pulitzer Prize, the other most (perhaps more) likely explanation for the style of the piece is that editors have tried so hard not to piss off the security establishment–and to stop short of voicing the conclusions that Dana Priest and William Arkin’s work support–that they’ve turned Priest and Arkin’s work into a bunch of disembodied fluff.