Haditha Hertz

Mary Katherine Ham has a nice roundup on the alleged "Haditha Massacre," including an article that provides some more desperately needed context as to what was going on in that western Iraqi town last year. I was especially struck by the profundity of this observation:

O.J. Simpson, arguably the most guilty innocent man in recent history, was treated with more respect during his circus of a trial than these Marines are being given now. They are men in uniform, men who have sacrificed more than most ever will in the name of the United States. They deserve our respect until such time as a verdict is reached which calls that respect into question.

'Tis hard to top that peroration. But then justice isn't the objective of "Haw-Haw" Murtha and his fellow-travelers, but rather defamation, defeat, and national suicide.

"Disgusting" doesn't begin to describe it.

UPDATE: Haditha does have one thing in common with Abu Ghraib - the military began a full investigation of the incident the instant it came to light, the diametric opposite of the "coverup" of the neoBolsheviks' tiresome innuendo.

You know the old saying: insanity is trying the same thing over and over and over and expecting a different result. Maybe someday the Democrats will start to figure that out, but it sure as hell won't be today.

UPDATE 6/1: Jed Babbin does his usual sobering job of summing up the stakes of Haditha:

No matter how quickly military investigators work, and no matter how firmly any crimes are punished, the anti-war left won't be satisfied unless Haditha becomes the lever that pushes President Bush to admit the war was wrong and set a time to withdraw from Iraq. My Lai - the March 16, 1968 massacre of about five hundred Vietnamese by US soldiers - was first covered up and then exploded in headlines, courts-martial and congressional hearings. (Maureen Dowd, one of the New York Times' hyperliberal columnists, has already labeled Haditha a "My Lai acid flashback.") Screamed about by protesters, shown endlessly on television news, My Lai and the court-martial of one of the perpetrators, Lieutenant William Calley, provided the final political nail in the coffin of American involvement in Vietnam. We withdrew from Vietnam in 1975, abandoning our allies and hanging our heads in shame. This is the political result the left wants from Haditha, and we cannot allow it to happen for one very big reason. The Vietnam War ended in Vietnam, leaving America incapable of taking action in defense of itself or its allies for decades. The end of the war against the terrorist nations won't occur in Iraq, and we must be prepared - psychologically and politically - to continue the fight. When we lost Vietnam the enemy didn't follow us home. Radical Islamists will. If they win, we will literally lose America. [emphases added]

Let the fifth-columnists scream - we'll shout 'em down. After all, there are few things more liberating than being "damned if you do and damned if you don't."

Bring it on, jihadi-symps, bring it on.