Slow Motion Vindication

Remember the so-called "Haditha massacre"?  Remember how the anti-war Left, in the corrupt personage of Representative Jack "Haw-Haw" Murtha (D-PA), tried to turn this one skirmish in the vast and sprawling War Against Islamic Fundamentalism into this conflict's version of the My-Lai massacre, depicting the GIs involved as bloodthirsty savages and war criminals?  Remember how much play this smear got in the Enemy Media at the time?

It's a pity they'll never give equal time to said American Marines' inexorable exoneration:

Last week's development in the Haditha case - the dropping of all the charges leveled against Lance Corporal Stephan Tatum for actions related to Haditha, Iraq - drives another nail into the shameful accusations made by Time magazine and Representative John Murtha.

Time magazine, with an assist from the Pennsylvania Democrat, sparked a legal and media inquisition against eight courageous United States Marines. Both Time and Murtha claimed these Marines committed cold-blooded murder in Haditha during a 2005 engagement.

They also alleged the Marines participated in covering up their alleged atrocities.

But after years of litigation and estimated $40 million in taxpayer funds expended, none of the Marines have been found guilty of committing murder or war crimes.

How much would you wager that Haw-Haw is not going to go to the floor of the House of Representatives and begin a weeks-long rampage of contrition and remorse in venue after venue apologizing for his reckless, relentless public slander of the members of Kilo Company 3rd battalion 1st Marines that was based upon the testimony of two known insurgent propagandists?  At least Time  issues four separate retractions, though obviously with such a degree of quietude that I never noticed it.  Every time Haw-Haw's rabid, Kerryesque accusations have gotten further disproved, he's simply reiterated them and mendatiously expanded the scope of his supposed "sources" for them, up to and including the then-Marine Corps Commandant himself, General Hagee - who, not surprisingly, denied telling Murtha any such thing.  Expect more of the same with this latest crushing setback.

That's what makes this victory so pyrrhic.  It's like one of the early victims of the Democrats' politics of personal destruction (Remember the phrase "sleaze factor"?) - Ronald Reagan's first Labor Secretary, Raymond Donovan - said after the Dems' trumped up "corruption" witchhunt against him was completely discredited and thrown out of court.  As he came down the steps of the federal courthouse and faced the usual phalanx of media cameras and microphones, he plaintively asked, "Which office do I go to to get my reputation back?"  Yes, he'd been exonerated; but he'd also been impoverished by the inevitable ton of legal fees, and his public reputation had been dragged through the PR muck for months.

And Donovan was a politician, or at least public servant, who had some idea of what he arena he was getting into.  What of these eight Marines, whose only mandate - and only action - was to defend their country?  A country that elects dishonorable toDsaH'pu like Jack Murtha to positions of power and influence from which they gleefully jam rusty d'k tahgs into the backs of America's men and women in uniform.  Who could blame them for wondering why they bothered serving such a country in the first place?

Yet I would wager that if you ask any of them that question, they'd give you the same answer as when they first signed up.

So which ones truly speak for our country?  The noble, honorable warriors of the Marine Corps, or lying sacks of taknar droppings like Haw-Haw Murtha?

I wish that question was a lot less rhetorical than it is.