Pre-Judging

Here are next week's Time and Newsweek covers (via Hot Air):

The investigation into the Haditha incident is not yet complete and no charges related to the incident have been filed yet.

I guess the folks at Time and Newsweek decided that they don't need trivial things like investigations and trials before assigning guilt.

And then there's this from a New York Times editorial:

So far, nothing in President Bush's repeated statements on the issue offers any real assurance that the White House and the Pentagon will not once again try to protect the most senior military and political ranks from proper accountability. This is the pattern that this administration has repeatedly followed in the past - in the torture scandal at Abu Ghraib, in the beating deaths of prisoners at Bagram air base in Afghanistan and in the serial abuses of justice and constitutional principle at Guantnamo Bay.

The overwhelming majority of American troops in Iraq are dedicated military professionals, doing their best to behave correctly under extraordinarily difficult circumstances. Their good name requires a serious inquiry, not another deflection of blame to the lowest-ranking troops on the scene.

That's something akin to asking a man if he's stopped beating his wife yet, isn't it? What the Times is calling for is someone big in the Bush administration to "plead guilty" to the killings at Haditha, which the Times has already decided is all the fault of Americans, they much like Time and Newsweek not needing the benefit of an investigation or trial.

What is astounding here is the assumption the Times make in calling for the head of a Bush administration big-wig. Even if the Marines did kill those civilians in Haditha, how is that the fault of upper command? They aren't the result of administration policy or orders from the chain of command. They are (if, again, the Marines did kill those people) the result of some soldiers snapping and making a poor decision.

We don't arrest the Postmaster General when some disgruntled letter sorter opens fire on his/her co-workers with a machine gun, and we don't hold the Secretary of Defense responsible for crimes committed by soldiers of their own volition.

All of the political axe-grinding surrounding Haditha is getting a little sickening. The incident is, at most, a rare black mark on the proud tradition of honorable service from 99% of our soldiers. It is an aberration, yet the left/media sees it as more. They see it as a weapon to use against a President and a set of foreign policies they hate. That they would politicize the issue, at the expense of the reputation of our troops, even to the point of assigning guilt before the accused are even formally charged (before an investigation into the matter has even been completed) is just plain disgusting.

You can read more from Rob Port at SayAnythingblog.com