Rushing To Haditha

Rushing To Haditha

By GARY BAUER
June 23, 2006

You've got to hand it to the liberals. Their response to alleged misconduct by
American troops at Haditha has been remarkably calm and controlled. Take
Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean's statement: "I've resisted
pronouncing a sentence before guilt is found. I still have this old-fashioned
notion that ... we should do our best not to ... prejudge jury trials."

Oh, wait. Sorry. This comment was actually made in 2003, when a reporter asked
then-Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean his preferred punishment
for Osama bin Laden.

Dr. Dean's willingness to give the benefit of the doubt to bin Laden,
America's most wanted terrorist, stands in stark contrast to the way his
fellow liberals discuss our Marines at Haditha.

Rep. John Murtha was quick to convict U.S. soldiers of killing "innocent
civilians in cold blood," and asked, "Who covered it up, why did they cover it
up, why did they wait so long?" Liberal blogger Arianna Huffington accused
U.S. troops of, "killing the wrong people all the time."

Let's be clear. There is still much that is unknown about what happened at
Haditha. What we do know is that Haditha was a city crawling with insurgents.
In a special report by Britain's Guardian newspaper just three months before
the attack, Haditha was described as an "insurgent citadel" where Islamist
guerillas were "the sole authority, running the town's security,
administration and communications."

Tellingly, DVDs of daily beheadings and torture were distributed free on the
street. The children preferred them to cartoons.

We also know that on the morning of November 19, 2005, a group of U.S. Marines
were passing through the town when one of their vehicles hit an improvised
explosive device planted in the road by insurgents. One Marine was killed, his
body cut in half.

more @ http://www.nysun.com/article/34970
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