The utter absence of any moral clarity over the Haditha incident (whatever turns out to have happened there) is further evidence of the Democrat/media's agenda to blame America first. This past week President Bush said that he found the incident to be "troubling." But that is just what Haditha is, an incident. Just like Abu Graib was an "incident." Now the battle has been joined by other film crews and accounts which have one purpose and one purpose only, to establish "Haditha-like behavior" as a pattern, a style of warfare, even a policy of the United States military. According to the Democrat/media story line, this would then constitute another reason, among their four reasons to be named later in this article, to pull out of Iraq.

 The truth is that none of these incidents have anything to do with our mission in Iraq, except as a superficial public-relations strategy. They do not contribute a whit to any decisions about troop levels, time-tables or strategic decisions about the war. Moreover, it is hard to believe we have not experienced more of these incidents, given the kind of warfare we have had to fight in Iraq, high-intensity, house to house searches, interspersed with cowardly terrorist bombings. But make no mistake about the left's goal in all of this: it is nothing short of making Haditha a pattern in the minds of Americans. Multiple My-Lai's come to mind. Visions of future John Kerry's testifying about "cutting off ears, cutting off limbs" dance in liberal heads.

 The Vietnam script of the left has been apparent from the beginning. It is fourfold. Quagmire, casualties, time and atrocities will end the war. It took the left three days into the war to start using the "Q" word. Then the incessant use of casualty figures took over. ABC ran all the names of the war dead. They claimed this proved they valued every life. Many did not believe them. Liberals objected to the "Mission Accomplished" banner, not because it was misleading, which it wasn't. They objected to it because it did not properly reflect "ongoing casualties" in the war. The third weapon was time. Setting time-tables, attempting to snatch control of the conflict from commanders on the ground, the incessant bomb-crater of the day and 24-hour news cycle all screamed one thing ... time to get out! This is going on too long! Now the fourth nail in the coffin. Try to make Haditha into the My Lai of Iraq. Making American soldiers into murderers and thugs is their ace in the hole. It worked with Lieutenant Calley in Vietnam. Why not in Iraq?

 The moral equivalency argument is the lynch pin. We are at fault. We are no better than anyone else. Our soldiers must be retrained and reassigned. Marine Captain James Kimber was reassigned following Haditha for "a lack of confidence in his and other's leadership abilities." Captain Kimber was not even present in Haditha at the time of the incident. He called himself a victim of "politics." The politicizing of the military will be continue so we might prove our worthiness in the minds of leftists to continue the war.

 Let's be honest. This criticism will not be diffused because it is not based in reality. It will not be disproved by any facts in the case or in any due process for the soldiers involved. Moral clarity here is something the left will never embrace. It is not subject to evidence to the contrary. Islamic terrorists kill, maim and murder men, women and children at will, by the dozens, hundreds and thousands. It may turn out that they did so at Haditha. We do not know yet. But it makes no difference. The media, left-wing politicians and our impotent allies do not care. If they have any moral outrage, it is only expressed at the USA. The underlying agenda is this: the sooner we admit our moral inferiority and strategic blunder and get out of Iraq, the better the world will be. What we do afterwards is something about which they have no idea.

  John Pendleton