Brass Knuckles

I can’t begin to tell you how relieved I am to see the Michelle Malkin post covering the announcement that charges in the Haditha case against Lcpl Stephen Tatum were dropped.  I called Haditha from the beginning as part of a propaganda effort against the US Military, and it almost succeeded, thanks in no small part to the efforts by the US media and a complicit Democratic Party.  From one of my postings on June 7, 2006.

There was something very familiar to me about the allegations that were being made regarding Haditha, and the media’s rush to sensationalize the allegations.  It sounded a lot to me like the missile strike at Damadola, which I wrote about here and here. For those who don’t remember, this was a CIA Predator missile strike in Pakistan that was originally portrayed vociferously in the media as a mistaken attack on a wedding feast full of innocent revelers.  In the end, the decision to hit the target was vindicated.

It should be common knowledge by now that the enemy we face is well versed in public relations, reads and knows the US media and has been largely ineffective in engaging the US military in anything larger than platoon-sized elements. The US death toll, though every death is a tragedy and a permanent loss, will no doubt be a benchmark for future conflicts that include a not insignificant urban component.  The death toll is low by any rational and educated measure, far lower than any other protracted conflict in our nations history. The most effective weapon in our enemy’s arsenal is their manipulation of great segments of the world press and their ability to effectively conduct psychological operations against the US population.  As an example, here’s an excerpt from Bin Laden’s tape which was released in January, 2006. 

From the beginning, there were plenty of indications that the allegations were patently fabricated; the fact that the “budding young journalism student” was like me in his mid-forties (not that I’m not young at heart) and one of the two-man-crew human rights organization that broke the story, the fact that the “human rights” organization waited four months to make the charges, and the fact that the Time Magazine reporter that broke the story was unabashedly infatuated with the Taliban and other anti-American elements, and so on.

The media treatment and the treatment that these your Marines received at the hands of the Democratic leadership has been nothing less than a travesty, and has been nothing if not treacherous and opportunistic, as evidenced by the unhinged comments about the case by former Marine John Murtha on May 18, 2006, in advance of the trials.

Time to broach the subject with Senator Obama and Senator Clinton.