The American Spectator

p> FEELING THE HEAT br> Re: Ben Stein’s Keeping the Faith : /p>

I find it odd that people who purport to honor and support our military immediately jump to the conclusion that the media reports — the same media that gave us such highlights as the “Horrors of Katrina,” “Flushed Korans” and Jason Blair/Janet Clark/Stephen Glass — are either trustworthy or accurate.

I also wonder why no one has raised the possibility that the insurgents themselves killed those civilians, for no other purpose than to blame it on the Marines. After all, they could count on the assistance of the Western media and the Dems in Congress. Not to mention the usual gaggle of leftist geese.

p>I find it odd that American troops would commit a massacre in broad daylight — especially when they are equipped and trained to act in the dead of night. And I find it far easier to believe that the insurgents — you know the guys who put car bombs in the middle of crowded markets or near schools — are capable of mass murder, than the Marines. br> — Michael Giles br> Copiague, New York /p>

My disagreement with Mr. Stein about the stewardship of Secretary Rumsfeld, I should like to point out that any and all hindsight is usually 20-20, and that FDR probably would have done some things differently if he had the benefit of transcending time. Be that as it may, I do not want to engage in a polemic defending Secretary Rumsfeld because I have neither the education nor the factual military experience to make the decisions which he has been called upon to make. I would, however, like to comment on the left (and even some of the right) tendency to skyrocket in righteous indignation at incidents such as the one purported to have happened at Haditha, yet barely raise an eyebrow when one of Saddam’s mass graves containing thousands of bodies is uncovered. No one in his right mind welcomes a massacre of civilians by any force or government, but why does the one raise such deep emotion while the other (far greater in scope) doesn’t even ripple the water of the collective left’s pool of conscience?

p>This selective sense of judgment seems to appear in other areas too. Look at a comparison of the DeLay/Jefferson debacle. Then there is the Patrick Kennedy affair, and we could go back in time to a comparison of the Condit/Ted Kennedy situations. I would like to respect the folks on the left, and would like to honestly debate them about the apparent double standard, however, whenever I bring this up, they slide away both verbally and literally, and I am left with the question with which I ended the previous paragraph. I have read in several sources that the reason one cannot verbally dissuade or demonstrate a delusional patient out of his delusions is because those people take anything that is said or done and play it into their delusions. As one tries to argue them away from lunacy, one is actually contributing new vistas to that lunacy. This could be the reason that arguing with a committed leftist is both exhausting and fruitless. It’s a thought.