It's about darned time.....
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It was amazing to me, to go online tonight, and open up something from the Wall Street Journal, and see this. I was flabbergasted for a few before I decided to post the story here on my blog. Maybe it will amaze you too.



U.S. Soldiers Aren't Guilty Before a Verdict
The U.S. military needs a PR counteroffensive.
BY DANIEL HENNINGER
Friday, July 7, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

We seem to have a new national holiday tradition: No holiday is complete without front-page allegations of an atrocity committed by U.S. soldiers in Iraq. A month ago, Memorial Day arrived along with Haditha, a place in western Iraq where hundreds of Memorial-weekend news reports said a military investigation had concluded that Marines "wantonly killed unarmed civilians," among them "women and children." This past Fourth of July, along with the skyrockets' red glare came news that a former Army private had been charged in Charlotte, N.C. with committing rape and murder while he was in Iraq. Labor Day awaits.

Rather than let the charges against the private run like a tape-loop over a long, news-dead weekend, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, appeared Fourth of July morning on both NBC and CBS. After CBS's Harry Smith professed himself perplexed at how all this atrocity stuff was happening now, Gen. Pace said that "99.9%" of the men and women in Iraq were serving with honor and promised he would "get to the bottom" of the allegations.

Military specialists will output case studies for years on how Iraq has altered the way war is waged by Americans--on the battlefield and on the home front. Most interesting to know would be whether the war as perceived at home and the war as fought daily by our soldiers in Iraq became two separate realms of consciousness, the former barely related to the reality of the latter.

One benchmark in this process will be deciding which elements of the nation's military past are deemed relevant to taking the measure of this war. Outside the military colleges, the experience of World War II appears to have become largely irrelevant. The controlling benchmark today is whether any American military commitment can evade the vague moral abyss of the Vietnam War. Thus when the Haditha story broke open over Memorial Day it was analogized as "another My Lai," the storied 1968 killing, and cover-up, of hundreds of civilians in a Vietnamese village.

The reason for viewing Haditha through the moral sextant of My Lai is that My Lai significantly altered the political status of Vietnam in the U.S. It became a totem for U.S. behavior in Vietnam. So it is only natural that the My Lai template, however ill-fitting, would be pressed against Haditha to see if this one lurid story would break the back of the entire Iraq enterprise. And so the chairman of the Joint Chiefs shows up on TV the Fourth of July--going on PR offense like any corporate product manager to ensure this isn't the one event that burns down the whole company. Fair or not, these are the new rules of political engagement in wartime America, and the government learns to play by them or risk being rolled off the field.

But what about the soldiers themselves? Nearly anyone who gets sucked into the media vortex--celebrity, CEO, sports hero--becomes mere cannon fodder, so assume the same for GIs involved in abuse or murder allegations. The Marines implicated in the Haditha incident are largely anonymous now, but each is being auditioned to play this war's Lt. William Calley. But first they have to be convicted of something.

The innocence or guilt of the individual soldiers implicated in Haditha or the other alleged abuse incidents is a lower-order concern to those fighting a PR war for the hearts and minds of the American people on Iraq. In the first effusion of media coverage of these events, the impression is weighted toward assuming guilt, and so when the pollsters call to ask about support for the war, the numbers fall. Mission accomplished--unless a Gen. Pace can jump quickly enough on the other side of the public-impression teeter-totter.

That is one kind of modern war reality. But there is another, less visible reality, which one might call, of all things, "justice." Ask Ilario Pantano about it.

Mr. Pantano, who left a successful job in New York City to reenlist in the Marines, was brought up on charges in 2004 of shooting two Iraqi prisoners in the back while serving as a lieutenant in al Anbar province. A year later--after the military's investigation, defense discovery and a military trial--the charges against him were dropped. His accusers were discredited at trial. The absorbing details of the case's passage through the U.S. military-justice system are described in Mr. Pantano's just-published memoir, "Warlord."

Interviews this week with Mr. Pantano, his lawyers and other defense lawyers describe a military-justice system that is tough on the defense, but fair. "Overall it's good," said Mr. Pantano, "but it doesn't feel good when you're inside of it." All of them said, however, that the national publicity that erupts today around incidents such as Haditha raises the bar for the defense.

Phil Stackhouse, who was one of the military lawyers assigned to Mr. Pantano's defense, now works as a civilian on behalf of accused soldiers. "When a John Murtha starts screaming 'cold-blooded murder,' the press will pick up on that," he says, "and it is that much tougher for the civilian defense attorney to counter the public's impression."

Mr. Pantano's civilian lawyer, Charles Gittins, launched a PR strategy, eliciting testimonials of support from other officers and colleagues. In short, they played the strongest card available to a Marine accused of an unlikely mistake in a spotless career--character. "Good military character itself can be enough create reasonable doubt in the mind of the jury," says Mr. Stackhouse.

"You need a PR counteroffensive," says Mr. Pantano today. "In a more nuanced world, it might not be necessary, but it's the only way the system can remain in balance anymore."

All the military attorneys I spoke with said ugly crimes do happen in war. But war at the shooting level is often a complex event. Haditha or one of the others may yet produce a crime or a cover-up. But in the age we live in, rush-to-judgment can become a bad habit. It might be better to wait for a real verdict.

Mr. Henninger is deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. His column appears Fridays in the Journal and on OpinionJournal.com.