Never let a Purple Heart ruin their purple finger fantasies

James Webb, secretary of the Navy during the Reagan administration, fairly oozes contempt from the pages of the paper this morning (it would be morning, except the Northeast seems to be in the throes of the End Times, with wind gusts bringing down stately oaks on to the decrepit tracks of our even more decrepit mass transit system...but I digress).

Military people past and present have good reason to wonder if the current administration truly values their service beyond its immediate effect on its battlefield of choice. The casting of suspicion and doubt about the actions of veterans who have run against President Bush or opposed his policies has been a constant theme of his career. This pattern of denigrating the service of those with whom they disagree risks cheapening the public's appreciation of what it means to serve, and in the long term may hurt the Republicans themselves.

This, I have to say, is especially piquant.

And now comes Jack Murtha. The administration tried a number of times to derail the congressman's criticism of the Iraq war, including a largely ineffective effort to get senior military officials to publicly rebuke him (Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, was the only one to do the administration's bidding there).

While I certainly do not disagree with Mr. Webb's assessment, but with regard to the current crop of politicians who have just finished serving in the armed forces and have to decided to run for office as Democrats, I am guessing that it is not so much the words of the Cheney administration's proxies that rankle them, but the actions of the Cheney administrion. Or lack thereof.