Where's Sy Hersh When You Need Him?

We've come to find out -- more than six months after the fact -- that U.S. Marines apparently mass murdered civilians in the Iraqi city of Hidatha. Even though the atrocity took place back on Nov. 19, the American public are only finding out about it now with the help of cable news "exclusives". Shouldn't this be appearing on the History Channel, if the slow-to-awaken-to-the-illegality-and-immorality-of-this-war media doesn't go to work checking out these stories until the Pentagon conducts its own investigation?

This is part and parcel of a larger problem with the "liberal" media and the anti-war movement in general: They've been unable to generate much traction in the outrage war. A generation ago, during Vietnam, Seymour Hersh was able to expose the My Lai massacre. For many, that was the final nail in the coffin of American exceptionalism in fighting communism.

Now we get pithy comments such as those uttered by many over the past several days by a number of observers that we shouldn't be surprised that these kind of things happen. Some soldiers are animals, the thinking goes, and that's really a good thing because we want them to be effective fighters. And if that means that a few innocent folks get slaughtered along the way, so be it.