Cowards cut and run, Marines never do

NYT headline: “Cocaine Prices Rise and Quality Declines, White House Says.” That’s sure a bitch, George, maybe you need to find a new dealer.

Bush has recently taken to delivering partisan attacks in front of the one group of Americans we’d really rather remain non-partisan, serving members of the military. But it also seems to me that there’s been a concurrent increase of people like Gen. William Webster and Col. James Brown, both of them commanders of forces in Iraq, taking up Bush’s tacit invitation and scolding Democratic congresscritters. And that’s to say nothing of the Marine colonel who Rep. Jean Schmidt claims told her to tell Rep. Murtha, “cowards cut and run, Marines never do.” Actually, the Marines will do whatever the civilian leadership tells them to do, and don’t forget it, colonel. (Incidentally, why are we using nautical imagery about a desert war?) It’s a nice bit of character-assassination precisely because of its ambiguity: is Murtha being accused of being a coward himself, or of calling Marines cowards? (Update: As Mikhail Capone points out in comments, Schmidt had to retract the comments, and pretend she wasn't implying what she was implying.)