Several rushes to judgement

John Podhoretz:

WHAT do these items have in common?

* Seven Palestinians die when stray military ordnance strikes on a beach in Gaza. Hamas, the terrorist group now running the Palestinian government, declares its nonexistent cease-fire ended. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert expresses his regret and sorrow. But as the days wear on, there seems to be some doubt about the provenance of the weaponry that did the killing. Israeli military officials say they ended their shelling of a Hamas site 15 minutes before the beachgoers were hit.

* America goes berserk when a North Carolina prosecutor declares that some Duke lacrosse players raped a black woman. Three players are indicted. But as time goes on, her story begins to look increasingly flimsy, and the impression grows that the players were railroaded.

* This week marks the publication of Ilario Pantano's vitally important book "Warlord," in which the former Marine tells the horrifying story of his own near-railroading - when he was falsely accused of murder during a successful pursuit of two terrorists in Iraq and pressured to plead guilty to a so-called Article 32 offense that might have resulted in his receiving the death penalty. Pantano refused and was cleared.

Clearly, what we have here, in each of these cases, is a rush to judgment - the presumption of guilt in a situation marked by controversy and the fog of competing claims on the part of witnesses and those accused.

We're all guilty of rushing to judgment, especially when the accused crime seems to validate our worldview in some way. Accuse someone named Clinton of any offense conceivable, and millions will happily believe it. Ditto for anyone named Bush, of course.

For those predisposed to think bad of Israel and its anti-terror tactics, it made perfect sense that the blood from last week's Gaza tragedy was on Israeli hands - even though the Palestinians have a history of blaming the Israelis for injuries their own gunmen actually had caused.

For those who think poorly of frat-boy jocks, the Duke rape accusation seemed all too believable.

For those inclined to believe that Marines are killing machines ready to go berserk on a moment's notice, the Pantano case seemed a perfect fit - especially since his chief accuser was a fellow Marine. The Marine Corps itself sadly decided to believe the accuser - until he fell apart on the witness stand during the trial.

You'd have thought two weeks ago that charges were going to be filed and the book thrown at the Marines who supposedly shot two dozen Iraqis in cold blood in the town of Haditha. That was the impression from the cascading news stories that emerged from a media wave in May.

Those charges may yet be filed, those Marines may be guilty, and they may deserve what happens to them. But in the interim, we've learned some things that suggest there might have been a rush to judgment here as well.

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The credibility of witesses is challenged and competing testimony tells a different story. That seems to be a common thread in all these cases.