That was the talk radio meme du jour on Friday, pegging off last week’s lyrical “shut. the hell. up!” communique from Murrowland. The money passage, via MSNBC’s transcript:

The president replied: “Doomsday scenario of course is that extremists throughout the Middle East would be emboldened, which would eventually lead to another attack on the United States. The biggest issue we face is, it’s bigger than Iraq, it’s this ideological struggle against cold-blooded killers who will kill people to achieve their political objectives.”

Mr. Bush, at long last, has it not dawned on you that the America you have now created, includes “cold-blooded killers who will kill people to achieve their political objectives?” They are those in — or formerly in — your employ, who may yet be charged some day with war crimes.

Ingraham and Mark Levin claim that’s aimed at U.S. troops; I disagree, for the simple reason that our man lacks the stones to slaughter a cow that sacred. Remember, we’re talking here about someone who, for all his supposed Beale-esque outrage, won’t even have Republicans on his show to confront them directly. He isn’t going to be the first “mainstream” lefty to shatter the welcome post-Vietnam taboo against blaming an unpopular war on the soldiers who wage it. You’ll hear our old pal Bryan Preston interject during the Ingraham segment that Murtha’s used precisely this type of language vis-a-vis Haditha, which is true, but that’s more of an isolated case than what Olby’s after here. He means Rumsfeld and Cheney and the rest of the neocon cabal who planned the war he so despises, all of whom are politically safe to criticize and thus qualify as “cold-blooded killers” while the all-volunteer army that carries out their plans is absolved, presumably on some updated, modern-day “just following orders” grounds. Or am I giving him too much credit, and he really does mean to indict the U.S. military as a pack of murderers? You make the call! Click the image to watch.