Distinguished Disservice. In honoring Murtha, the Navy insults its own.

In bestowing the navy’s highest civilian medal, the Distinguished Public Service Award, upon Rep. John P. Murtha (D., Pa.) last month, the secretary of the Navy acted as a supplicant — an accountant happy to be given funds and disinclined to question the source. The secretary (Donald C. Winter, a Bush administration holdover who has since left the job) demonstrated that he did not understand his official role as a leader when the country is at war. Murtha smeared the reputation of a generation of Marines, and to reward him alongside several other members of Congress for earmarking funds served to exonerate the congressman, who never apologized for besmirching the honor of our fighting men.