Terri Schiavo’s autopsy results are in. There was no evidence of the abuse, broken bones, and strangulation that Michael Schiavo was roundly accused of, and Terri’s condition was exhaustively verified as irreversible. Her brain was half the weight of a normal human’s, she was blind, and she would not have been able to eat or drink without her tubes.

This has fixed everything, and the long overdue period of national healing has set in.

It almost brings a tear to my eye the way the sides have reconciled. From far and wide, apologies are pouring in for all the hurt and hyperbole. Those who claimed Terri could see, respond, and even talk are abject, those who accused her husband of everything up to attempted murder have swallowed their pride and apologized, and everyone now agrees that the issue always was, and should have been, whether or not a woman in a vegetative state with no hope of recovery should have been kept alive against the wishes of her spouse and what he maintained were her wishes.

The United States Congress has offered their sincerest regrets that they interfered with the constitutional separation of powers in order to prolong a family’s agony. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a medical doctor, is abject and regretful about the cavalier “diagnosis” he publicly made based on videotaped evidence, because he now “can see, based on the autopsy’s data about the degredation of her visual cortex, that I was completely wrong, and making such a statement only fanned the flames of anger and misunderstanding.”

President Bush has also weighed in, remorseful that he was deceived by the “junk science” put forth by the Schiavonistas. “I still think that we should err on the side of life,” he said. “But in this case it’s clear that the courts worked the way they were supposed to, scientific evidence was weighed responsibly, and my involvement only caused more personal pain and national discord. Sorry.”

Randall Terry, spokesman for Terri’s family, was no less apologetic. “I still believe in preserving life and object to the way her life was ended,” he said. “But the accusations I made against Michael Schiavo and his motives, the assertions I made about Terri speaking and pleading for her life… I was wrong about that. It was irresponsible, and I put my ideology and wishful thinking in front of good faith and intellectual honesty. I’m sorry, and it’s time to heal.”

Even the Schindlers said today that…

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Wow, that’d be great. Forget it.

This is, believe it or not, the Iraq war all over again. We will hear that the believability of Michael Schiavo was never the issue. That we had to be sure before we acted rashly on the word of a husband and dozens of French-looking medical “inspectors” and 15 years of unchanging brainless existence. That the autopsy was politically motivated and inconclusive. That whether or not Terri was in a persistent vegetative state or could recover was always a side issue. That the goal was always to liberate the Floridian people. That Michael Schiavo may have covertly shipped half of Terri’s brain off to Syria while nobody was looking.

Oh well. It was silly to think there’d be humanity, understanding, or reconciliation from the opportunists who grabbed Terri Schiavo’s inert body and dragged her, head lolling obscenely, into battle. They’re too busy sending out inflammatory fundraising emails and preparing the heavily-Photoshopped “2006 Terri Schiavo Swimsuit Calender.”

Being at war, even a “culture war,” means admitting no errors, not until it’s over. Which is why we’re fighting wars on “terror” and “the culture of death” rather than wars on “Iraq” and “The Schiavo Case.” Those might end, after all.