Are you perhaps young?
A lot of us are used to it by now. They did the same thing during WW III (aka the Cold War): "Alger Hiss was just a liberal unjustly tarred by red baiters!","The NVA's Tet offensive was a devastating defeat for the US", "The nuclear freeze movement is a grass-roots peace movement", etc. etc.
The only thing that's new is that now the 'progressive' secular left has gotten itself into the bizarre position of lying on behalf of the most retrograde and reactionary movement on Earth, and one with a religious basis to boot: Salafist Islam that regards late 7th century Arabia as the perfect society to be recreated by force of arms, directed at noncombattants more often than not.
No, I'm not young, and in fact I've been fighting this fight most of my adult life. It just seems like the level of hatred and the extent of the lying and smearing has gotten much worse the last few years. I agree with your examples, and I also remember Bork, Tower, Thomas and Donovan, etc. etc.