Since John Murtha became outspoken against the Iraq War last fall, conservatives could not wait to “swift boat” him. Now we are finding out one of the examples he used as a problem in Iraq is in fact true:
US lawmaker and former Marine colonel accused US Marines of killing innocent Iraqi civilians after a Marine comrade had been killed by a roadside bomb.
“Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood,” John Murtha told reporters. The November 19 incident occurred in Haditha, Iraq.
“There was no firefight” that led to the shootings at close range, the Vietnam war veteran said, denying early official accounts, which said that a roadside bomb had killed the Iraqis.
“There were no (roadside bombs) that killed these innocent people,” he said.
Time magazine reported the shootings on March 27, based on an Iraqi human rights group and locals, who said that 15 unarmed Iraqis died, including women and children, when Marines barged into their home throwing grenades and shooting.
“It’s much worse than reported in Time magazine,” Murtha said.
At least three Marine officers are under official investigation, and no report has been released, Army Times said Tuesday.
Now this story came out two days ago. When it was released, I posted it as a news item but decided to hold off on blogging about it because I wanted to give the right wing blogs a couple of days to comment on it. To my shock (not really), the right has been relatively quiet on this story. I found one diary on RedState that addressed it (somewhat):
Well, I’ve pretty much had it with this dementia riddled, media whore passing gas and pretending its rhetoric. His latest indiscretion is here. Regardless of the eventual findings from the investigation, no politician, with a national platform, should be allowed to prejudge this matter and in so doing inflame an already volatile environment.
Can any rational person argue that his comments may well lead to additional killings while giving aid and comfort to our enemies? Can anyone argue that our troops in harms way, may hesitate a fatal moment, knowing that their actions will be judged by a buffoon in consort with the traitorous MSM?
This fool should be expelled from from his seat and every Republican should demand this happen. Let him exercise his free speech from a street corner, not Capitol Hill. He has forfeited that right with this latest display of rhetorical incontinence.
TBone – perhaps the Marines who killed innocent women and children should have thought about this from the beginning. This is not a case of the Marines versus the insurgents. This is us versus the Iraqis and if we let an incident like this go without acting like we were the lest bit upset, it would drive even more people to join the insurgency. I guess they don’t report that kind of stuff on FOX news though.
I assume TBone never served in the military. Instead he is another one of those “ball-less” Americans that I wrote about yesterday, sitting in his house praying daddy Bush will protect him. John Murtha spent 37 years defending the Constitution of these United States and in doing so he earned more of a right to his first amendment than little, paranoid TBone did, or any other pussy on the right that can sit there and cheer on this illegal war while being to scared to go over and fight it.
As for John Murtha – Thank You! You are a true patriot and believe in what this country does stand for.