I’ve heard this on the news a couple of times today and it makes me so angry I can barely breathe.
Apparently, Congressman Murtha has accused Marines of murder for going into a house in Iraq and killing the occupants after they had been fired upon by someone in that house.
What is WRONG with this person!?!?
Either he is NOT what he claims to be, a battle tested veteran, or he has wet-brain and needs to be put out to pasture.
If he has indeed been in battle himself, then he KNOWS, HE KNOWS what this kind of sedition and treason does to the morale of our men in combat. He knows it leads to lower morale and increased casualties. It gives aid and comfort to the enemy.
Whichever it is, he needs to SHUT UP!
If there was fire coming from this house prior to the Marines entering, they were doing WHAT THEY ARE TRAINED to do by killing the occupants of the house. OF COURSE they were ‘on their knees praying’. You would be on your knees praying too if a bunch of United States Marines were entering YOUR house after you’d been shooting at them.
Don’t send our troops to battle with their hands tied.
I can’t find a source on the internet right now. I’ll include it when I find it. I’ve just heard it on the TV.
Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hanged.
~ Abraham Lincoln
When did we quit hanging people for treason?
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Update: Carry on America was kind enough to supply an online source for my outrage. The Army Times and Breitbart.
This article is even more enraging:
Rep. John Murtha, an influential Pennsylvania lawmaker and outspoken critic of the war in Iraq, said today Marines had “killed innocent civilians in cold blood†after allegedly responding to a roadside bomb ambush that killed a Marine during a patrol in Haditha, Iraq, Nov. 19.
and
A March 27 Time magazine report published claims by an Iraqi civil rights group that the Marines barged into houses near the bomb strike, throwing grenades and shooting civilians as they cowered in fear. The report prompted calls for a Pentagon probe.
“It’s much worse than was reported in Time magazine,†Murtha, a Democrat, former Marine colonel and Vietnam war veteran, told reporters on Capitol Hill.
and
Time magazine spent 10 weeks interviewing local residents affected by the incident and, in January, shared these accounts with military officials in Baghdad.
Perhaps while Time Magazine is spending so much time interviewing insurgents to get allegations against OUR MARINES, they can get a little information about who are planting the IEDs that are killing so many of our Soldiers. I suppose they aren’t interested in actually helping our side.
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Others posting: Gateway Pundit, The Political Pitbull, Newsbusters, Flopping Aces, Blue Crab Boulevard, Wide Awake Cafe, Sweetness & Light, Expose the Left, In the Bullpen, California Conservative, Boots & Sabers, Let Freedom Ring, Macsmind, Euphoric Reality
5/18 Update - more postings: Michelle Malkin, Captain’s Quarters, Jawa Report, Sister Toldjah, Stop the ACLU, Blogmeister USA,
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Discussion is going on at Mudville Gazette and here
Hugh Hewitt calls it irresponsible.
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parody Sacred Cow Burgers
Open trackbacks: Gribbit’s World; Diane’s Stuff; Third World County; Adam’s Blog; Stuck on Stupid; Cao’s Blog; TMH’s Bacon Bits; Is It Just Me? ; Basil’s Blog; Right Wing Nation; Outside the Beltway; Argghhh! ; Jo’s Cafe ; Freedom Watch
May 18th, 2006 at 11:28 am
Murtha needs to GO AWAY!!…
I certainly hope the people of Pennsylvania come to their senses at election time. John Murtha needs to GO AWAY.
I have always respected people who wear or wore the uniform of our Armed Forces. I have always thought highly of our combat seasoned Mil…
May 18th, 2006 at 11:44 am
So, Where’s Al Jazeera On This One … ?…
I heard Murtha on Chris Matthews last night…
Most of his information came from Time Magazine, which was supplied information by the a journalist named Bobby Gnosh, who got his tape from a “student journalist.” Gnosh was the guy that filed charge…
May 18th, 2006 at 12:06 pm
That’s right Sherri - he’s endangering our troops. It’s dispicable.
May 18th, 2006 at 12:42 pm
Beth,
Are you so far loosened from your senses that you can make such statements? The gaps and illogic in what passes for your argument are so many and so huge that I hardly would know where to begin pointing them out. For starters: “I have as much information as Murtha has in making his accusations. You are assuming what he has put forth is accurate. His statements are based on the statements of insurgents in Iraq.”
Absurd. Murtha said that he was told about the state of the military investigation by some of those who have inside information about it. He obviously has also read all the reporting on the incident, which goes back months. You, by contrast, began shooting your mouth off before you even could find a link to any stories on line.
I assume nothing about the accuracy of anybody’s statements, except that the various accounts given by the Marines and the military of what allegedly occured are full of basic contradictions. Their story has changed over time. Second, the military has admitted at several stages that some of the things said by the Marines who did the killing conflict with the physical evidence.
You have either no knowledge or no interest in those basic facts. Instead, you rush to the assumption that the dead Iraqis and the other villagers were “insurgents”, though you have no proof of that.
You also are exceedingly eager to label a man a traitor because he’s stating things about military activities that you don’t care to be said. But you’re all in favor of freedom of speech? Hah.
I see nothing patriotic about American troops massacring civilians anywhere, if that is what they did. It brings our nation into disgrace. Any other soldiers who would want to be associated with those kinds of activities are likewise a disgrace to their uniform–and in my experience, they would be in the distinct minority. Decent minded servicemen and women don’t tolerate those kinds of scum in their midst.
As for your other bizarre ideas, such as that I’m a democrat, or can’t tolerate dissent, I won’t waste any further time on them. You’ve said just about as much as any person needs to know about you, when you declared that Murtha is seditious and treasonous because he dared to expose apparent wrongdoing by the military.
So you’re going to line him up against a wall and kill him? Tough talk is always quick out of the mouths of wackos. In your fantasies, you and your allies on the rightwing fringes are always killing Americans off. Yet you’re patriots at the same time, aren’t you all? And you’re just absolutely full of sympathy for, well, yourselves and your own families.
Isn’t it just lovely that you care so much about your own child that you have zero sympathy left for Iraqi children who are being slaughtered in this war. Perhaps you could get up a collection among your fellow-minded readers, to pay for you to fly over to Iraq and dance on the kids’ graves there? That would surely make your heroics here all the more impressive.
May 18th, 2006 at 1:19 pm
Ya know… Murtha retired as a colonel. Means he could be subject to recall. Hmmm… Summer in Iraq… Murtha in full kit… strokes out within a week.
Works for me.
May 18th, 2006 at 2:25 pm
David - I think that’s a marvelous idea! Works for me too
May 18th, 2006 at 3:34 pm
I once was at an Army Reserve training class where one classmate attempted to justify what had happened at My Lai to the instructor. This was in 1980.
The instructor, a Special Forces master sergeant (who was in Vietnam and also in Bolivia when Che was killed), instantly berated the idea that My Lai was justified, saying that Calley should have been “hung by his balls” for killing innocent civilians and dishonoring the USA.
That made me proud to wear the uniform.
Atrocities against women and children do not make me proud to be an American.
If the facts come out as badly as Murtha implies, and it appears that he has inside knowledge, he is to be commended for telling the truth.
I was in Iraq, as a contractor on governance and democracy programs - I was there then Abu Ghraib broke. It had a devastating effect to our image in Iraq.
Aren’t we supposed to be bringing democracy to Iraq?
I sympathize, as Murtha does, with the beleaguered Soldiers and Marines - there are not enough of them to do the job, and Rumsfeld has fought expanding the size of the force tooth-and-nail. The media is not the source of the problems which Soldiers and Marines face: it is the fact that there never have been enough of them to do the job. They have to roll out of the gate every day and night to patrol streets which have never been secured.
Since I know Iraqis, have worked with Iraqis and have friends who are Iraqis, I can’t just dehumanize them and place their lives as worthless. The bad guys, and only the bad guys, have to be killed or captured.
Reprisal killings of civilians are wrong. Telling the truth, however unpleasant, is right. If we can’t do this job right, then Murtha is right, we should get out, because we are harming the Iraqis and ourselves.
May 18th, 2006 at 3:54 pm
Iraq Participant, I agree with you up to the point of admiring Murtha for speaking out. It is inappropriate for him to use information about an ONGOING investigation for his own political gain. Which certainly looks like what he is trying to do.
If the soldiers are guilty they need to be dealt with. If they are not, they have been damaged by a public figure making this accusation public before the investigation is complete.
Even so, he doesn’t need to be ‘airing dirty laundry’ for the world to see. The other countries are picking that up and it undermines everything our soldiers are doing. It makes us appear weak.
It’s dispicable and inexcusable.
Let the investigation take its course and the soldiers be cleared or convicted as the law demands. But don’t have Murtha making political hay at their expense!
BTW - I have heard different opinions about the numbers of boots on the ground. i personally would have no problem with instituting the draft. I think it would do a lot of good in a lot of ways. But that’s for the military to decide, not me.
May 18th, 2006 at 4:08 pm
The Murtha Court-Martial…
Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa), one of the Bush Administration’s chief critics, and an ex-Marine himself has made a public accusation that U.S. Marines had “killed innocent civilians in cold blood†after allegedly responding to a roadside bomb ambush tha…
May 18th, 2006 at 9:18 pm
smintheus,
You say you assume nothing about the accuracy of anyone’s statements, yet you take Murtha’s statements at face value. Without question. You use his words as your argument, ‘he said…’ So you start out contradicting yourself.
You also start each of your posts with inflamatory, insulting comments. That’s a common tactic used to put the opponent off balance from the get-go. It’s then followed by a condescending tone that is also commonly used to belittle the argument of the opponent. These types of techniques are used to be argumentative, dominate and belittle, not to debate or encourage reasonable discourse.
The common factor in these techniques is that they are …. common. [common as in base] They are also not very creative.
You accuse me of rushing to judge Murtha - yet you have judged the soldiers with the only information you have from the word of Murtha. How easy it is to judge soldier’s harshly. How easy it is to judge America harshly. It’s such an easy shot.
You say you have read all you need to know about me - and yet you continue to wax on and on in an extremely long and wordy essay (ever hear of the usefulness of an economy of words?).
You say you know all you need to know of me - and yet you are still here!
And then you go to the children again. Yes, I do value my child more - don’t you. That’s human nature.
I don’t dance on graves. I’ve only seen the Shenanigans dance on her own son’s grave - rather she laid there, smiling.
Your argument is silly, immature, mean-spirited, intolerant and full of misinformation and contradiction.