John Murtha, who tried and convicted the Haditha Marines over a year ago, is about to get pummeled with the truth. That's because the truth was finally declassified. It was a little over a year ago that John Murtha talked with George Stephanopoulos about Haditha. Here's what Murtha said back then:
"There was no firefight. There was no IED that killed those innocent people. Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood."
That quote is about to bite Murtha in his sizeable backside very soon. The reason why it will is explained here:
As NewsMax.com has previously revealed, the bulk of that exculpatory evidence is contained in the eight hours of videotaped testimony offered by the battalion intelligence officer (designated S2), all of which up until now has been highly classified and therefore unusable in open court and kept from the notice of the American people.
According to NewsMax, here's the significance of that information being declassified:
Intelligence gathered by Marine S2 officers in advance of the events of Nov. 19th, 2005, revealed that it was known that an insurgent ambush was planned for the day.
Although exact details of the planned ambush were not known, some important details were revealed, most importantly, that some 20 insurgents would take part, and a white car would play an important role in the ambush.
The intelligence was made available to the officers and men of Kilo Company including Sgt. Frank Wuterich who has been charged with, among other things, murdering the occupants of a white car that came on the scene following the IED explosion that killed one Marine and seriously wounded another. The evidence will show that Wuterich acted appropriately when he shot the passengers of the vehicle.
Although the media continues to report that 24 innocent civilians were killed that day, the S2's testimony shows that eight of the dead, including four of the five occupants in the white car killed by Wuterich, were known insurgents and the dead civilians therefore numbered 16, not 24.
The insurgents whose communications were intercepted and which revealed the planned ambush were the same two men who were the sources of the fallacious and dishonest Time magazine story, which was the source of the accusations against the Marines.
As previously reported by NewsMax, the battalion S2 officer made a full and complete report based on his monitoring of the day's events and the intelligence he and others had amassed then and previous days. As we wrote at the time, the PowerPoint after-action report he sent up the command ladder proved to all the higher officers that the incident warranted no further investigation. None!
Let's summarize by pointing out the 'inconsistencies' between Murtha's lies and the evidence.
John Murtha said:
"There was no firefight. There was no IED that killed those innocent people."The evidence shows that:
Sgt. Frank Wuterich killed the occupants of a white car that came on the scene following an IED explosion that killed one Marine and seriously wounded another.
John Murtha said that:
"High-level reports he received indicated that no one fired upon the Marines or that there was any military action against the U.S. forces after the initial explosion."
(Ed. Who gave Murtha these "high-level reports"?)
Yet the deaths were not seriously investigated until March because an early probe was stifled within days of the incident, he said.The battalion S2 officer's report showed this:
The PowerPoint after-action report he sent up the command ladder proved to all the higher officers that the incident warranted no further investigation.
In other words, the biggest accusations that Murtha made, that the Haditha Marines had "murdered innocent civilians in cold blood" and that there wasn't a firefight or an IED explosion have been utterly debunked by the S2's PowerPoint report. The distribution of this PowerPoint report also debunks Murtha's myth that "the deaths were not seriously investigated until March because an early probe was stifled within days of the incident."
Let's also remember that Murtha didn't accuse these brave Marines once of "killing innocent civilians in cold blood." He repeatedly told reporters this stuff. One of the ways that he kept this accusation going was with this quote:
"I will not excuse murder, and this is what happened," he said. "This investigation should have been over two or three weeks afterward and it should have been made public and people should have been held responsible for it."This is as disgusting as it gets. I'm unable to point to a single part of Murtha's story that's accurate. What's more disgusting is that Murtha made these accusations before he was officially briefed on the incident. Furthermore, Murtha accused the Marines of not investigating the incident because they tried covering the incident up. Also, Murtha said that there wasn't a firefight and that there wasn't an IED explosion.
We now know that those things are bald-faced lies. We know that they couldn't be proven beyond a reasonable doubt in a civilian court. I'd bet the proverbial ranch that this strengthens Sgt. Wuterich's libel lawsuit against Murtha to the point that Murtha's attorneys will want to settle this before trial. I suspect that the blogs, FNC and talk radio will be the only people that will talk about Murtha's lies, which have undercut the war effort and that have besmirched these Marines.
It's also time to start an ethics investigation into Murtha's accusations of the Haditha Marines. He attempted to play judge, jury and executioner in this case. He made accusations that he should've known wouldn't hold up. worst of all, he did all this to score cheap political points.
I can't find a single honorable characteristic about Rep. Murtha. Murtha needs to step down so that the people of PA-12 will finally have an honest representative. Murtha needs to step down so we can get rid of one of the most corrupt politicians in this nation's history.
Murtha is more corrupt than the Dukester?
Really?
Posted by: Nirvision ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.gopbloggers.org/nav-commenters.gif)
at June 17, 2007 01:01 AM
I guess Murtha get another award for his distinguished service. The coveted Order of the Blue Falcon.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=blue+falcon
Posted by: LiberalNightmare at June 17, 2007 07:51 PM
Murtha is not the most corrupt,on the contrary hes an average every day Democrap.The whole party is corrupt and evil.Murtha is just a symptom of the underling sickness that is the Democraps.
Posted by: jainphx at June 18, 2007 12:05 AM
Gary,
Murtha's quote about an IED not killing those people was in referrence to the first US report on the civilian deaths which attributed them to an IED explosion, not gunshot wounds.
He didn't say there was no IED explosion, just that the civilians were not killed by an IED explosion.
Posted by: Tom Shipley at June 18, 2007 08:35 AM
We are pleased announce that your blog has been chosen as nominee for the 2007 Kairos Award for Blogging Excellence. Our Webblog advocacy class at the University of Pittsburgh is studying advocacy blogs and their effects on society and media. Each student choose a political advocacy blog they felt best represented kairos and advocacy.
For 5 weeks our class has conducted heated debates on which blog should win the Kairos Award for Blogging Excellence. Each blog has a representative and a skeptic briefing and our class votes on which blog represents the criteria we set the best.
For more on the course, the contest, and voting reports:
http://kairosawards.blogspot.com/
Next Tuesday, June 19, we will hold a final round of deliberations to select a winner from the three finalists, and I am writing today to invite you to observe our website and give us feedback!
Please visit our website, enjoy the commentary and let your readers in on how the academic world supports blogging excellence! If you have any questions please feel free to email us back at carmen.berkley@gmail.com or our professor at gordonm@pitt.edu
Best,
Carmen Berkley and Azadeh Boroumand
Undergraduate Representatives for the Webblog Advocacy Class at the University of Pittsburgh
Posted by: carmen! at June 18, 2007 06:34 PM
Jack-off Murtha should be swinging from a gallows. If I outlive this b*stard, I want to be the first to p*ss on his grave...
Posted by: keefer at June 18, 2007 08:59 PM
Jack Murtha's a corrupt piece of crap. What else is new? Doesn't excuse the Haditha Massacre in the least, and every single one of those marines should be tried and sentenced to life. I'd recommend the death penalty but it's something I never support, even if it was someone like Hitler. Death never solves any problems.
Hope I'm allowed to comment considering I was banned from B4B for daring to criticize Israel. Typical tactics of neocons---if you dare even suggest that Israel has done anything wrong, you're anti-Semitic obviously. Despite the fact that I didn't once say a single negative thing about the Jewish people or about the religion of Judaism.
Posted by: Colin at June 20, 2007 10:18 AM
