John Murtha's Haditha legacy

Tom Stone:

I have waited until the burial of Rep. John Murtha, D-PA, to allow an appropriate amount of time for the grieving of his family and the accolades of his accomplishments to subside before writing to put forth what is, in my opinion, a stain on his legacy that will never be cleared.

Since his death, I have heard not a word from the press or print media regarding his involvement in what had been labeled “The Hadithah Massacre.” While Murtha was clearly frustrated with the Iraq War and sought its end, his method to achieve that end was the blatant, unfounded defamation of eight young Marines involved in that incident.

His labeling of the young Marines as “cold-blooded killers,” and the officers as guilty of dereliction of duty in the reporting and investigating of the incident, without any substantive proof whatsoever, was shocking, irresponsible, and critical to the U.S. military’s obsessive pursuit of convictions of these eight young Marines.

Murtha was the catalyst in this tragedy, and the real guilty parties, the Marine Corps General Staff and Pentagon Officials, all caved in to his malicious, dare I say, delusional accusations, and soon the witch hunt for the sacrificial lambs was on.

As has hardly been reported by The Washington Post or other news outlets, six of the Marines have been exonerated, one was given immunity prior to the prosecutions (which I might add were extraordinary prosecutorial overreach), and one is still awaiting his fate.

What Murtha did to these young men, potentially ruining their promising military careers, hanging an albatross around their necks for the rest of their lives, causing undue emotional and financial stress to them and their families, is what I will always remember of him.

And despite the exonerations, this man could never bring himself to apologize for what he wrongfully did to them. He was not a man of honor.

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Stone's son was one of those accused in the case. I have posted a good bit about these cases and I think Mark Walker at the North County Times has done a good job of covering the military proceedings that led to their exoneration.

Haditha was one of those classic cases of the war witht eh Islamic religious bigots. The enemy camouflages himself as a civilian and also uses civilians as human shields, then when civilians are killed the troops are blamed and not the people who have committed two war crimes before the young Marines ever fire their weapons. The war crime of not wearing an identifying uniform was the proximate cause of the deaths at Haditha as well as the enemies use of civilians homes to make their get away.

Murtha's use of these young Marines as political props for his anti war message was unforgivable.