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(not a damn thing)

By Mark Kilmer Posted in War — Comments (8) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Jack Murtha saw nothing at Haditha. Jack Murtha had not heard from the soldiers at Haditha that November 19. Jack Murtha had not talked to their commanders. Jack Murtha heard some lefty innuendo and made it the basis for a rant perhaps describable as putrid.

Two solders who were victims of Okinawa Jacks lies have been exonerated; five await their trial.

I cover the Sunday Morning Talk Shows here at RedState.com, and I was at first amused to see Jack Murtha try to revive his Congressional career, destroyed long ago by his own ABSCAM corruption, by ranting that we should cut and run from Iraq immediately and redeploy to Okinawa in case we needed to react quickly.

The initial amusement, however, eventually became disgust.

Okinawa Jack Murtha, a Winter Soldier for the modern age, stammered loudly about what he had decided had happened Haditha for George Stephanopoulos on May 28. 2006. Let's eye the transcript of that morning's episode of ABC's This Week:

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GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS (ABC NEWS)

(Off-camera) Thank you, sir. You have been briefed several times on this incident on November 19th. And you've said that the evidence shows that Marines killed innocent civilians in cold blood. From what you know, what happened?

REPRESENTATIVE JOHN MURTHA (DEMOCRAT

Well, there's no question in my mind, what happened was an IED went off. And you gotta put this into perspective. Every day they go out, an IED goes off. And I sanitize when I say IED. I'm talking about explosive device goes off. It doesn't - hurts somebody one day, the next day it kills somebody. The next day, it maims somebody. And I see those people in the hospital all the time. So the pressure builds every time they go out. So this particular case, an IED exploded. It killed one Marine. And then a taxi drives up. When the taxi comes up, there's four or five people in it. And they shoot; shoot those four or five people, unarmed. And then they go on a rampage throughout the houses and kill people. One woman, as I understand it, in talking to the officials in the Marine Corps, was bending over a child pleading for mercy and they shot her in cold blood. That's the thing that's so disturbing. And even more disturbing is the fact that, we know the Iraqis knew about it because they made payments to the Iraqis for accidental deaths or for salacious deaths, whatever you want to call it. And then in addition to that, they had - there has to have been a cover-up of this thing.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS (ABC NEWS)

(Off-camera) So you believe there was a cover-up?

REPRESENTATIVE JOHN MURTHA (DEMOCRAT

No question about it. First of all, they first tried to say that the IED is what killed these people. The next day, there was a team out there investigating, as they always do. And then nothing happens. Nobody hears about it. They don't tell anybody. Until March, when "Time" magazine broke the news, nobody realized or recognized what happened. These kind of things have to be brought out immediately. Because, the Marines, if they did get away with it, then other Marines would say, well, I'll do the same thing. As a matter of fact, we have another incident which is very similar to this, George. An incident where a Marine - or some Marines pulled somebody out of a house, put them next to an IED thing, fired some AKAs so they'd have cartridges there. And then tried to cover that up.

He did not see this. He heard a few things then read another inaccurate TIME mag story, and he launched against the Republicans via George Bush through Iraq.

Remember, the Dems still had to take the Congress.

Picking up where we left off:

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS (ABC NEWS)

(Off-camera) April 26th in Hamindiyah. And several Marines have been put into custody for that, as well. Let me stay on Haditha for a second. We've read that there is evidence, photographic evidence of what happened. Is that true?

REPRESENTATIVE JOHN MURTHA (DEMOCRAT

Yeah, that's exactly true. And it's a combination of the people that did the investigation and Iraqis took - took the evidence itself. There's no question about what happened. And the problem is, who covered it up? And why did they cover it up? Why did they wait so long? It's been six months since this happened. It's very simple. They went out the next day, they knew there was something wrong. Two or three days later, they decided that this - these people were murdered.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS (ABC NEWS)

(Off-camera) So who do you blame for the cover-up?

REPRESENTATIVE JOHN MURTHA (DEMOCRAT

Well, that's what we're trying to figure out. We don't know how far it goes. I mean, it goes right up the chain of command. Right up to General Pace. When did he know about it? Did he order the cover-up? Who ordered the cover-up? I'm sure he didn't. But what - who said, we're not going to publicize this thing? We're not even going to investigate it. Until March, there was no serious investigation. There was an investigation right afterwards but then it was stifled. So we need to know what happened. And the point is, the pressure, the tremendous pressure on these guys, every day when they go out with an explosive device. Second is, the Marines knew about it. And so, this gets around the Marine community, as I'd heard rumors about it. Then, third is, the Iraqis all knew about it. You can bet.

General Pete Pace, then the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was in on Okinawa Jack's little Winter Soldier "coverup." The accusations flew from the man's flabby lips at such a rate, as I recall, that he forced himself into a near-stammer.

And he continued:

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS (ABC NEWS)

(Off-camera) Three commanders have been relieved to their duty. Is that connected to this?

REPRESENTATIVE JOHN MURTHA (DEMOCRAT

Well, they tell me it's not connected. They tell me this is dereliction of duty. But we cannot allow something like this to fester. We can't allow it to happen. They've got to put the blame where it goes and they gotta get this over with. They gotta make sure that - we're celebrating Memorial Day. And on Memorial Day, the freedom and democracy of this great country and the people that fight for it. And we memorialize the people that have died and the ones that have fought for the country and the family. And here we are with something like this. We gotta make sure the world knows this is not something that our troops do. We can't – we can't allow something like this.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS (ABC NEWS)

(Off-camera) And are you absolutely sure, though, that this wasn't something that happened in the fog of war? It was confusing. That they thought there was fire coming from the houses and they thought they were responding to enemy fire from insurgents?

REPRESENTATIVE JOHN MURTHA (DEMOCRAT

The reports that I have, from the highest level, no firing at all. No interaction. No, no military action at all in this particular incident. It was an explosive device which killed a Marine. From then on, it was purely shooting people inside the houses and a taxi.

Murtha was there? He watch our soldiers in Iraq as they "personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan."

Yes, that was snark; but on a side note, it is worth observing that such lies did not put JF Kerry into the White House, and it most certainly did not put Okinawa Jack into the House leadership. (He was on the fast track before his corruption was caught on film.)

Okay. Back to the transcript:

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS (ABC NEWS)

(Off-camera) "Time" magazine reports this morning they also have a photo that shows a Marine - it was taken by a Marine with a cell phone, showing Iraqis kneeling before they were shot. Is that true?

REPRESENTATIVE JOHN MURTHA (DEMOCRAT

Well, I hear that one of them was even in English asking for mercy. And so I haven't heard that. I saw that in "Time" magazine, sitting on your table out there. That's the first I knew about that. But, but I've heard rumors like that the whole time. The point is, the Marines knew about it all this time. Somebody in the chain of command decided not to allow this to happen. How far up it went, I don't know. But the worst thing is, the Iraqis all knew about it. And then they made payments to the families. And that doesn't happen at the lowest level. That happens at the highest level before they make a decision to make payments to the families.

Jack and George were far too willing to believe that weekly infotainment glossy, TIME. They wanted a story, you know, perhaps to inspire a nascent author named Scott Thomas Beauchamp to concoct the plot for his first novel.

It kept going, folks:

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS (ABC NEWS)

(Off-camera) You know, a Marine who was accused last year of committing war crimes, Lieutenant Alario Pantano, has written a letter to "The Washington Post" this morning saying you're rushing to judgment. And saying, that, as he wrote in 'The Post," 'members of the US military serving in Iraq need more than Mr. Murtha's pseudo-sympathy. Let the courts decide if these Marines are guilty. They haven't even been charged with a crime yet, so it's premature to presume their guilt unless that presumption is tied to a political motive."

REPRESENTATIVE JOHN MURTHA (DEMOCRAT

George, I can understand - anybody that's been over there, I can understand anybody that feels that you're denigrating the troops. What I'm saying is, there's nobody done more for the troops than I have. Nobody's worked harder than I have, in trying to make sure the troops have what they need. But I will not excuse murder. And this is what happened. There's no question in my mind about it. This investigation should have been over two or three weeks afterwards. And it should have been made public. And people should - should've been held responsible for it.

Okinawa Jack wanted to grab the marines and string 'em up without trial. They were guilty, darnitall!

George Stephanopoulos quoted Lt. Pantano as protesting that "it's premature to presume their guilt unless that presumption is tied to a political motive." And it was! For purely partisan, political, Democrat reasons, Jack Murtha proclaimed the guilt of those Marines. And he and his party rode it the whole way through to Election Day that November.

It was tragic to see a man who fought so bravely for his country in one war, Vietnam, turn to slandering today's soldiers in another. You can excuse Murtha as a doddering, old man, but he knew what he was saying.

It is even more tragic to have our soldiers dragged through the mud by a U.S. Congressman. The NRCC is already targeting Murtha in Pennsylvania's 12th CD, and he'd better find an answer to this quickly. A simple apology, though the right thing to do at this point, won't cut it. That corrupt shell of a man should be bounced from Congress at the next election.

We do not know what happened at Haditha, and as the Aussies remind us, five soldiers remain charged with something or other, but Jack Murtha does not know what happened at Haditha. He should not have opened his yap. Military Justice has run its course for two, much to Murtha's embarrassment, and we shall see what it has for the remaining five.

Jack Murtha's trial-by-ballot begins on the morning of November 4, 2008.