The elite media and Murtha--they just don't get it!
No, Murtha is not being assailed for "daring" (don't you just love their choice of words?) to "speak out"--Murtha is being assailed for his lamebrain, unworkable and seditious rhetoric and ideas during a time of war! He is also being assailed for denying a group of fellow Marines their Constitutional right to due process and presumption of innocence! On with theEditorial | Murtha is assailed for daring to speak out
U.S. Rep. John Murtha (D., Pa.), a decorated war veteran, is taking obscene criticism from the right for daring to point out that the Bush administration has given our troops an all-but-impossible job in Iraq.Did this guy ever think about moving to France?
The 17-term congressman had already inflamed the Swift Boat crowd last year by calling for a rapid withdrawal of U.S. forces.Read: Surrender to terrorism.
Don't you love how they chose the word "lamenting"--poor widdle Johnny Murtha--bless his heart!The fallout reached a ridiculous low point last fall when a Republican congresswoman who'd never been within several time zones of a battlefield called Murtha, winner of two Purple Hearts, a coward on the House floor.
Now, incredibly, the partisan rhetoric is even more vile. Murtha is being called a traitor and a "fifth columnist" because he responded to reports of a possible massacre in Haditha, Iraq, by lamenting that Marines shot Iraqi civilians "in cold blood."
Word to the Philly Inquirer editorial staff: Since when is publicly declaring, in front of millions of people--before reading any reports--before receiving any official briefings--that Marines are guilty of cold blooded killing--mere lamenting? And when in Murtha's comments did he ever pair the words "possible" or even "may have" with his pronouncement that Marines were engaged in killing innocent civilians in cold blood?
"I will not excuse murder, and this is what happened," Murtha said. (note: no Clintonian parsing of the word "is")To the Philadelphia Enquirer: Are Marines, who fight to defend our Constitution, not privy to the same rights afforded by that Constitution; namely to the right to due process and presumption of innocence before pronouncement of guilt? For God sakes, there hasn't even been charges brought forth to this point in August, and Murtha already made a pronouncement of guilt over two and a half months ago!
To make matters worse, in his rush to increase his stack of "chits", Murtha has poisoned the waters of public opinion and has all but guaranteed that an impartial jury cannot be found should charges ensue (it is my guess that they won't).
Even worse yet, Murtha's rush to judgment before the facts have been garnered has also given our enemies another propaganda tool from which they can increase recruitment. Murtha could not have done better for the enemy if he was standing in front of the Al Qaeda recruitment center itself and handing out $50,000 sign-up bonuses.
But of course, to the Philadelphia Enquirer, Murtha was merely lamenting.
The descriptions of what happened in Haditha on Nov. 19, 2005, are among the ugliest to come out of the war. The Marines said initially that civilians were killed in crossfire with insurgents after a bomb killed a Marine. A military probe since then has amassed evidence that Marines may have deliberately shot and killed 24 civilians, including children, in a house-to-house search, and that attempts were made to cover up the incident.Note that I emphasized the word, "MAY" (that word was nonexistent in Murtha's verbiage when he played judge, jury and executioner on May 17th this year).
Second, note how if a casual reader reads that paragraph and misses that three letter word in the middle of it, that the Philadelphia Enqirer itself runs the risk that the reader will presume guilt (not that they care). Even Time Magazine, whose original article brought this
And we all know that Arabic sources to MSM outlets have all been accurate, impartial, and free from propaganda, right? But hey, if it's good enough propaganda for the Islamofascists, then it's good enough for Murtha and the Philadelphia Enquirer:Time’s source, Thaer Thabit al-Hadithi, is not a "young man." He is not a "budding journalism student."
And al-Haditha is not separate and apart from the Hammurabi Human Rights Group. Nor is he a man who wanted to remain anonymous because he feared for his safety.
Thaer Thabit al-Hadithi
Al-Haditha is 43 years old. He "created" Hammurabi 16 months ago. (Before that he worked directly under the head of Haditha’s hospital, Dr. Walid al-Obeidi, who pronounced that all the victims had been shot at close range.)
In fact, al-Haditha is one of Hammurabi’s only two members. He serves as its "Secretary General" while the only other member, Abdul-Rahman al-Mashhadani, performs as its "Chairman.")
Al-Haditha is the one and only person behind this tape. He made it. And he sat on it for four months before turning it over to Time magazine.
But it looks like Time did not consider these mundane facts about the maker of this tape compelling enough. So they made up additional romantic details and invented the involvement of the "internationally respected Human Rights Watch" to burnish the video’s provenance.