Thursday, May 25, 2006

A military investigation into the deaths of two dozen Iraqis last November is expected to find that a small number of marines in western Iraq carried out extensive, unprovoked killings of civilians, Congressional, military and Pentagon officials said Thursday.

Two lawyers involved in discussions about individual marines' defenses said they thought the investigation could result in charges of murder, a capital offense. That possibility and the emerging details of the killings have raised fears that the incident could be the gravest case involving misconduct by American ground forces in Iraq.

Officials briefed on preliminary results of the inquiry said the civilians killed at Haditha, a lawless, insurgent-plagued city deep in Sunni-dominated Anbar Province, did not die from a makeshift bomb, as the military first reported, or in cross-fire between marines and attackers, as was later announced. A separate inquiry has begun to find whether the events were deliberately covered up.

Evidence indicates that the civilians were killed during a sustained sweep by a small group of marines that lasted three to five hours and included shootings of five men standing near a taxi at a checkpoint, and killings inside at least two homes that included women and children, officials said.

That evidence, described by Congressional, Pentagon and military officials briefed on the inquiry, suggested to one Congressional official that the killings were "methodical in nature."

John Murtha’s said some extremely outrageous things the past 6 months but nothing as outrageous as his latest pack of lies. He was barely tolerable when he was hurling lies about conditions on the ground. This latest tripe is the stuff that should get him expelled from the House. Here’s his latest pack of lies:

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. The incident is still under investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and Multi-National Forces Iraq.
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“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. “There was no firefight. There was no [bomb] that killed those innocent people,” Murtha explained, adding there were “about twice as many” Iraqis killed than Time had reported.

Frankly, this is the actions of a traitor or a sellout. He deserves to be ridiculed, excoriated and frog-marched off Capitol Hill, then remanded to jail. No bail. Doesn’t this idiot know the type of damage this inflicts on the Marines? Or is it that he’s so intoxicated with the thought of becoming the next chairman of the House Armed Services Committee that he’ll say anything?

When Murtha’s made prior outrageous statements, I’ve advocated that the Pennsylvania voters should fire him. This goes beyond him advocating “immediate redeployment” of the troops or his claiming that “our troops are living hand to mouth”. This rises (sinks?) to the level of harming the U.S. military at a time of war. That takes it beyond Pennsylvania. Now it’s the nation’s business.

James Taranto makes a great point about the comments of Rep. John Murtha regarding the investigation into whether U.S. troops committed war crimes in a November incident where 15 Iraqi civilians were killed in Haditha, Iraq. Murtha claims that an internal investigation will show "there was no firefight, there was no IED (improvised explosive device) that killed these innocent people. Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood."

As Tananto notes, however, Murtha's description is self-contradictory because if the Marines "overreacted," then the killings were not premeditated. And if the killings were not premeditated, they were not in cold blood.

Moreover, if the killings were not in cold blood, then Murtha is slandering our troops by saying that they were. If the killings were in cold blood, then Murtha, in characterizing them as an overreaction to the pressure of the mission, is making an excuse for horrific crimes.