Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich filed suit against Murtha, claiming that the veteran lawmaker damaged his reputation when he told the press that Wuterich’s squad in 2005 killed civilians in cold blood in Haditha, Iraq.

Wuterich argued that Murtha made false and defamatory statements to the press about Wuterich’s and his comrades’ role in the civilian deaths.

Murtha, a former Marine, used his congressional immunity as his defense, arguing that he made those statements to the press in his official capacity as a member of Congress. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on Tuesday ruled that Wuterich can’t sue Murtha.

Read in entirety… all six paragraphs… at link above.

They also have a petition going:

In May 2006, you accused a group of United States Marines of killing “innocent civilians in cold blood”. You made these allegations during an ongoing investigation. In fact, a Marine Corps spokesman said that you made your statement a week before you had even been briefed.

You continued to accuse these eight Marines of “cold-blooded murder and war crimes”, even after the Marine Corps itself said your comments on the matter “would be inappropriate and could undermine the investigatory and possible legal process.”

As a result of the investigation, the charges were dropped against 7 of the 8 Marines and the other Marine is awaiting his day in court.

However, you have not withdrawn your statements or apologized for your defamatory remarks.

Marines implicated in the incident believe that you have committed slander and libel against them. These United States Marines, whose honor you have attacked, deserve to hear an apology from you.

We, the undersigned, implore you, Representative Murtha, as a man who serves the public in Congress, as a man who once served in the Marine Corps, to do the honorable thing.

You must apologize.

Signed,

Pete Hegseth, Vets for Freedom
Erick Erickson, Red State
Paul Mirengoff, Powerline
Marc Danziger, Winds of Change
Jim Hoft, Gateway Pundit
Roger L. Simon, Pajamas Media
Ed Morrissey, Hot Air
Alex Charyna, PA Watercooler
Eric Odom, Conservablogs
Michael Illions, Conservatives with Attitude
Scott W. Graves, Red County

Please add your voice to this request by signing below.

Please go here and add your name.

While it looks like the Democrats may gain some seats in the House and the Senate John Murtha is close to losing his seat to a 28 year old Army Officer who’s own resume is quite stellar AND he supports our troops, unlike Murtha.

So what does he do?

He appeals to MoveOn for support.

In the letter to MoveOn he claims he is up against “the right-wing attack machine” who are “swiftboating” him because of his “work to end the Iraq war” and that Rush, O’Reilly and Hannity have called him a traitor.

Right wing attack machine? Don’t really need it when his own mouth is his own enemy. Calling the Haditha Marines murderers before an investigation is complete is one instance. The other? Calling his own constituents racists. When he realized he made a mistake he tried to make up for it by calling them rednecks.

Swiftboating? He swiftboated the Marines if anything. All his opponent is doing is calling him out for his ignorant actions including trying to end the Iraq war in failure and disgrace. If Hannity, O’Reilly and Rush called him a traitor….it fits.

So cry all you want Murtha, your days may very well be numbered:

Rep. John P. Murtha is cashing in on his extensive network of House connections to help fend off a surging Republican challenge for his 12th District seat in Pennsylvania. The 17-term incumbent has raised more than $170,000 since Monday, a large slice of it from his Democratic colleagues.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California kicked in $7,000 from her campaign and political action committees, as did Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel of Illinois and Rep. James P. Moran of Virginia, a fellow member of the House Appropriations Committee.

Murtha’s seat was considered safe until he made comments earlier this month referring to his home region as “racist.” The widely publicized statement drew attention and support to his well-funded GOP challenger, William Russell, and led the National Republican Congressional Campaign Committee to jump into the race, pledging $84,000 in coordinated spending. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee responded yesterday with $2,400 to help pay for phone banks.

You know your in trouble when you need to borrow money from your buddies and the DNC.

Here’s a little of what I’ve found…

9/17/2007 Iraq Baghdad 21 people were killed and 32 people wounded in Ramadan violence, including a car bombing at a mosque. (Religion of Peace.com…)

9/17/2006 Iraqi soldiers conduct operations in Diwaniyah (CENTCOM MNF Briefing)

9/17/2006 Iraqis celebrate opening of refurbished operating room at Musayyib Hospital (CENTCOM MNF Briefing)

9/17/2006 INP, MND-B Soldiers seize munitions cache, foil roadside bomb threat (CENTCOM MNF Briefing)

9/17/2006 Over 750,000 Iraqis Benefit from new landfill in Kiruk (US Army Corps of Engineers website)

9/17/2006 Iraq , Baqubah 2 Killed , 3 Injured ; Jihadis attack an electrical plant, killing two guards. (the religion of peace.com…)

9/17/2006 Iraq , Kirkuk 21 Killed , 63 Injured ; Two suicide bomb attacks by ‘Holy Warriors’ take the lives of at least twenty-one innocents. (the religion of peace.com…)

9/17/2006 Iraq , Baghdad 24 Killed , 0 Injured ; Twenty-four more tortured and executed victims of religious sectarian hatred are found. (the religion of peace.com…)

9/17/2006 Sergeant Adam L. Knox Baghdad (north-central part) by small arms fire

9/17/2006 Sergeant David J. Davis Baghdad (Sadr City) in an IED attack

9/17/2005 Iraq , Baghdad 9 Killed 0 Injured Sunni radicals kidnap and torture nine men before killing them exectution style. (religion of peace.com…)

9/17/2005 Iraq , Nahrawan 30 Killed 38 Injured al-Qaeda murders thirty Shiites in a street bombing in an industrial area. About forty others are injured in the blast. (religion of peace.com…)

9/17/2005 Iraq , Mushahada 3 Killed 1 Injured A Jihad ambush on an Iraqi Parliament member leaves him and two civilians dead. (religion of peace.com…)

9/17/2005 Staff Sergeant Regilio E. Nelom Al Asad (near) in al Anbar Province by an IED attack

9/17/2005 Joint raid in Baqubah nets two detainees, weapons (CENTCOM MNF Briefing)

9/17/2005 Joint raid nets suspects, weapons, and several car bombs (CENTCOM MNF Briefing

9/17/2005 Multi-National forces capture key terror leaders in Mosul (CENTCOM MNF Briefing)

9/17/2005 Coalition Forces raid foreign fighter safe house (CENTCOM MNF Briefing)

9/17/2005 Article 32 investigation delayed (CENTCOM MNF)

9/17/2004 Iraq , Baghdad 8 Killed 41 Injured Fedayeen suicide bomber murders eight people in a shopping district. Forty-one others survive with injuries.

9/17/2004 First LadyLaura Bush’s speech at a firehouse in Hamilton, New Jersey is disrupted by anti-war campaigner Sue Niederer. (Wikepedia 2002 to 2004 election timeline)

9/17/2004 Corporal Christopher S. Ebert was killed in Al Anbar Province by hostile fire

9/17/2003 An audio tape message purported to have been recorded by the deposed Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, is aired by Arabic television channel al-Arabiya.

9/17/2003 Six months after the invasion of Iraq retired General Wesley Clark announces his candidacy. His opposition to the Bush Administration’s war in Iraq is the core platform of his candidacy. (Wikepedia 2002 to 2004 election timeline)

9/17/2002 In an effort to avoid invasion and to finally resolve the 11years of conflict between the U.S. and Iraq, President Bush put diplomatic pressure on Iraq, and Saddam’s regime finally allows U.N. inspectors back into Iraq after 4 years of absence.

9/17/2001 “On Sept. 17, 2001, six days after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush signed a 2½-page document marked “”TOP SECRET”" that outlined the plan for going to war in Afghanistan as part of a global campaign against terrorism. Almost as a footnote, the document also directed the Pentagon to begin planning military options for an invasion of Iraq, senior administration officials said
…
The Pentagon, while it was fighting the war in Afghanistan, began reviewing its plans for Iraq because of the secret presidential directive on Sept. 17. On Sept. 19 and 20, an advisory group known as the Defense Policy Board met at the Pentagon — with Rumsfeld in attendance — and animatedly discussed the importance of ousting Hussein. (Washington Post) NOTE: At the time, every national leader in the world pledged support and sympathy for the 911 attacks except for Saddam Hussein who-coincidentally-had also shot down an American drone monitoring the terms of the 1991 Cease Fire during the 911 attacks. Since there had been zero human intelligence assets inside Iraq between 12/98 and 9/17/01, there was no evidence gathered to determine if Iraq was directly involved in the 911 attacks or just used as a casus belli by Osama Bin Laden. “

The entire article by Lance Fairchok at American Thinker is spot-on excellent, and exactly what I was looking for as an answer to this, which surprisingly seemed to get little media traction. However, I’d like to cite the following passage as a lead-in for a different, if not unrelated topic:

Webster defines propaganda as the “spreading of ideas or information to further or damage a cause,” it is also “ideas or allegations spread for such purpose.” The popular connotation of the word is false information, or information used to deceive or mislead. The left uses the word as a negative label for information that does not conform to their view, a tool to demean and discredit, regardless of truth. Their purpose is to dominate what the public sees with their messages and to eliminate contradictory information.

In information warfare, this is called shaping the battle space.

Throughout this war, the military has been inundated with negative press. Damaging leaks were rampant, coming from the Democrats in the Senate and the House, from the CIA and the State Department, even from inside the Pentagon. Every setback was exaggerated in an unrelenting information campaign to shape public perception.

Disinformation from our enemies was accepted without critical analysis by much of the media. Papers worldwide splashed every unsubstantiated negative story they could find. Enemy agents posing as stringers were feeding false stories about American atrocities. Terror attacks were timed for the 24-hour news-cycle. The broadcast media’s mantra for Iraq was “if it bleeds it leads” writ large.

The enemy knew it, and used it.

This relentless media assault frustrated and confounded the military, for whom the lessons of press malfeasance in Vietnam still rankle. How can you prosecute a war against a vicious enemy when your every action may be portrayed as criminal? How can you show success when failure is all Americans are allowed to see and hear? How do you get your message out when the press ignores or alters it? How can you tell the ground truth if no one is there to listen?

This brings us to today’s New York Times piece, written by Scott Shane, which details some of the little known interrogation of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. What is shocking (and yet, why shouldn’t we be surprised?) is the disclosure outing of the name of the 9/11 Mastermind’s interrogator:

Mr. Martinez declined to be interviewed; his role was described by colleagues. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, director of the C.I.A., and a lawyer representing Mr. Martinez asked that he not be named in this article, saying that the former interrogator believed that the use of his name would invade his privacy and might jeopardize his safety. The New York Times, noting that Mr. Martinez had never worked undercover and that others involved in the campaign against Al Qaeda have been named in news articles and books, declined the request. (An editors’ note on this issue has been posted on The Times’s Web site at nytimes.com/world.)

What is it about today’s press that has impaired judgment, given aid and comfort to America’s enemies, endangered lives, prolonged the conflict, and sabotaged and undermined anti-terror programs by publishing leaks regarding such things as CIA secret prisons, NSA surveillance program, the SWIFT program? Were 32 frontpage stories on abu Ghraib published in the New York Times really warranted? Did the act itself inflame the Arab world and create more terrorists, or was it the media hype about the abuses, which did so? What about Haditha? Who has done more damage to the war effort? Soldiers on the frontlines to win hearts and minds, protesters out on the streets, politicians back in Washington, or perceptions created and driven by the media in its coverage of the war? The Bush Administration is held accountable for its failures in prosecuting the Iraq battle with zero percent casualties; but where is the media accountability?

There’s a reason for classified information and government secrets, aside from cynical conspiratorial beliefs that our government is up to no good, to remain secret from the public (and consequently, from our enemies). Is it not obvious?

From the editor’s note regarding the NYTimes defending its decision to publish KSM’s interrogator’s name:

The Central Intelligence Agency asked The New York Times not to publish the name of Deuce Martinez, an interrogator who questioned Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and other high-level Al Qaeda prisoners, saying that to identify Mr. Martinez would invade his privacy and put him at risk of retaliation from terrorists or harassment from critics of the agency.

After discussion with agency officials and a lawyer for Mr. Martinez, the newspaper declined the request, noting that Mr. Martinez had never worked under cover and that others involved in the campaign against Al Qaeda have been named in news stories and books. The editors judged that the name was necessary for the credibility and completeness of the article.

The Times’s policy is to withhold the name of a news subject only very rarely, most often in the case of victims of sexual assault or intelligence officers operating under cover.

[sarcasm]
Yes, if only he were an “undercover” operative like Valerie Plame Wilson. Then the NY Times would have kept him anonymous. [/sarcasm]

Since I opened this post by citing a passage from Michael Yon’s book I found relevant, let me bookend the post by closing with this passage from Robert Kaplan’s Hog Pilots, Blue Water Grunts, pg 26-27:

Dekryger showed me the book he was reading, Tarawa: The Story of a Battle by Time-Life correspondent Robert Sherrod. He said that he found the book inspiring. Leafing through it, and reading it carefully at night in the hootch, I discovered that it was like other books popular among marines and soldiers, but which the contemporary media, aside from the military correspondents, were barely aware of. No potboiler, Tarawa was just an old-fashioned sort of book, very much in the tradition of great war reporting as defined by Richard Tregaskis in Guadalcanal Diary, Bing West in The Village, and Harold Moore and Joe Galloway in We Were Soldiers Once…and Young. These books celebrated the sacrifice and heroism of American troops in World War II and Vietnam not because it had been the authors’ intention, but because it was true and happened to be all around them.

~~~

Sherrod, like other correspondents of the era, keeps using the words “we and “our” when referring to the American side, for although a journalist, he was a fellow American living among the troops. Back in Honolulu a week after the battle, he found the naïveté of the home front toward Tarawa “amazing”. The public saw the killing of so many troops in so few days as scandalous. There were rumblings in Congress about an intelligence failure, and vows that such a thing must not happen again. But as Sherrod argues, there was no easy way to win many wars (in fact, eight months later, the first day of fighting on Guam would claim nearly seven hundred marines dead, wounded, or missing). Thus, “to deprecate the Tawara victory was almost to defame the memory of the gallant men who lost their lives achieving it.” He concludes that on Tarawa, in 1943, “there was a more realistic approach to war than there was in the United States.”

And then there was one.

Saying a general overseeing the case had been influenced by an investigator, a military judge today dismissed charges against Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani, who was accused of not looking into the killings of 24 Iraqis in Haditha in 2005.

“Unlawful command influence is the mortal enemy of military justice,” said Col. Steven Folsom, quoting previous case law. “In order to restore the public confidence, we need to take it back. We need to turn the clock back.”

The charges can be refiled, but Folsom ordered that the Marine Forces Central Command not be involved in the future, The Associated Press explains. The prosecution has 72 hours to appeal.

Ben Johnson gives a great rundown of the sequence of events regarding the trial aspect of the case:

• In April 2007, the government offered immunity to Sgt. Sanick P. Dela Cruz in exchange for his testimony. He promptly changed his story five times.
• In August 2007, Lt. Gen. James Mattis pronounced 22-year-old Lance Cpl. Justin Sharratt absolutely “innocent” of all wrongdoing.
• At the same time, Lt. Gen. Mattis waved charges of dereliction of duty against Capt. Randall Stone, saying Stone’s actions did not “rise to the level of criminal behavior.”
• One month later, prosecutors granted immunity to Capt. Lucas McConnell, who was not at the scene, in exchange for his testimony.
• In April 2008, the government dismissed all charges against 26-year-old Lance Cpl. Stephen Tatum “with prejudice.” Although an eyewitness testified Tatum acted with malice aforethought, Tatum passed his lie detector test, while his accuser failed his. His adversary, a native of Venezuela, also happened to be “trying to get his application for U.S. citizenship released by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, which is holding up his papers.” Tatum nearly broke down on the stand last July, telling the judge: “I am not comfortable with the fact that I might have shot a child…That is a burden I will have to bear.”
• Two weeks ago, a jury found Lt. Andrew Grayson “not guilty” of multiple counts of making false official statements and one count of attempting to deceive.

I can all but guarantee the charges will NOT be refiled. The way this whole event has been politicized by the cowardly ex-Marine Murtha forced the military to proceed with charges that should never had been filed in the first place. Which we now see made some on the prosecuting team act improperly to ensure a conviction.

Sadly, this has ruined the careers of Marines who did a tough job, and did it well. They acted as they were trained to do in combat and for that they were thrown under the bus. The firm that represented Chessani had this to say:

Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel of the Law Center, commenting on the judge’s decision had this to say, “We are all grateful for the judge’s ruling today. He truly was the “last sentinel” to guard against unlawful command influence.”

“Tragically, our own government eliminated one of its most effective combat commanders. The insurgents are laughing in their caves,” said Thompson.

And they aren’t kidding. Take a look at this officers resume: (via California Conservative)

• “Leads Marines from front in every operation. Demonstrates moral courage everyday. Doesn’t hesitate to report bad news fast or contest unrealistic plans/poor concepts. Despite the complexity and size of his AO [area of operations], he always maintains a calm, cool demeanor.”
• “Always seeks advantage over complex, diverse insurgent enemy. Truly one of the finer thinkers in this COIN [counterinsurgency] environment.”
• “One of the top 3 infantry/Cav Bn commanders of 13 who have served with RCT –2 [the regiment] during OIF. A superb leader, who knows his men, knows the enemy, knows his business. Doesn’t attract a lot of fanfare; just gets the job done to an exceedingly high standard.”
• “Long ball hitter; recommend selection for promotion to Colonel and TLS [Top Level School].”

And now a very deserving officer has had his career demolished thanks to Murtha and his need to prove Bush was wrong.

Thankfully Murtha isn’t off the hook yet.

In an interview with nationally syndicated radio talk host Michael Savage, the lead attorney for Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani said he and his client will look into suing Murtha and the Time magazine reporter Tim McGuirk, who first published the accusations by Iraqi insurgents.

But the attorney, Brian Rooney, said nothing will happen until Chessani, described as a devout Christian and the father of six homeschooled children, is completely “out of the woods” legally…

But Rooney, a judge advocate general officer who served a tour of duty in Iraq himself, said the Marine Corps has until Friday at 10 a.m. Pacific Time to appeal…

Rooney acknowledged to Savage it’s difficult to sue a sitting congressman, but he believes it can be done.

“If he leaves his realm of speaking from the congressman’s point of view … then he can be sued for libel and defamation,” Rooney said.

And I don’t believe the Speech and Debate Clause will apply here seeing as how he made the rounds of the morning talkshows to push these accusations with absolutely NO evidence of wrongdoing and he was not on Capitol grounds. Yes, he doesn’t HAVE to be on Capitol grounds, it basically covers everything to do with his job, but let him explain to the court how it was his job to accuse these Marines with no evidence. Either way it will give the Marines lots of publicity, and lots of bad publicity for Murtha.

And lets not forget the man is already being sued by the last man to face charges. SSgt Wuterich.

I can’t wait to see you squirm ex-Marine Murtha.

Gateway Pundit has many more reactions.

A Marine intelligence officer has been acquitted of charges that he tried to help cover up the killings of 24 Iraqi men, women and children.

A jury of seven officers delivered the verdict Wednesday in favor of 1st Lt. Andrew Grayson after more than five hours of deliberation.

Grayson, who has always maintained he did nothing wrong, was not present at the scene of the killings on Nov. 19, 2005, in Haditha. He had been accused of telling a sergeant to delete photographs of the dead from a digital camera and laptop computer.

Grayson was found not guilty of two counts of making false official statements, two counts of trying to fraudulently separate from service, and one count of attempt to deceive by making false statements.

And then there were two:

Still no apology from Murtha yet.

ANN ARBOR, MI – Military prosecutors are expected to call as their witness General James N. Mattis, a highly respected Marine officer and one of only a handful of four-star Marine generals, to testify in the court-martial hearing against LtCol Jeffrey Chessani on June 2, 2008, at Camp Pendleton, California.

Gen Mattis, recently given his fourth star, was the previous convening authority for the Haditha cases and the officer responsible for referring LtCol Chessani’s case to a general court-martial. Prosecutors are relying on him to rebut previous findings of the Military Judge that there is evidence of unlawful command influence.

So let me get this straight. When the defense asks for Mattis’ sworn deposition, they’re denied. Yet the prosecution can call him as a witness with no problems at all? And what will Mattis say? Well, of course he’ll say there was no undue command influence, and the judge will nod and say, “Oh, okay. Wow. Good thing you came on the stand and set that straight. Thanks, guys. Let’s all go get a brewski now.”

Am I the only one who thinks this fish smells worse than a two-dollar hooker? As it turns out, I’m not.

Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel of the Thomas More Law Center, the national public interest law firm defending LtCol Chessani, commented, “This case is dripping with double standards and political intrigue as the Pentagon attempts to appease Washington’s political establishment and press…”

[I must point out here that those of us fighting for these and other Marines like SGT Lawrence Hutchins (of the Pendleton 8) have repeatedly tried to get Thomas More Law Center involved, but were rebuffed. Now suddenly it appears they've seen the light, sort of like the Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus. We're just happy they caught up.]

And here’s a little factoid you may not have known about:

“…Gen Mattis was investigated for ordering a ground and air assault of an Iraqi ‘wedding party’ in 2004 that resulted in the deaths of 40 men, women, and children. At a press conference shortly after the incident, he defended his actions by retorting, ‘I don’t have to apologize for the conduct of my Marines.’ What is puzzling is that even though Mattis rightfully was never charged with any criminal wrongdoing in that case, he did not give LtCol Chessani the same consideration.”

Did you catch that? “I don’t have to apologize for the conduct of my Marines.” Brilliantly said, and yet here we are, with Mattis at the forefront of a witch hunt against the very men he claims to love and respect so deeply, in almost the same type of situation. Then again, when it comes to the Marine Corps leadership, it’s not about fairness, justice, or even honor–as we’ve seen time and time again in case after case.

What makes me so curious is how Mattis will explain away roughly 25 closed-session meetings where one of the investigators was allowed to attend and discuss the case with the officers controlling the disposition of the case. That’s like a homicide investigator meeting with the judges in a civilian case. In other words, not right.

Chessani’s attorneys will be able to cross-examine the general on the stand, but if past track record is any indication of how that will go, the prosecutor will object, the judge will sustain, and Mattis will not be exposed for the dishonorable man that he is. We shall see if the judge has the personal integrity and fortitude to make his decision based on facts instead

[Note: I am well aware, dear readers, that my freedom to call Mattis dishonorable was given to me in part by Mattis himself. However, it was also paid for by Jeffrey Chessani and Larry Hutchins, so you'll forgive me if my loyalty lies with them instead of the one who ruined their careers and traded their freedoms for his fourth star.]

As disgusting as these cases continue to be, and as much of a cesspool as the military “justice” system has become, each mistake, each over-the-top action that they take is one more arrow in our quiver. It is one more piece of proof of innocence for all of these Marines, one more way we can show how badly these cases are conducted. That means one step closer to freedom for SGT Larry Hutchins.

So hang in there, Hutchins and Chessani. If the NCIS, the JAG, and the Marine Corps leadership show their backsides any more, we’ll have caught them with their pants down completely–which is exactly what I, and others like me, intend to do.

Military prosecutors dropped all charges on Friday against a U.S. Marine accused of involuntary manslaughter and aggravated assault in the 2005 shooting deaths of two dozen unarmed Iraqi civilians at Haditha.

The charges against Lance Cpl. Stephen B. Tatum, 26, were dismissed “in order to continue to pursue the truth seeking process into the Haditha incident,” the Marines said in a statement.

Word of the development came as jury selection was about to begin in Tatum’s court-martial on charges of involuntary manslaughter, reckless endangerment and aggravated assault at the Camp Pendleton Marine base in California.

Here is the message from his defense lawyers:

All charges were dismissed with prejudice against LCpl Tatum this morning, on the day his trial was to begin on allegations stemming from actions in Haditha, Iraq on 19 November 2005. The government said it was done to further the truth seeking function. We emphasize that LCpl Tatum will testify truthfully if called as a witness but there is no deal for his testimony. It became clear to the experienced prosecution team that the right thing to do was to dismiss all charges against LCpl Tatum. We believe the evidence shows that LCpl Tatum reacted to an enemy attack the way he was trained to do.

This result is consistent with the recommendation of the Article 32 investigating officer who recommended last summer that no court-martial be held in this case.

JACK B. ZIMMERMANN
KYLE R. SAMPSON
LTCOL MATTHEW W. CORD, USMCR
MAJ JEFFREY V. MUÑOZ, USMC

So now, after years of “investigations” we have five of the eight Haditha Marines exonerated, and SSGT Frank Wuterich and the two officers trials delayed indefinitely.

The case against them has been falling apart for years and they now appear to have come to grips with the simple fact that they have no case. Murtha’s “cold blooded murder” has slowly become “following the rules of engagement,” as it should of been from the beginning. For the remaining defendents not one murder charge is pending.

Feb. 13: Marine Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, center, arrives for his motions hearing at Camp Pendleton, Calif. Wuterich is being charged for his alleged involvement in the death of Iraqi civilians in Haditha, Iraq in 2005. Mike Blake – Reuters

The program airs this Tuesday night. Bruce Kesler received an advanced copy, and gives a great review of the contents, here.

Curt has followed the story since its inception, and you can see his previous 41 blog entries here.

The defense for a Marine accused in the deaths of 24 Iraqi civilians said Wednesday it wants to depose a Pennsylvania congressman to determine whether a general told him that the accused and his squad killed in cold blood.

Jack Zimmermann, an attorney for Lance Cpl. Stephen B. Tatum, told judge Lt. Col. Eugene Robinson that he also wants a deposition from Gen. Michael Hagee, former commandant of the Marine Corps now retired, to find out what he may have said to Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., and to Marines serving in Iraq.

~~~

Zimmermann said Murtha, a former Marine who is an outspoken opponent of the Iraqi war, refused to be interviewed because squad leader Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich — who is charged with unpremeditated murder in 17 of the deaths — filed a defamation lawsuit against him last year.

“Murtha said (during several media interviews) he was briefed at the `highest levels’ that Marines (in Tatum’s squad) committed murder, killed in cold blood … it was another My Lai,” said Zimmermann.

My Lai was the site of the killing of more than 300 apparently unarmed Vietnamese civilians by U.S. soldiers in 1968.

“Could these be construed as political rantings?” the judge asked the defense attorney.

“Murtha said, `I was briefed by the commandant of the Marine Corps,” Zimmermann responded.

The attorney urged the judge to order depositions by Murtha and Hagee.

“We don’t think there’s any congressional immunity here,” Zimmermann said. “We want to ask General Hagee, Did you tell him (Murtha) that? Where did he get this? Is he making it up?”

Recall what he said:

The man is a disgrace to the Marine Corps and to his chosen profession.  The sad thing is even if he is sworn in, I doubt he will tell the truth.  He is so full of corrupt earmark dealings and other lies I doubt he even knows what the truth is anymore.

A Marine Corps official has recommended that murder charges be dismissed against a Camp Pendleton squad leader accused in the deaths of 17 civilians killed in the Iraqi city of Haditha two years ago.

The official, Lt. Col. Paul Ware, said in a recommendation obtained by the North County Times that rather than face murder charges, squad leader Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich should be tried for the lesser offense of negligent homicide in the deaths of five children and two women.

Ware recommended 10 other murder charges against Wuterich be dismissed.

“I believe after reviewing all the evidence that no trier of fact can conclude Staff Sgt. Wuterich formed the criminal intent to kill,” Ware wrote in reference to the women and children. “When a Marine fails to exercise due care and civilians die, the charge of negligent homicide, and not murder, is appropriate.”

Ware’s report, issued to prosecutors and defense attorneys this week, found the evidence against Wuterich contradictory. Ware’s role as the case’s investigating officer is akin to that of a judge presiding over a pretrial hearing.

“The case against Staff Sgt. Wuterich is simply not strong enough to conclude he committed murder beyond a reasonable doubt,” Ware wrote. “Almost all witnesses have an obvious bias or prejudice.”

And guess what?  I can guarantee you that he will not be convicted of negligent homicide.  He was following his training, his rules of engagement, and did what needed to be done.  The enemy used human shields to protect themselves and in the process caused all those innocent men, women and children to die.  Sad, but the fault of those who attacked our Marines.

Still, no apology from this disgrace of a Marine named Jack Murtha.  But thats par for the course.  Being a Democrat means you never have to say your sorry.

Charges have been dropped against a captain who was accused of failing to investigate the deaths of 24 Iraqi civilians in the town of Haditha, the Marine Corps said Tuesday.

Capt. Lucas M. McConnell of Napa was granted immunity and ordered to cooperate with officials looking into the November 2005 killings, the Marines said in a press release.

Charges have now been dismissed against four of the eight Marines who were initially charged with murder or failure to investigate the deaths. A battalion commander has been recommended for a court-martial; a final decision is pending.

And we’re still waiting for Murtha’s apology:

The coward.

An investigating officer has recommended that a Marine Corps general drop all charges against a Marine accused of murdering civilians in Haditha, Iraq, finding again that the 2005 shootings were “tragedies” but that the Marine did not violate the laws of combat.

Lt. Col. Paul J. Ware wrote in a 29-page report that there is insufficient evidence to show that Lance Cpl. Stephen B. Tatum did anything other than follow Marine Corps rules when he killed women and children in two houses in a residential neighborhood in Iraq on Nov. 19, 2005. Ware found that Tatum followed orders to attack the houses and shot a group of civilians only because another Marine in the unit was already shooting at them.

~~~

“What occurred in house 1 and house 2 are tragedies,” Ware wrote. “The photographs of the victims are heart wrenching, and the desire to explain this tragedy as criminal act and not the result of training and fighting an enemy that hides among innocents is great. However, in the end, my opinion is that there is insufficient evidence for trial. LCpl Tatum shot and killed people in houses 1 and 2, but the reason he did so was because of his training and the circumstances he was placed in, not to exact revenge and commit murder.”

Jack B. Zimmerman, a civilian attorney for Tatum, said he is pleased with the report and will await Mattis’s ruling before commenting further. Should Mattis dismiss the charges, it would leave pending murder charges in the case against one enlisted Marine, Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich.

You can read the IO’s report here in PDF format.  Some interesting passages:

In most homicide cases, a killing can be presumed to be unlawful absent evidence to the contrary. That is not the same as placing a burden of raising an affirmative defense upon the accused but recognition that in our society, killing another is not normally legal or authorized. There are two obvious exceptions to which the presumption of a killing is not lawful, law enforcement and military combat operation. Marines engaged in combat are expected to kill. This legal authority to kill, however, is certainly not absolute. Our Marine Corps makes great efforts to ensure Marines are educated and trained on the limits of authority to kill under the rules of engagement.

In a homicide case arising from actions by a Marine within a combat environment, the government may not rest on the normal presumption that killing is wrong and therefore burdened with proving that the killing was in violation of the rules of engagement. The ambiguity that arises in this case is not what the rules of engagement require, but how those rules are applied for criminal liability. Is the requirement to identify hostile act and intent based on subjective or objective criteria? If it is subjective, does that belief have to be honest and reasonable or just honest? If it is an objective test, is that based on the experience of a basic trained Marine or a combat veteran? Government witnesses indicated that the test was subjective. My opinion is that the test should be a subjective, honest and reasonable belief so that Marines in combat that are acting in good faith have the protections of the rules of engagement if they honestly perceive hostile acts or intent and make a decision to use deadly force that in hindsight, with time to reflect, others might consider such a decision to be a mistake.

~~~

The government counsel argued that positive identification of occupants of the room was required under the rules of engagement. Such a theory, requiring positive identification before engaging targets in a room that you hear an AK-47 racking within a home that is declared hostile, would appear to be a rewrite of the rules of engagement and is clearly contrary to the training and experiences of the witnesses that testified. The government did not present even one witness that testified that positive identification under such circumstances is required before employing deadly force.

Using the government’s theory that positive identification was required within the room of house 1 when LCpl Tatum heard a noise he and his fellow Marines believed was an AK-47 racking, they would be authorized to throw a grenade into the room, but when entering the room they would be required to distinguish between enemy and innocents within the room. Such a result seems counter intuitive.

~~~

Such restraint might be good practice for law enforcement or special operations forces conducting hostage rescue operations, but not in combat. In combat Marines are trained to neutralize the enemy with overwhelming force. If we adopt the theory of liability espoused by the government, we in tum are placing innocents in grave danger as they will become truly effective shields against our Marines engaging the enemy.

Murtha cares little, it seems, to the "protections of the rules of engagement."  He cares little for the men who were fighting and dying over there because if he did you could damn well bet he wouldn’t  go half cocked and call them murderers.  He wanted to score political points.  Thats it in a nutshell.  Just like Scott Beauchamp and TNR wished to show that Iraq is bad because they force our soldiers into becoming bloodthirsty robots we have Murtha wanting to show the same thing, on the backs of our Marines:

Think we’ll hear an apology from the EX-Marine? 

Well, two more Marines have been cleared of wrongdoing:

The Marine Corps announced Thursday that it had dropped charges against Lance Cpl. Justin L. Sharratt, who was accused of murdering three Iraqi brothers in November 2005.

Sharratt was one of eight Marines initially accused in the slayings of 24 civilians in the Iraqi town of Haditha after a roadside bomb killed a Marine.

Four enlisted men were charged with the killings and four officers with dereliction of duty for not ordering a war crimes investigation.

Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis, commander of Marine Force Central Command, said he dropped the charges out of a belief that Sharratt acted within Marine Corps standards when forced to make a quick decision while searching a house for insurgents.

In a separate decision, Mattis also dropped charges against Capt. Randy W. Stone, who was a lawyer with the battalion involved.

And very little is said on the nightly news, in our newspapers. 

Mattis also praised Sharratt for his service.  Here is the complete statement from General Mattis:

"The events of November 19, 2005 have been exhaustively reviewed by Marine, Army, and Naval Criminal Investigative Service investigators. An independent Article 32 Investigating Officer has considered all the facts and determined that the evidence does not support a referral to court-martial for LCpl Sharratt. Based on my review of all the evidence in this case and considering the recommendation of the Article 32 officer, I have dismissed the charges against LCpl Sharratt.

"LCpl Sharratt has served as a Marine infantryman in Iraq where our Nation is fighting a shadowy enemy who hides among the innocent people, does not comply with any aspect of the law of war, and routinely targets and intentionally draws fire toward civilians. The challenges of this combat environment put extreme pressures on our Marines. Notwithstanding, operational, moral, and legal imperatives demand that we Marines stay true to our own standards and maintain compliance with the law of war in this morally bruising environment.

"The experience of combat is difficult to understand intellectually and very difficult to appreciate emotionally. One of our Nation’s most articulate Supreme Court Justices, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., served as an infantryman during the Civil War and described war as an ‘incommunicable experience.’ He has also noted elsewhere that ‘detached reflection cannot be demanded in the face of an uplifted knife.’

Marines have a well earned reputation for remaining cool in the face of enemies brandishing much more than knives. The brutal reality that Justice Holmes described is experienced each day in Iraq, where Marines willingly put themselves at great risk to protect innocent civilians. Where the enemy disregards any attempt to comply with ethical norms of warfare, we exercise discipline and restraint to protect the innocent caught on the battlefield. Our way is right, but it is also difficult.

"With the dismissal of these charges LCpl Sharratt may fairly conclude that he did his best to live up to the standards, followed by U.S. Fighting men throughout our many wars, in the face of life or death decisions made in a matter of seconds in combat. And as he has always remained cloaked in the presumption of innocence, with this dismissal of charges, he remains in the eyes of the law – and in my eyes – innocent."

So lets look at what we have here:

And with each dismissal there are calls for Murtha to apologize, and none ever come.  The sign of a true coward.  The case is unraveling but we don’t hear the left and our MSM admitting that maybe, just maybe, they were wrong in convicting these heroes before there day in court. 

For a great timeline and rundown of evidence in the case and against Murtha check out this Let Freedom Ring post:

1. Murtha made these malicious accusations before he’d received an official briefing.
2. Murtha initially said that his information came from “commanders” and other people “who know what they’re talking about.”
3. A Marine spokesman said that Gen. Hagee briefed him but that didn’t happen until a week after Murtha went public with his accusations.
4. Murtha said that Gen. Hagee had briefed him before Gen. Hagee had briefed him. I’ll let readers decide whether Rep. Murtha lied outright when he said that.

And from NewsMax comes this rundown of Captain Jeffrey Dinsmore testimony, the battalion intelligence officer, who testified for 8 hours some months back and whose testimony was declassified in June of this year:

• 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!

It told the full story, was supported by photographic evidence, logs of all the day’s radio transmissions, and included an almost minute-by-minute narrative of the day’s events.

The eight hours of testimony and cross examination offered by Capt. Jeffrey Dinsmore, the S2 officer, gave full details of the intelligence passed on to the officers and men of the 3rd Battalion 1St Marine Regiment including the Marines of Kilo Company. It buttressed previous briefings which alerted the Marines of insurgent tactics such as the killing of seven reconnaissance Marines who were ambushed by insurgents in hospital beds with AK-47s hidden under the bedcovers.

According to Dinsmore, a 20-year up-from-the ranks captain reputed to be one of the best intelligence officers in the Marine Corps, as well as the unit’s only officer awarded a Bronze Star for his service in Haditha, the officers and men of 3rd Battalion 1St Marine Regiment were specifically alerted to the possibility of a white car being involved in the planned ambush.

But they trudged on with this witchhunt because of Murtha and the MSM.  They have put and are putting these Marines through years of hell to satisfy their craving for another My Lai they can trumpet.  Our Marines be damned.

UPDATE

Listen to Bryan from Hot Air calling Murtha’s office and being hung up on after asking if a statement was forthcoming: