eglamkowski's Journal: I hope the people in PA are embarrassed

embarrassed enough to vote Murtha out of office in the coming election.

James Taranto does a good job picking apart his latest absurdity:
http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110008389

The Pentagon is investigating whether U.S. Marines committed war crimes in a November incident in which 15 Iraqi civilians were killed in Haditha, Iraq. NBC News reports that Rep. John Murtha, who voted for the war in Iraq, claims to have advance knowledge of the investigation's outcome:

        Murtha, a vocal opponent of the war in Iraq, said at a news conference Wednesday that sources within the military have told him that an internal investigation will show that "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."

What happened in Haditha we know not, but we can tell you that Murtha's description is false, for the simple reason that it is self-contradictory. If the Marines "overreacted," then the killings were not premeditated. They could not have killed both in the heat of the moment and in cold blood. Murtha therefore either is slandering the Marines by exaggerating their guilt or making excuses for horrific war crimes.

Why would he do such a thing? The key is that phrase "because of the pressure on them." They're depraved on account of they're deployed: Murtha seeks to maximize the evil of the alleged crimes while simultaneously deflecting blame from the actual perpetrators to those who have applied "pressure" to them--i.e., civilian leaders in the executive branch.

Sound familiar? This was just what John Kerry did back in 1971, when he told tales (many of them false) of war crimes in Vietnam. Yet in his own mind, he wasn't accusing troops of anything, as he explained in a 2004 CNN interview:

        I was accusing American leaders of abandoning the troops. And if you read what I said, it is very clearly an indictment of leadership. I said to the Senate, where is the leadership of our country? And it's the leaders who are responsible, not the soldiers. I never said that. I've always fought for the soldiers.

War crimes do, of course, exist, even if Kerry told fabricated stories. To excuse war criminals by denying that soldiers are responsible for their actions is an insult to everyone who has ever worn a military uniform and conducted himself honorably and lawfully.

Either that or Murtha's an InDUHvidual

[Marxist Hacker 42]

And is mixing his metaphores inappropriately- I agree that the description is impossible. Either these Marines were under enough stress to think they were under attack- or they weren't.

murtha...

[setzman]

is a douchebag.

There's no contradiction here

[buffer-overflowed]

You can overreact and still kill someone in cold blood. You're being highly pedantic, and playing a semantics game of the highest order, the question is why.