Haditha

The Pentagon rescinded the invitation of evangelist Franklin Graham to speak at its May 6 National Day of Prayer event because of complaints about his previous comments about Islam.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation expressed its concern over Graham's involvement with the event in an April 19 letter sent to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. MRFF's complaint about Graham, the son of Rev. Billy Graham, focused on remarks he made after 9/11 in which he called Islam "wicked" and "evil" and his lack of apology for those words.

Col. Tom Collins, an Army spokesman, told ABC News on April 22, "This Army honors all faiths and tries to inculcate our soldiers and work force with an appreciation of all faiths and his past comments just were not appropriate for this venue."

Seven of the eight Marines charged in the alleged "massacre" of 24 civilians in the Iraqi town of Haditha in 2005 have been acquitted or had their charges dismissed. Yet the cover of the New York Times's Sunday Book Review is splattered with the charge that Marines at Haditha committed a "crime."

Of all the crimes that sullied the record of the United States military in Iraq -- the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, the killings of 24 Iraqi men, women and children by Marines in November 2005 in Haditha -- the murder of an entire Iraqi family in the village of Yusufiya may rank as the most chilling.

Bloomberg News managed to pen a full obituary of the late Congressman Jack Murtha today, calling him a "Supporter of Troops" in the headline, without once mentioning his incendiary--and unfounded--claims that a group of Marines had murdered 24 Iraqis in cold blood (h/t Washington Examiner's Mark Hemingway).

Murtha, himself a former Marine, said in 2005 after two dozen Iraqis were killed in the city of Haditha, "there was no firefight, there was no IED that killed these innocent people. Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood."

Eight Marines were charged in the killings. Charges against six of them have been dropped, one has been found not-guilty, and the case against the remaining Marine is pending. Murtha was unrepentant about the slanderous accusations he leveled against these Marines. He even compared the Haditha incident to the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War (see video below the fold).

John Murtha, who represented the 12th district of Pennsylvania for 35 years, died Monday. David Stout's obituary in Tuesday's edition of the New York Times, "Representative John P. Murtha Dies at 77; Ex-Marine Was Iraq War Critic," focused on Murtha's influential anti-war turn and "history of hawkishness," but omitted Murtha's smear of the military -- his preemptory claim that Marines in the town of Haditha, Iraq had killed women and children ''in cold blood'' in a November 2005 incident. Of the eight Marines accused, only one still faces possible charges -- the rest were either acquitted or had the charges dropped.

Stout hit the sordid highlights of Murtha's legislative career, including the Abscam scandal, which he survived by the skin of his teeth, turning down money from an undercover FBI agent posing as a sheikh but said would be willing to talk about it later. Stout called it an "awkward moment." But Stout made Murtha's anti-Iraq war position a running theme of the obituary, while not once bringing up Murtha's smear of the Marines at Haditha.

David Rogers glossed over the late Rep. Jack Murtha's (D-Pa.) Haditha Marines smear in an obituary published yesterday and updated this morning at Politico:

Rather than lie low, Murtha further made himself a target with public comments in the spring of 2006 pressuring the Marine command to investigate allegations of civilian casualties at Haditha, Iraq. This infuriated many Marines, and critics argued that the congressman had become more partisan himself out of loyalty to Pelosi.

But Murtha went beyond pressing for a formal military investigation, which is a legitimate call any congressman could and should make after an incident like Haditha. The former Marine practically declared the Marines at Haditha guilty by saying they have killed "in cold blood." 

Updated: Washington Post adds mention about Murtha's Haditha comments, thanks me for me pointing out omission (see bottom of post).

Rep. Jack Murtha (D-Pa.) passed away earlier today, and the Washington Post has already published a 26-paragraph obituary.

Post staffers Martin Weil and Carol Leonnig don't gloss over some of Murtha's political controversies, such as his penchant as a pork barrel appropriator and his role in the Abscam scandal.

Yet oddly enough, Murtha's most profoundly jarring political scandal -- his insulting and untrue smear of U.S. Marines at Haditha as cold-blooded killers -- went unmentioned.

Meanwhile, the Associated Press, for its part, noted the controversy...:

This post builds on Noel Sheppard's NewsBusters entry earlier this morning.

Noel covered portions of Pennsylvania Congressman John Murtha's Thursday interview with Pittsburgh TV Station KDKA used by CNN's "Situation Room" on Friday (transcript here [Murtha segment is about halfway through]; video here).

CNN carried KDKA footage showing that Murtha has grudgingly acknowledged the obvious: That the troop surge in Iraq has, in his words, "in the short-term ..... certainly reduced incidents," but that "I'm not sure whether it's because of the Iraqis are just worn out, but certainly the way they're doing it today makes a big difference."

What KDKA decided to keep from TV viewers is arguably at least as important as what the station showed.

In interview footage left on the cutting room floor, Murtha falsely claimed that less than 1/3 of the Iraqi benchmarks have been met, and that the majority of Americans "want us out" of Iraq as fast as possible. But most explosively, the Pennsylvania congressman claimed that a major reason why the troop surge has been successful is that before that time "we broke down doors, we went in and we killed people inadvertently."

MRC President Brent Bozell appeared on the June 24 "Hannity & Colmes" to comment on a trend in Iraq reporting that conservatives have known for a while and the New York Times is only now catching on to: the media love to report negative developments from Iraq, while downplaying or ignoring positive developments such as the succeess of the surge or the exonerations of the Haditha "massacre" Marines.

Here's an excerpt of Bozell from the segment:

BRENT BOZELL, MRC President: There's a terrible adage in journalism: good news is no news, bad news is great news. And that's the coverage that we've seen in Iraq. Countless studies have been done, we've done studies on this, showing that as things got worse and worse, you had more and more coverage. But suddenly the surge came around and as the surge took off and was successful, the coverage went down. You see just the other day where the military announced that violence is down 89 percent, and yet NBC and CBS didn't think that was news. Now, they didn't need to send a reporter to Iraq to report that one, they could have done that from their bureaus.

You seriously have to question why the mainstream media feels compelled to hire activists to pose as reporters in their precious newspapers.

I contemplated taking the higher road in this article and setting emotion aside. But I feel compelled to call it like it is. Why should I or anyone else sit idly by while feckless reporters such as Abdon M. Pallash of the Chicago Sun Times use the power of an irresponsible press to push their one sided agenda as if it was news?

Here's how I see it. Vice President Cheney visited the Great Lakes Naval base last night to give a graduation speech to 4000 sailors who have decided that they wanted to be part of the greatest military in the world despite the fanatical antics of anti-war Berkeley types and their supporters in the press. Given that American soldiers have repeatedly been branded by the mainstream media in the false context of cold blooded killers, who are depressed and too stupid to get a real job you would imagine that these recruits decided the press was full of it and that a military career was the path they wanted to take anyway.

Welcome to the 2007 Top Ten Lowlights of The New York Times. As usual, the year brought a cornucopia of biased behavior by the nation's paper of record, from sliming innocent Duke lacrosse players to defending illegal immigration to yet another liberal rant from a high-level Times executive (this year it was Executive Editor Bill Keller who did the honors). Times Watch has whittled down the absolute worst from another liberally slanted year from the New York Times. For the full report, visit Times Watch. Here are the headlines for a taste:

10. Bill Keller Unleashed in London -- "War Going Very Badly in Iraq"

9. The Haditha "Massacre"

8. Doubting the Fort Dix Six Terror Plot

7. France's Fearsome Nicolas Sarkozy

6. Gee, Why Is Dick Cheney So Secretive?

5. Reporter Chastised for Saying "Surge" Worth a Shot...

4. Blaming the Victims in the Duke "Rape" Hoax

3. Loving the (Illegal) Alien

2. Deep Discount for MoveOn.org's "Petraeus-Betray Us" Ad

1. Grossly Biased Giuliani Coverage

Paul von Zielbauer of the New York Times has filed 34 stories on the alleged killings by marines of two dozen Iraqi civilians in Haditha since the incident first came to light in July 2006. His story on Saturday may be one of the last, as the murder charges against the marines are falling apart: "The Erosion of a Murder Case Against Marines in the Killing of 24 Civilians."

One would never have guessed that outcome based on von Zielbauer's previous pieces, which bought into the assumption that the marines had "massacred" 24 Iraqi civilians.

January 7: "An American government report on the killing of 24 Iraqis, including several women and children, by marines in the village of Haditha in 2005 provides new details of how the shootings unfolded and supports allegations by prosecutors that a few marines illegally killed civilians, government officials said yesterday."

The disinformation campaign against the Haditha Marines continues despite exonerations and dismissed charges. This was quite evident during Thursday night’s discussion on Hannity and Colmes.  Jason Mattera, the young man who dared confront John Murtha about his claims of “cold blooded murder” was a guest and Jane Fleming Kleeb represented the dissenting viewpoint.

Alan Colmes gave us a hint about the latest tactic to diminish the results of the 2 year Haditha investigation when he questioned the integrity of  General James Mattis.