John Murtha

Good Morning America’s George Stephanopoulos on Tuesday became emotional over the passing of John Murtha, named by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington as one of Congress’ most corrupt politicians. He lauded the Democrat as "one of those guys who make the [House of Representatives] work." [Audio available here.]

Neither Stephanopoulos, nor Juju Chang, who filed a news brief on Murtha, mentioned his 2006 smear that U.S. Marines killed Iraqi civilians "in cold blood." Stephanopoulos, a former Democratic operative, reminisced as he tried to maintain control: "I’m going to get a little choked up. I miss him already. You know, I went to Capitol Hill as an aide almost 30 years ago."

He cooed, "And he did it with such a sense of joy and fun and he taught me an awful lot." Stephanopoulos skipped the following quote from Murtha in May of 2006 about a supposed massacre in Haditha, Iraq: "Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood."

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...:

Talk about taking one step forward and two steps back. Chris Matthews, on Wednesday's Hardball, opened the show by offering an apology to members of the military and their families for his infamous West Point is the "enemy camp," quote made during coverage of Obama's Afghanistan speech, as caught by the MRC's Jeff Poor, but immediately after that went to an interview with John Murtha, who himself got in trouble with servicemen and women for falsely accusing Marines of killing innocent civilians in Iraq.

Matthews opened the show by saying he received a "some very tough calls from parents of cadets and former cadets," for calling West Point an "enemy camp," and offered, "I deeply apologize." But after attempting to repair that bridge, he didn't do himself any favors by turning to Democratic Representative John Murtha to talk Afghanistan war policy. For the record Matthews followed Murtha with Republican Representative Mike Pence, but given the damage done with the "enemy camp" remark perhaps he should have had aired Murtha second, or even better, brought on a Democrat who isn't being sued by a Marine for falsely smearing him of slaughtering innocents. 

The following Matthews apology and odd turn to Murtha were aired on the December 2, Hardball:

At this point, there should be little doubt that there is a concerted attempt underway to use the war in Afghanistan as a justification for punitively taxing high earners.

Last weekend (noted at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), the New York Times discovered that wars cost money. It cited Wisconsin Democratic Congressman David Obey's concern that funding the Afghanistan effort at the level requested months ago by General Stanley A. McChrystal would "devour virtually any other priorities that the president or anyone in Congress had."

Thursday, as reported by AFP (noted last night at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), House Democratic heavy-hitters Barney Frank, John Murtha, and (no surprise) Obey announced the "Share The Sacrifice Act of 2010," an income-tax surcharge that overwhelmingly targets high-income earners.

Now Michigan Democratic Senator Carl Levin has weighed in. Bloomberg dutifully carried his water, as seen in this graphic containing the first four paragraphs of the report:

You've got to hand it to the propagandists at the AFP. When heavy-hitting members of the party they favor announce an idea whose main purpose is, as the New York Times suddenly "discovered" last weekend, to remind people that wars cost money and distract from supposedly more important priorities, the wire service leaps into action.

Even AFP acknowledges that the tax proposal by several top-tier Democrats has no chance of becoming law. But again, that's not the point. Their proposal's purpose is to remind people that spending money on wars supposedly takes money out of the mouths of children and other living things, even those in non-existent congressional districts, and to attempt to make the climate for increasing taxes in the near future more favorable.

Here are key paragraphs of the unbylined report (bolds are mine):

All three network morning shows on Friday skipped a Washington Post report revealing that powerful congressional Democrats such as John Murtha, James Moran and others on a defense panel are the subject of an ethics investigation for a relationship with a lobbying firm. The Democrats, and some Republicans, are under intense scrutiny for steering over $200 million in earmarks to clients of a company called PMA.

However, ABC’s Good Morning America, NBC’s Today show and CBS’s Early Show somehow managed to ignore this potentially damaging problem for the Democratic majority. Instead, NBC’s hosts found time to dress up as Star Wars characters. (Ann Curry appeared as Darth Vader.) Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith went drag and impersonated Julia Child for a cooking segment (See video and blog here.) Even though it’s October, GMA promoted a new version of A Christmas Carol.

It seems unlikely that these news outlets would ignore a similar story that involved possible allegations about a group of mostly Republican lawmakers who are in charge of earmarking federal funds. Washington Post staff writer Carol D. Leonnig explained:

The Politico's Jonathan Allen reported last night that Democratic Congressment Alan Grayson of Florida let loose on the House floor. (UPDATE: Politico now has a YouTube video of Grayson's performance at the link.)

Hopefully, Allen himself was only being sloppy with his own wording:

Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., warned Americans that "Republicans want you to die quickly" during an after-hours House floor speech Tuesday night.

His remarks, which drew angry and immediate calls for an apology from Republicans, were highlighted by a sign reading "The Republican Health Care Plan: Die Quickly."

"Warned"? As if "Republicans want you to die quickly" is a fact?

What follows, via Politico's Glenn Thrush, is what you can't say about a President:

In the week since South Carolina’s Republican Governor announced he had flown to Argentina to carry on an extra-marital affair, the broadcast morning and evening news shows have gone full bore on the scandal, cranking out 49 stories even in the midst of other major stories like Michael Jackson’s death and the continuing repression in Iran.

The morning after Sanford announced his affair, on the June 25 Good Morning America, longtime correspondent Sam Donaldson used the scandal to broadly charge Republicans with being “sanctimonious. They thump the Bible. They condemn everyone else, and when they [act] human, they don’t have much credit in the bank for forgiveness.” Unlike when New York Democratic Governor Eliot Spitzer was caught consorting with a prostitute in March 2008, all three broadcast networks immediately identified Sanford’s party ID.

A number of top Democrats are enmeshed in embarrassment or facing allegations of wrongdoing, but the networks have far less interest in publicizing those cases. A rundown of ABC, CBS and NBC morning and evening coverage so far this year:

I think it is finally getting to the point that when an Old Media story goes out over the wires without mentioning the party affiliation of troubled politicians, people naturally assume that all the criminal actions in said story are being perpetrated by Democrats. But, that assumption aside, we are still seeing reports nearly every day that omit the "Democrat" in any story involving criminal Democrats. Here is yet another one.

The Associated Press posted a story on the FBI's probe of questionable campaign donations to Senator Patty Murray and Representative Norm Dicks of Washington state. The possibly worrisome donations were from PMA Group, a lobbying firm founded by an aide of Representative John Murtha of Pennsylvania. With all these politician's names being thrown around in the AP report, though, it is curious that not a one of them were ever identified as Democrats. Not once.

In a damage control piece Thursday, Associated Press writer Kimberly Helfing attempted to portray Pennsylvania Congressman John Murtha's last-minute use of high-profile advisor Tony Podesta as "shoring up" his support, characterized accusations directed at residents of his district as only targeting "some" of them, and failed to mention Murtha's opponent until the fifth paragraph.

The facts are that Murtha is not clearly ahead in the polls (ahead by not much here, behind by more here), that he may very well be behind in reality against challenger William Russell, and that Murtha directed his "racist" characterization at 12th District residents in general, not just "some" of them.

Here are the key paragraphs from Helfing's report:

On Friday, October 17, news broke that Rep. John Murtha told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that Barack Obama might have tough sledding in his home area: "There is no question that western Pennsylvania is a racist area." Trying to add context to his remarks, Murtha later said many in Western Pennsylvania were "rednecks" several years ago. Now he’s in danger of losing his House seat. But have the national media noticed? ABC, CBS, and NBC all brushed past the remarks in stories on other, broader subjects, as did NPR. Time and Newsweek have run nothing. Even the major newspapers – The Washington Post, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and USA Today – have each mentioned the remarks only once, in passing.

Among the networks ABC was the worst (but also the first) to raise Murtha on the Sunday morning program This Week on October 19. But they utilized a separate, slightly less insulting interview with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

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."

One of Congress's most outspoken critics of the war as well as last year's surge in troops, Rep. Jack Murtha (D-Penn.), told a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, news station on Thursday that he believes things have gotten better in Iraq.

Yet, apart from CNN, his statements appear to have gone largely unnoticed.

This of course is in stark contrast to the media frenzy that occurred in November 2005 when Murtha called for an immediate withdrawal of troops.

I guess we should be thankful that CNN discovered the report done by CBS affiliate KDKA on Thursday, and shared the news with its viewers during Friday's "The Situation Room" (video available here):

The "Big Three" networks’ morning shows all ignored Representative John Murtha’s "the surge [in Iraq] is working" comments during a recent video conference. On the other hand, CNN’s "American Morning," during its 6 am Eastern hour "Political Ticker" segment, covered the Pennsylvania Congressman’s apparent shift in opinion.

Murtha, who became a bit of a media darling for his anti-Iraq war stance, recently came back from a trip to Iraq. The Pittsburgh Post Gazette quoted Murtha as saying, "I think the 'surge' is working." Murtha then went on to say that the Iraqis "have got to take care of themselves."

This article appeared a couple of days ago in the Johnstown (PA) Tribune-Democrat, but it just came to my attention today. It's about Republican William T. Russell, the career Army man who is launching a campaign to unseat Rep. Democrat John Murtha in Pennsylvania's 12th District in 2008.

What stands out isn't the topic of the article. It's this little paragraph inserted close to the midway point:

Russell and his wife, Kasia, were in the Pentagon when a hijacked jetliner crashed into the building on Sept. 11, 2001. They escaped unharmed.

A hijacked jetliner? Which one would that be? Goodness, there have been so many hijackings in the past decade, it's hard to keep count.

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.

This particular AP report is an interesting study in how the AP subtly backs the Democrats in their efforts to undermine the war effort and how they present the GOP as somehow lacking all support or being merely a blocking force in Congress instead of actually representing their constituent's wishes. In the AP's stylebook, Republican = bad and Democrat = good. In this case, funding for the troops is presented like an average fight over tax money and only the Demos side is discussed with no GOP views offered in the story.

Let's start with the very first paragraph of the story titled Democrats to Wait on War Funding Debate.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats are not expected to take up President Bush's war spending request until November, giving them time to calculate their next move and see if Republican support for his policies deteriorates.

Well, now, see the good news? The Dems have a strategy! But, this strategy consists of depriving our soldiers of the funds they need to keep moving forward. Yet the AP presents it as a mere political strategy, as if it were a story about funding Social Security or Medicare -- just an average funding battle. The AP gives it as benign a presentation as they can.

Then the AP goes on, still ignoring the actual target of the funding debate:

Less than 24 hours after the Senate passed a supposedly sweeping ethics bill designed to end corruption in Washington, some astounding earmark and pork totals for leading Congressmen were reported by The Hill (emphasis added throughout):

Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), chairman of the House Appropriations defense panel, has secured the most earmarked dollars in the 2008 military spending bill, followed closely by the panel's ranking member Rep. Bill Young (R-Fla.).

Even though Young secured 52 earmarks, worth $117.2 million - and co-sponsored at least $27 million worth of others - Murtha's 48 earmarks amount to a total of $150.5 million, according to a database compiled by the watchdog organization Taxpayers for Common Sense (TCS).

Please bear in mind that nothing in the just-passed bill sitting on the President's desk would in any way prevent those earmarks, or these:

Well, the L.A.Times certainly followed the Democratic National Committee's stylebook for reporting the news with this one, it is obvious. In a story about the new "sweeping ethics bill" making its way through Congress this week, they mention all the Republican corruption they can dredge up, but somehow miss every single Democrat example of the same. They also misreport a Nancy Pelosi rules change that makes it seem as if she is a corruption fighter when the truth is that she backed off from the very rule the Times cites as an example of how "ethical" the House is! This one is a perfect example of partisan, agenda driven "reporting," for sure.

So, the L.A.Times gives us the hero Democrat Party who has quashed that "culture of corruption" and cleaned up Congress' "sullied image." Yaaa, Democrats and boo Republicans who are so "corrupt." Read on for some fair-and-balancedness that'll curl yer hair!

Ken Pollack and Michael O'Hanlon's surprising op-ed in the New York Times on improvements in Iraq may have been ignored by NBC Nightly News on Monday , but CNN's John Roberts thought it was worthy enough to mention the article in an interview of Representative John Murtha on Tuesday morning. Murtha, a frequent guest on CNN when the subject of discussion is the Iraq war, dismissed the Pollack/O'Hanlon assessment. "I dismiss it at as rhetoric. I dismiss it as -- you know, in my estimation, the things that I measure are not -- oil production, electricity production, water. Only two hours of electricity. I don't know where they were staying. I don't know what they saw. But I know this, that it's not getting better. It's rhetorical is what is getting better. It's over-optimist. It's an illusion."

As noted here at NB yesterday, Kansas Congresswoman Nancy Boyda walked out of a House Armed Services Committee hearing on Friday after hearing General Jack Keane testify about the potential impact of a bill meant to micromanage troop deployment. Keane also testified about progress being made in the counteroffensive that has come to be known as "the surge."

Boyda walked out because the objections to that bill, and the descriptions of an improving situation in Iraq, were apparently too much to bear. She said as much when she returned. Boyda and the fly in her pocket (based on her several references to "we") went into full-rant mode (painfully long and slow-loading audio is here; scroll down to July 27's entry and click on "Audio Transcript"; Boyda's tantrum is about 60% of the way through it; also note that at least a half-dozen hecklers and demonstrators had to be removed during the hearing):

"..... As many of us, there was only so much that you could take until we, in fact, had to leave the room for a while, and so I think I am back and maybe can articulate some things that after so much of the frustration of having to listen to what we listened to."

"But let me just first say that the description of Iraq as if some way or another that it's a place that I might take the family for a vacation, things are going so well, those kinds of comments will in fact show up in the media and further divide this country instead of saying here’s the reality of the problem and people, we have to come together and deal with the reality of this issue."

Something interesting is happening between the new and old media: the more Democrats move to the left to please liberal bloggers, the more mainstream press members express disdain.

On Wednesday, following in the footsteps of the Washington Post’s David Broder and Time’s Joe Klein, and just days before Democrat strategist Bob Beckel, NBC’s Tim Russert jumped on the “Netroots Are A Danger to Democrats” bandwagon.

Appearing on Fox News’ “Hannity & Colmes,” Russert seemed incredibly at ease with both co-hosts as he made statements that had to shock conservative and liberal viewers alike.

Hannity set up the first interesting exchange thusly (video available here):

On Saturday, a NewsBusters headline asked the following question: “JFK Terror Plot: How Soon Before Media Blame Bush For Timing of Arrests?”

Well, Sunday morning, ABCNews.com actually went one better by using a statement made by John Murtha (D-Pennsylvania) on “This Week” as the headline for the video of George Stephanopoulos’ interview with the Congressman: “Murtha Ties Foiled JFK Plot to U.S. in Iraq.”

In reality, Murtha was brought on to counter the “things are getting better” in Iraq after the surge viewpoint expressed by the previous guest, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani (video available here).

Yet, about one minute into Stephanopoulos’ interview with Murtha, the Congressman said (video available here):

What’s going on lately at the station formerly known as the Clinton News Network?

Last week, CNN was the only major American news outlet other than Fox News to cover the al Qaeda torture manual story.

On Tuesday, unlike virtually every press organization that did its best to sidestep the issue while covering Cindy Sheehan’s resignation from the peace movement, Kiran Chetry actually said on “American Morning” “she renounced her ties to the Democratic Party.”

And, as reported by Allah at Hot Air Thursday:

Imagine for a moment that a high-ranking Republican was accused by a Democrat of violating House rules in order to get a $23 million earmark approved for his district.

Would the media report it?

Probably on front-pages all across the country, and on morning and evening network newscasts for days, right?

Well, last Thursday evening, Politico reported (emphasis added throughout):

Using the newly released George Tenet book and four year anniversary of the President's "Mission Accomplished" speech as a backdrop, NBC's Today show invited on Congressman John Murtha to talk about a troop pullout and even impeachment. During her interview Today co-host Meredith Vieira asked Murtha if the Democrats had a "fallback plan" against a Bush veto of their troop withdrawal bill and then followed that query by bringing up the ‘I' word as she pressed: "Is impeachment really on the table?"

The following questions came during a segment in the first half-hour of the May 1st Today show:

Vieira: "Well let's, let's look forward sir because there is a war funding bill that is gonna be before the President, that the, the Congress has handed him, and he has said he is going to veto it because it sets a timetable for the removal of troops from Iraq. So what is your plan when he does, indeed, veto this? What is your fallback plan?"

It must have been very chilly in hell on Friday, for the editorial division of a major newspaper actually came down on Democrats.

I kid you not.

For those that missed it, the Washington Post ran an editorial Friday entitled “Retreat and Butter,” with a sub-headline “Are Democrats in the House voting for farm subsidies or withdrawal from Iraq?”

Having asked a tremendously valid question that most in the antiwar media have ignored as the Iraq debate heated up on Capitol Hill this week, the Post surprisingly and accurately answered its own question (better strap yourself in your seat):

Since Rep. John Murtha (D-Pennsylvania) became the media’s antiwar darling, he has been allowed to say virtually anything he wants with total impunity. Ignoring rules of engagement that clearly don't apply to him, FNC’s Brit Hume finally took the congressman to task on the most recent installment of “Fox News Sunday.”

During the panel discussion, host Chris Wallace played a video clip of a recent statement by Murtha concerning Iraq. Hume took issue with the congressman's views, and said what many on the right have been waiting for since the media unjustly crowned this man as a voice of reason concerning all things military (video available here):

The mainstream media loves war veteran members of Congress -- when they’re opposed to the Iraq War. As reported by Newsbusters, in November 2005, when Congressman and Vietnam War veteran John Murtha came out against the Iraq War, the network news broadcasts touted his opposition as well as his service.

That has never been the case for Congressman and Vietnam prisoner of war Sam Johnson. Earlier this week, Johnson spoke out in favor of the war and against the anti-surge resolution. Congressman Johnson gave an emotional press conference with his retelling of the events of that era.

Representative Sam Johnson (R-TX): “Words can't fully describe the unspeakable damage of the anti-American efforts against the war back home to the guys on the ground. When they pulled the funds for Vietnam, we were still POW's and we thought we were going to be there forever.”