Official: Marines could be charged with murder
Pentagon has no comment on case involving alleged Iraqi civilian killings
According to a congressional aide, lawmakers were told in a briefing Thursday that it appears as many as two dozen civilians were killed. And they were told that the investigation will find that â??it will be clear that this was not the result of an accident or a normal combat situation.â?Â
Another congressional official said lawmakers were told it would be about 30 days before a report would be issued by the investigating agency, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.
Pentagon spokesman Eric Ruff said Friday he believes the investigation is winding down, but he would not comment on what the evidence shows.
First, this does not absolve John Murtha for what he did and how he did it. Obviously this is being investigated and those responsible will be held to account. The issue with Murtha has never been related to whether or not the story turns out to be true. It is that he went public before the investigation was complete and convicted these guys on national TV (sort of, after all it was Chris Matthews) before even a report was issued, let alone a hearing. And he did it to advance a political agenda. It had nothing to do with this incident, in my opinion.
Secondwho gave the info so early to Murtha? And notice the sources on this story? Two unnamed “congressional aides“. Is it any wonder why the Bush administration shared NSA terrorist surveillance info with only key members of Congress and not the entire body? Despite Democrat protests to the contrary, fifteen Democrats were fully briefed. Given the leaking record of both parties (GOP’s Richard Shelby comes to mind), anything more would have been irresponsible.
Third, people who wear the uniform and step out of line are held to a higher degree of accountability than any other group in our society. These guys were investigated, and if guilty, they will be punished. The same is true for some 100+ soldiers who were implicated in torture and other inappropriate treatment of detainees. Taken in total, the conduct of our troops has been nothing short of incredible. Those who have strayed, have been punished. We should all feel good about that. We are sadden by these incidents but know that they are the exception that prove the rule.
Values and accountability. That is what seperates us from them.
UPDATE: Captain Ed has an appropriately outraged reaction,
This makes me physically ill. We can say it happens in every war, and that would be accurate, but it doesn’t excuse it in the least. Our military has the reputation of high discipline and morale, and 99.9% of our troops live up to that standard. As with Abu Ghraib, only on a much less serious scale, the actions of one undisciplined unit will reflect horribly on those who have done their best to protect Iraqi civilians, especially the children. Those 99.9% of our troops provide the best possible security for the United States. If these men turn out to be war criminals of the most despicable variety, they will have damaged the work done by our armed forces immeasurably.
I keep hoping that this report will say something different when it gets publicly released, but I know it won’t.
Needless to say, every Marine involved in this atrocity must face court-martial, and their command has to answer for the brutal murders of people that we took under our protection. Those court-martials must be public and thorough. Nothing should be held back. The men charged should receive the best defense possible in order to ensure that justice is done. If the report turns out to be accurate and the men involved are found guilty, they need to get the full punishment due them under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
We need to demonstrate that we stand for something better than Haditha, and we need to show the world that we will hold all those responsible accountable for their crimes. Justice will provide cold comfort to those who have died and those who mourn them, but we owe the victims and the Iraqi people as much justice as we can provide.
Here are the direct phone numbers for the Massachusetts’ Congressional delegation. Each one of these Mass liberals support the Hagel-Martinez Senate Immigration Bill in which is, in essence, amnesty for the 11-15 million illegals in this country right now and as many as 65 million new immigrants who would come to our country within the next 20 years based on the four key provisions of their bill.
Now is the time to flood them with calls, voice mails, and e-mails! Be respectful but forceful. Demand that before we have any conversation and legislation regarding what to do with the 11-15 million illegals here now that we totally secure the border. No ifs, ands, or butts. Secure the border now!
Senator Kennedy- 202-224-4543
Senator Kerry- 202-224-2742
Rep. John W. Oliver- 202-225-5335
Rep. Richard Neal- 202-225-5601
Rep. James P McGovern- 202-225-6101
Barney Frank- 202-225-5931
Marty Meehan- 202-225-3411
John Tierney- 202-225-8020
Ed Markey- 202-225-2836
Michael Capuano- 202-225-5111
Stephen Lynch- 202-225-8273
William Delahunt- 202-225-3111
You may recall back in February when news broke that Michael Yon was involved in a copyright suit with the US Army over one of his unfogettable images from the Iraq War. After MSM folks like Jay Fitzgerald at the Boston Herald picked up on the story, we contacted Michael and started a blog swarm that was aided by links from Glenn Reynolds and many other prominent bloggers.
As a result of the blog swarm, the copyright battle that had gone on for seven months was settled by the Army within 24 hours. You can read about the entire incident here.
This is from Michael’s announcement that the dispute had been settled,
Thousands of readers might have learned about it from Jay Fitzgeraldâ??s piece in Tuesdayâ??s Boston Herald. Maybe it was the article Dan Lavoie wrote for last Sundayâ??s Southtown Free Press, or the press release issued by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. Or when Kevin Whalen at Pundit Review called for blogger arms in an intransigent dispute with the Army over intellectual property rights. The growing volume of these voices gained the attention of people who could resolve the conflict.
Well, HFM, the international publishing outfit, has gone and used the image without approval. Even worse, they have put it on the cover of a vile anti-war rag.
Matt at Blackfive has the story and a few words of advice for HFM,
When you steal from a milblogger, your going to get busted!
Oh yea, he also has this,
HFM is (212) 767-6000.
Email Shock at shock@neodata.com and inbox@shocku.com.
A few weeks ago, we interviewed Matt from Blackfive and Michael Yon and we discussed the war on terror. if you’d like to listen to the interview, go to iTunes and search for Pundit Review Radio Podcast or click here
Revisionist History
Antiwar myths about Iraq, debunked.
BY PETER WEHNER, deputy assistant to the president and director of the White House’s Office of Strategic Initiatives
Iraqis can participate in three historic elections, pass the most liberal constitution in the Arab world, and form a unity government despite terrorist attacks and provocations. Yet for some critics of the president, these are minor matters. Like swallows to Capistrano, they keep returning to the same allegations–the president misled the country in order to justify the Iraq war; his administration pressured intelligence agencies to bias their judgments; Saddam Hussein turned out to be no threat since he didn’t possess weapons of mass destruction; and helping democracy take root in the Middle East was a postwar rationalization. The problem with these charges is that they are false and can be shown to be so–and yet people continue to believe, and spread, them. Let me examine each in turn:
The president misled Americans to convince them to go to war.
The Bush administration pressured intelligence agencies to bias their judgments
Because weapons of mass destruction stockpiles weren’t found, Saddam posed no threat.
Promoting democracy in the Middle East is a postwar rationalization.These, then, are the urban legends we must counter, else falsehoods become conventional wisdom. And what a strange world it is: For many antiwar critics, the president is faulted for the war, and he, not the former dictator of Iraq, inspires rage. The liberator rather than the oppressor provokes hatred. It is as if we have stepped through the political looking glass, into a world turned upside down and inside out.
Read The Whole Thing!
DEFEATING TERROR
DESPITE THE POLS, WE’RE WINNING
By Ralph Peters
Plenty remains to be done. We must see our Iraq mission through to the end – unless the Iraqis fail themselves. We must restore integrity and common sense to our foreign policy by ceasing to pretend that the Saudis are our friends and by living up to our rhetoric about support for democracy. And we need to take a very hard line on China’s currency manipulation and cheating on trade.
Still, any fair-minded review of the last several years of American engagement abroad would conclude that, despite painful mistakes, we’ve changed the world for the better. The results have been imperfect, as such results always will be. But the bewildering sense of gloom and doom fostered my many in the media is as unjustified as it is corrosive.
Our global report card right now? A for effort. B for results. C for consistency. D for media integrity. And F for domestic political responsibility.
Read the whole article here.
UPDATE: Go visit Dean Esmay for the latest Carnival of the Liberated
Two of our favorite guests on Pundit Review Radio interview each other. Michael Yon talks to Bill Roggio as he embarks on a trip to Afghanistan. Check it out here.
Bush’s Faith Worries Madeline Albright
LONDON, England (Reuters) — U.S. President George W. Bush has alienated Muslims around the world by using absolutist Christian rhetoric to discuss foreign policy issues, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright says.
“I worked for two presidents who were men of faith, and they did not make their religious views part of American policy,” she said, referring to Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, both Democrats and Christians.
“President Bush’s certitude about what he believes in, and the division between good and evil, is, I think, different,” said Albright, who has just published a book on religion and world affairs. “The absolute truth is what makes Bush so worrying to some of us.”
Thank you Madam Secretary for an unintentional glimpse into why Democrats cannot be trusted with national security. They cannot even bring themselves to call the throat cutting, hijacking, barabrians evil. Too many variables for a liberal to come to that conclusion. Maybe the jihadists had mean daddies, or grew up poor or blah, blah, blah. If they can’t recognize evil, how can they stop it?
And one more thing Madeline, being a “man of faith” is about how you live your life, your actions, not your empty rhetoric. Bill Clinton is a man of faith as much as George Bush is a man of MENSA.
For more on why Democrats are unable to manage a war on terror, click here.
UPDATE I: Jonah Goldberg and Matt Yglesias have more on the subject of moral relativism.
UPDATE II: Gregg takes his cuts,
Madge says: “The absolute truth is what makes Bush so worrying to some of us.”
That last sentence speaks volumes about the modern day secular humanist anti-theist left. This is the thing they abhor most about conservatives and Bush specifically.(One could include Ashcroft, Rice, Gonzalez, Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc…all evangelical Christians whose words and actions are largely dictated by their faith in the Almighty.) They hate the fact that he views the world in terms of moral absolutes via a Judeo-Christian paradigm. This is why the left mocks him when he talks about the axis of “evil.” The left’s contempt for such a parochial and “unenlightened” view of the world is why they are so closely aligned with the ACLU and other anti-theistic organizations who are attempting to snap every cross and star of David from every church and synagogue in our country. What makes those such as Albright so “worrisome” to most of us right of center Americans is the left’s inability to recognize the existence of pure evil and the fact that pure evil cannot be reasoned with but must be annihilated from the face of the earth in order for Western Civilization and its liberal Democracies to live on.
So I guess in addition to supporting big intrusive Govt, higher taxes, abortion on demand, same sex marriage, open borders, cutting and running in Iraq, lefties like Albright now think that political leaders of the Christian faith and their belief in moral absolutes poses a grave threat to the world. Just when you thought the lefties couldn’t move any further left. I wouldn’t recommend advocating this belief if they plan on “reconnecting” to those red state values voters who happen to believe in silly anti-delluvian notions such as “good” and “evil.”
Notice how she had not one word to say about how the mullahs in Iran were making Jews and Christians wear colored headbands. Nothing about how many Muslims such as Abumenijad deny the Holocaust or how the throat cutters cut off womenâ??s’ heads for wearing nail polish, or be-head homosexuals. Lefties like Madge are so quick to condemn Christians and America in general, yet not a word of condemnation about radical Islam in the CNN piece. So people wonder when we discuss the domestic insurgents on our show who we are speaking of. We are talking about people like Albright who continue to assert, in essence, that it is fundamentally America and our Christian president who are the real reasons for all the evil in the world. Trust me this article and her words will be used as propaganda to aid and abet the enemy just like Durbin’s, Dean’s, Kennedy’s, Pelosi’s, Murtha’s, et al. These people will stop at nothing to take this president and the GOP down just to regain political power. It is sickening to witness. Madge should stick to making brisket. She did enough damage as the worse sec of state in our nation’s history. The thought of her clinking champagne glasses with Kim Jong Il disturbs me to this day.
This weekend at Pundit Review Radio we picked up the debate among conservative bloggers whether or not it would be better for the GOP to lose in 2006, to take their medicine if you will. This position has been clearly articulated by Mark Tapscott. Jim Geherty of National Review has a different take, you never take the field to lose.
Both sides of the arguement have valid points, but the bottom line for Pundit Review, the Democrats are simply too dangerous to put in charge of the war on terror, no matter how bad the GOP is.
This is also available as a Podcast at iTunes.
What is Pundit Review Radio?
Pundit Review Radio is where the old media meets the new. Each week Kevin & Gregg give voice to the work of the most influential leaders in the new media/citizen journalist revolution. Hailed as “Groundbreaking” by Talkers Magazine, this unique show brings the best of the blogs to your radio every Sunday evening at 8pm EST on AM680 WRKO, Boston’s Talk Leader.