John Murtha Receives Distinguished Public Service Award from the U.S. Navy; Marines Everywhere Puzzled

It was quite a shock to refresh Drudgereport last week and see that the Navy had honored Rep. John Murtha (D-PA.) for his "selfless devotion to the Nation’s sailors and Marines.” Murtha is a retired Marine colonel.

The Navy is, assuredly, within its rights to bestow awards like this as a matter of course. Rather, I want to examine whether or not they should have given one to Murtha by pointing out the ridiculousness of this whole situation.

For those ignorant on the subject, it all starts in November, 2005. In the town of Haditha, Iraq, an IED exploded, killing one Marine lance corporal. In the action following the IED attack, 24 Iraqis were killed. Later, a Time magazine article stated that the Marines randomly targeted civilians and noncombatants. Mystery surrounds the circumstances of the killing. The absolute truth will probably never be known. The Marine Corps charged eight of the Marines with crimes.

While charges against these Marines were pending, John Murtha took to the CNN-provided pulpit and threw [his fellow] Marines under the bus.


"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."

To attack this quote phrase by phrase:

"There was bo firefight." -Yes, there was.

"There was no IED that killed these innocent people." -Debateable

"Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them." -Here, Murtha makes a thinly-veiled attack on the Bush administration. He's obviously trying to score political points with the Left by throwing the Marines under the bus. And, in his mind, he can do that because he, too, is a Marine.

"...They killed innocent civilians in cold blood." -Liberals, the champion of the little man, are usually first to point out that the accused are innocent until proven guilty. But that logic only holds true for minorities, the poor and liberal politicians. If it's a military member, 'ehhhhh, just throw 'em under.' Easy Scapegoat. Murtha breaks two codes here: 1) He doesn't give the accused the benefit of the doubt and 2) he doesn't stay faithful to the Marines. Until they're guilty, they're still Marines and need the benefit of the doubt from a Congressman.

His award is for being "selfless?" Throwing Marines under the bus for political gain isn't selfless.

Within the Marine Corps, Murtha is a joke. A punchline.

In the Marines, the saying goes, "there's no such thing as an ex-Marine, just Marines." Yet, like any good rule, there's an exception: Lee Harvey Oswald. In many Marines' eyes, John Murtha has earned himself the infamous honor of being the second ex-Marine.

And oh yeah, charges have been dropped on almost all the Marines. But even if they were guilty as hell, Murtha was wrong to throw them under the bus. I don't know what the Department of the navy was thinking.