Pennsylvania Congressman John “Jack” Murtha was once known as an advocate for the troops. But I highly doubt the troops feel he is working in their best interests now. Because he’s now claiming that troops carried out a cold blooded massacre in Iraq, but the investigation is not over yet. So how is Jack (not to be confused with Bauer) helping the troops with his latest rants? I can’t think of any way that he is helping them at all. Running to the media with information that is still part of an investigation does nothing to help find all the truth.

He claims the troops acted out of line because of stress. Does he think taking this to the media will somehow cause a massive pullout of Iraq? We know he’s tried to pull that before. So is he trying to make a story of this to resemble something from his Vietnam years? If that’s the means he wishes to use to “bring the troops home now”, does he also understand the shame a pull-out for such reasons would bring on our troops? Does he think the stress of that media shame would somehow make them feel good, coming home without finishing their mission? And what if it is found that the troops did nothing wrong? He has now branded them in the media as guilty.

I think Jack has run to the media with an agenda, but used a very short sighted plan. It will not result in any pull-out, but pushing this into the media only plays into the lies that the USA is evil. People outside of the USA and military haters within the USA will not remember Murtha’s mitigating statements, they will only remember that he said US troops killed innocent people. And we know this added noise from him in the media is going to only fuel recruitment for our enemies.

This was a terrible action on the part of Congressman John Murtha. He has done nothing to help our troops. He should have kept his big mouth shut and allowed the investigation to complete without any further hype in the media.

Read all the details at Hugh Hewitt, MilBlogs and video from The Political Pit Bull.

Related post: Congressman John Murtha has not been a ?hawk? for some time!

update 5/18/2006 9:00PM: Expose the Left has video of Democratic House Leader Nancy Pelosi claiming there is a cover-up. It’s sad Democrats are trying to use this as some sort of political opportunity. They simply want to make it appear that they alerted the public to the issue. They also want to try and make a new Vietnam type incident. Just sad they are acting like this. It does nothing to help the troops. The investigation is ongoing and the results were going to be released. Anyone that acted out of line will be addressed. There was no need for Democrats to make noise about this. I think it might backfire on them.