Good.  I cannot wait to see how this works.  Murtha’s comments were inexcusable. He badly slandered some innocent people.  Via Hot Air:

Well, the Marine Corps investigator has now dropped all charges against 3 of the 8 accused Marines in the case, and only one Marine still stands accused of crimes at the scene. The others are charged with various after-the-fact issues that arose from investigations of Haditha, not the events themselves. Murtha’s aim, of course, in accusing the Marines of murder “in cold blood” was to pin the blame on Bush. But in the process of blaming Bush, he slandered those Marines.

One of those Marines, Col. Jeffrey Chessani, plans to sue Murtha once he’s exonerated.

Brian Rooney, one of the attorneys at Michigan’s Thomas More Law Center representing Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani and a former Marine captain himself told NewsMax.com that his client, who is alleged to have failed to fully investigate the killing of 24 Iraqis in Haditha November, 2005 and not reporting an alleged Law of War violation, may follow the example of another Haditha Marine, SSgt. Frank Wuterich who is suing Murtha for libel.

I hope he cleans Murtha’s clock.  Our politicians need to be reminded that they have an ethical obligation to the truth.

The investigation into the killings at Haditha is still underway, but the most recent hints don’t look good.  There are rumors of a field cover up, and of conflicting reports.

Sen Murtha has taken this as his latest complaint about the war in Iraq:

Murtha on Hardball: Troops “Killed Civilians”, Agrees With My Lai Comparison

Rep. John Murtha appeared on Hardball this evening and made an obscene claim, he said that our Marines “killed civilians” in Iraq. This remark was followed by yet another reprehensible statement; Chris Matthews questioned if what Murtha was talking about like My Lai, to which the Congressman said that was “exactly it”.

CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: Let me ask you Mr. Murtha to give us some details about that. Draw us a picture of what happened at Haditha.

REP. JOHN “JACK” MURTHA: Well, I’ll tell you exactly what happened. One Marine was killed and the Marines just said we’re going to take care – we don’t know who the enemy is, the pressure was too much on them, so they went into houses and they actually killed civilians. And, and –

MATTHEWS:—was this My Lai? Was this a case of – when you say cold blood Congressman, a lot of people think you’re basically saying you got some civilians sitting in a room around a field and they’re executed.

MURTA: That’s exactly it.

He is not the first to accuse the military of attrocities.  Remember thet John Kerry has already taken us down that road.

But Murtha was relating an actual investigation into actual events, not speculation and rhetoric, as Kerry was.  What bothered me was that Murtha had made this into a done deal, not an investigation.  Sister Toldjah had this to say when Murtha first ran the story:

Does Rep. John Murtha know something we don’t?

Rep. John Murtha, infamous for his call in the fall of 2005 for a US military immediate withdrawal from Iraq, claims to know - prior to the completion of a military investigation - that US Marines in Haditha, Iraq on Nov. 19 “killed innocent civilians in cold blood”: