Let's clear the air here. At best, as an S2, Murtha would have collected Intel from some poor grunt, living in a hole, under a shelter-half, with a handful of ARVNs,out in the boonies somewhere. It was that Marine or Soldier, who actually gathered that information, at great personal risk! And not the guy who merely collected it!
Or at least that's the way it worked, but Murtha played with the system. First with the help of the republican congressman he would eventually replace, he requested two purple hearts for injuries that vary from account to account by Murtha, then using the logic of he was wounded in action twice, he got awarded a combat "V" added to the Bronze Star he got for just being there and keeping his nose clean while chained to a desk.
Meanwhile his loyal media flacks have concocted enough lies about his service that now thirty years later even Murtha can't remember them all. And like President Nixon ordering John Kerry sent into Cambodia (as told by Kerry in a speech on the Senate floor)The lies become almost laughable in their brazenness(Nixon wasn't even President when Kerry said he was sent into Cambodia) and yet as with most lies if told often enough, they become fact rather then fiction.