Posted on 11/28/2007 4:49:24 PM PST by freema
High-ranking government officials in the United States pre-judged the criminal case against Marines involved in the 2005 Haditha incident in Iraq, said the Thomas More Law Center, which is co-defending the commanding officer charged in the case.
U.S. Marine Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani was arraigned Nov. 17 at Camp Pendleton on charges of dereliction of duty and violation of a lawful order for allegedly failing to investigate the conduct of four Marines under his command after a Nov. 19, 2005 house-to-house battle in Haditha.
In that battle, 24 Iraqis were killed, 15 of whom allegedly were noncombatant civilians. (See Haditha Investigation Timeline)
The Thomas More Law Center, a conservative group, is joining Chessani's military legal defense team for his trial, which starts in April 2008. Chessani is the highest ranking official charged in the case. Click Here
The law center plans to make motions to dismiss the charges against Chessani on grounds of "unlawful command influence," because high-ranking government officials pressed the case early before all the facts were in, said Brian Rooney, a spokesman for the group.
(Excerpt) Read more at crosswalk.com ...
Ping
What a travesty of justice and an insult to our brave soldiers.
...and almost all the witnesses have an obvious bias or prejudice.”
:::::::
And this is what is supposed to motivate and represent support for soldiers in a war environment. These men will not support an anti-military liberal-leftist-Marxist president that hates the military. What else can do to, er, for our troops today, who are fighting and dying to keep this country free from terrorism and attack???
In other related news:
Haditha Booming Thanks to Marines
Marine Corps News | November 27, 2007
http://www.military.com/features/0,15240,157085,00.html
I guarantee you this is a motivator. Just not the kind of motivator the left imagined.
Iraq Journal: An Edgy Calm in Fallujah
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,313202,00.html
“You’re probably safer here than you are in New York City,” Marine 1st Lt. Barry Edwards said when I arrived in Fallujah. I raised my eyebrows at him skeptically. “How many people got shot at last night in New York City?” he said.
“Probably somebody,” I said.
“Yeah, probably somebody did,” he said. “Somewhere.”
Nobody was shot last night in Fallujah. No American has been shot anywhere in Fallujah since the 3rd Battalion 5th Marine Regiment rotated into the city two months ago. There have been no rocket or mortar attacks since the summer. Not a single one of the 3/5 Marines has even been wounded.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Fallujah is different.
None of the Marines I’ve spoken to are nervous while walking the streets. “Complacency kills” is the new catchphrase in Fallujah, and it’s drummed into the heads of the Americans here every day. The Marines may not have won the war in this city, but it sure is starting to look like it.
The insurgency in Fallujah is over.
Hobson Says He Hopes U.S. Role in Iraq Changes by End of ‘08
(Republican congressman from Springfield visited the region with three Democratic representatives)
http://www.daytondailynews.com/n/content/oh/story/news/local/2007/11/28/ddn112807hobson.html
By Jessica Wehrman
Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
~EXCERPT
Hobson, a member of the House Appropriations Committee’s Defense subcommittee, was the lone Republican on a trip headed by Rep. Jack Murtha, D-Pa., chairman of the defense subcommittee. Reps. Sanford Bishop, D-Ga., and Norm Dicks, D-Wash., were also on the trip.
The group also visited Turkey, where they met with the Turkish president, and Belgium, where they met with representatives of NATO. The delegation returned Tuesday afternoon.
Hobson said while U.S. troops were still taking attacks, the attacks seem to be fewer than before.
“The surge worked,” he said.
The Thomas More Law Center contends that previous reports by Army Gen. Eldon Bargewell and Army Col. Gregory Watt from last year back up the conclusion of the 37-page report leaked to Newsweek.
"A U.S. Army colonel and an Army general conducted two separate investigations and came to the same conclusion: There was no 'massacre' and no 'cover-up,'" said the law center's president, Richard Thompson, in a statement.
"Yet the government still pursued a multi-million dollar investigation in order to appease an anti-war politician and the blame-America-first media. Now we have the absurd situation of Lt. Col. Chessani being charged with failing to report and investigate a crime that never occurred," Thompson added.
The "anti-war politician" referred to by Thompson is Rep. Jack Murtha (D-Pa.), a retired Marine colonel who became a vocal critic of the Iraq war in 2005.
In May 2006, Murtha said at a Capitol Hill press conference: "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."
As chairman of the House Appropriations Committee and the Subcommittee on Defense, Murtha wields power over defense spending and that power potentially could influence the investigation and case against Ware, according to the law center.
In addition to Murtha, the law center's legal motions name other officials who supposedly biased the case, including Sen. John Warner (R-Va.) who, in 2006, was chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and vowed to hold hearings on the matter; Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), who compared Haditha to the My Lai massacre of Vietnam; and U.S. Navy Secretary Donald Winter, who also made comments that potentially could pre-judge the case, said Rooney.
"They all showed a bias that these men were guilty before an investigation was complete," Rooney told Cybercast News Service .
"It's frustrating to me, as a former Marine, that a lot of reporters, media types, and politicians have the worldview from the 1960s that never changed. They wanted to make this the new My Lai because they have tried from the beginning to make this the new Vietnam," he said.
The Stab That Failed
By Noemie Emery
The Weekly Standard | Wednesday, November 28, 2007
http://frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=48436BE2-BCD4-4710-823E-05875368B2FC
~EXCERPT
As they took control of Congress at the start of 2007, the Democrats vowed this would be a year of historic importance, and it seems they were prescient: Seldom before in the annals of governance have so many politicians fought so long and so hard to completely screw up a winning strategy being waged on their country’s behalf. Some cruelly define this as treacherous conduct, but this is imprecise and unkind. They tried, it is true, to do serious damage, but were compromised in the event by their chronic incompetence, as well as by being too above-board and open to try to do things on the sly. A stab in the back as a concept was wholly beyond their capacities. This was not a stab in the back that works via guile and subterfuge. It was 41 different stabs in the front, that always fell far short of serious damage, unless you count the damage they did to their own reputations (the approval ratings for Congress are now in the twenties). It was the Stab in the Front, the Surge-against-the-Surge, the Pickett’s Charge of the Great War on Terror. It was a year to remember, that will live in the annals of fecklessness. It was historical. It was hysterical. It was the Stab that Failed.
Tuesday, 27 November 2007
McCain on Murtha
Video at Hudson’s Smokehouse in Lexington
http://blogs.thestate.com/bradwarthensblog/2007/11/mccain-on-murth.html
Week of Dec. 3
Business Procurement Summit information on how small and large business can obtain government contracts. Hosted by U.S. Rep. Joseph Sestak, featuring U.S. Reps. John Murtha and Ike Skelton. Springfield Country Club, 400 W. Sproul Rd., Springfield; 610-892-8623 or www.sestak-procurement-summit.org. $40, including continental breakfast and lunch. 7 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Dec. 3.
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/breaking/business_breaking/20071128_Business_happenings.html
Justice will only be served if all charges are dropped, and no negatives are added to the colonel’s service record.
So when do we get to tar and feather the various Freepers who wanted to hang these guys without a trial back when?
Let me buy ya a beer, Linda : )
Excellent. I know we are suppose to “forgive” but those people, supposedly on our side, who wanted to sell these guys out without even looking at the evidence, really pissed me off.
Ditto.
Additionally, ex-American, ex-Marine John Murtha admitted that he was BRIEFED by the Commandant of the Marine Corps on the charges and that the only conclusion can be cold-blooded murder.
It is awfully suspicious that the SecNavy comes from the defense industry, was part of a company subject to the whim of John Murtha, and continued to hold stock in that company.
Why did the Commandant give Murtha the impression of cold-blooded murder? If it wasn’t intentional, then why did he release such information to one who was so unreliable to go immediately to the media with it, prejudicing the case of all of these soldiers?
How can this anyone with any knowledge of this case, and importantly, anyone with a clear knowledge of it, ever consider any convicted person actually to be guilty.
It is entirely rational to believe that they have been railroaded, and that no justice can ever be done for them.
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