Sorry, but I don’t buy it. I am not going to defend Murtha for a minute, but Murtha cannot order a Courts Martial. That is entirely within the control of the President, and his senior DoD officials and the Convening Authorities.
True, but what in that article suggested to you that he did?
It's his insidious influence that is at issue, not his power to dictate by direct order matters of military justice.
Defeating an insurgency is damned difficult. The very last thing anyone needs is to have troops running around killing civilians. There's a reason armies would once take every tenth men in a company and shoot them on the spot. Occupiers need to show that they are there to protect the local population and will mete out impartial justice.
Murtha threw gasoline on the fire. He turned Haditha into a political, anti-war, story. Haditha wasn't front page news around the globe until Murtha confirmed the Time story and said the truth was even worse than Time reported.
Then Murtha boxed in the Bush Administration by asserting that no one could believe anything that the military or Bush officials said. After that, it was pointless for Administration officials or the military to refute any of the allegations in the media. Even Gen Pace went on CNN and was basically accused of being in on a cover-up.
As far as anyone knows, that's the extent of Murtha's involvement with the Haditha case. In public, at least, Murtha walked away from Haditha when it no longer had any political value.
So while the DoD and the Marine Corps brass are responsible for the prosecutions, suspicions still linger that Murtha is exerting influence behind the scenes. He brought the appearance of doing evil on himself.
As the article linked above says, Murtha could easily dispel suspicions by a full, public apology for his actions (not one of those "I'm sorry if I offended anyone" numbers). Such an apology would also go some distance toward restoring the reputation of the Marines involved and the US around the world.