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.
First, I don't care what happens; when you break faith with your troops by sacrificing a couple of guys in a publicly embarrassing display of injustice, you have destroyed the moral fiber of your fighting force. No competent commander does that or allows it to happen, and you can take that implication right from the very bottom all the way up to the very tippy top.
Second, it just shows what a bunch of self-absorbed amateurs we have running the palace in DC. This is not exactly the first time in our history that the press has reported a scandal that just wasn't so. Professionals know how to deal with this. It takes time, patience, information, etc. What it doesn't need is a 4-star on the Sunday talk show circuit as fodder for the Dan Rather wannbe Charlie Gibson look alike contest and only an idiot neophyte in the DC public relations battle would do that, not that Bush hasn't found a lot of those guys.
I hope people are beginning to get a sense that this is just another painfully clear example of how thoroughly incompetent this administration is. The two guys who are not a total joke are Gates, who is a Bush 1 not a Bush 2 man, and Petraeus, who they ended up with after everyone else botched the war.
Which exactly proves the type of "person" Murtha really is. I can't bring myself to call him a man, cause he's not. Too bad you can't cut a snake off at the knees, cause if there was any one more deserving... And our Military are not agent provocateurs. Unfortunately, civilians are killed. But there is a statement in this showing the "civilian" population is complicit in the insurgency. When you have people who are joe blow by day, and joe blow-up by night, precisely pinpointing "civilians" may be impossible. To prosecute these Marines in this situation is going way too far, IMO. They did nothing wrong.
Murtha has stated publicly that he has friends in high places in DOD, though he hasn't named names it's plain that is true.
SECNAV Winter has headed companies that Murtha has had connections to for years with defense contracts and companies which have donated heavily to his campaigns.
Murtha undoubtedly knows many flag rank officers just from being involved with defense spending for so many years.
Though he is not in the direct chain of command as fas as unlawful command influence goes for the charges of all the Haditha Marines he holds the purse strings for our military and it's not much of a stretch to believe he could influence the people involved in these charges.
After the despicable statements he's made publicly about these Marines there's no doubt in my mind that his actions constitute the appearance of UCI>