Swift Boat Chickenshits

Pssst! Jack Murtha is a phony! Pass it on!

Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), the former Marine who is an outspoken critic of the war in Iraq, has become the latest Democrat to have his Vietnam War decorations questioned.

In a tactic reminiscent of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth assault on Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) during the 2004 presidential campaign, a conservative Web site yesterday quoted Murtha opponents as questioning the circumstances surrounding the awarding of his two Purple Hearts.

David Thibault, editor in chief of the Cybercast News Service, said the issue of Murtha's medals from 1967 is relevant now "because the congressman has really put himself in the forefront of the antiwar movement." Thibault said: "He has been placed by the Democratic Party and antiwar activists as a spokesman against the war above reproach."

Bullshit. Murtha took the initiative on his own to present an alternative plan, which was supposedly what everyone was waiting for the so-called opposition party to muster. To imply that he was pushed by Cindy Sheehan, ANSWER, and the party is nonsense. If anything, the Democratic Party didn't do nearly enough to back Murtha's motion on the House floor.

Cybercast is part of the conservative Media Research Center, run by L. Brent Bozell III, who accused some in the media of ignoring the Swift Boat charges, but Thibault said it operates independently. He said the unit, formerly called the Conservative News Service, averages 110,000 readers, mainly conservative, and provides material for other Web sites such as GOPUSA. "We won't run anything against anybody if we don't have the goods," he said.

Uh-huh. You may recall GOPUSA as the site which, while coincidentally named after the Republican Party, scrupulously avoided specific mention of it so as to retain the veneer of objectivity (for drooling idiots, I guess). You may also recall them as the umbrella organization overseeing Talon "News" Agency, which introduced the one and only Jeff Gannon™ -- and his $200/hour, 8" cut throbbing man-meat -- to an unsuspecting world.

Really, it's all just a bunch of happy coincidences. The only thing missing is that jowly cow at the '04 Republican convention, with the purple bandaid on its chin.



Yeah, that's the despicable cunt.

Former representative Don Bailey (D-Pa.), who was quoted in the article, confirmed his account to The Washington Post yesterday.

In a conversation on the House floor in the early 1980s, said Bailey, who won a Silver Star and three Bronze Stars in Vietnam, Murtha told him he did not deserve his Purple Hearts. He recalled Murtha saying: "Hey, I didn't do anything like you did. I got a little scratch on the cheek." Murtha's spokeswoman would not address that account.

Bailey, who lost a House race to Murtha after a 1982 redistricting, said "Jack's a coward, and he's a liar" for subsequently denying the conversation. "That just really burned me," he said.

While saying he has only responded to reporters' questions and is not bitter toward Murtha, Bailey said the congressman's approach to Iraq is "not responsible" and that "it just turned my stomach" to see Murtha acting as a spokesman for veterans.

He said he shared the information with Republican William Choby, who ran against Murtha four times beginning in 1990 and made the Vietnam decorations an issue. Choby raised the issue again during Murtha's 2002 reelection campaign.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, citing Marine records, reported that year that Murtha was wounded during "hostile" actions near Da Nang, Vietnam: "In the first incident, his right cheek was lacerated, and in the second, he was lacerated above his left eye. Neither injury required evacuation." The Cybercast article cites a 1994 interview in which Murtha described injuries to his arm and knee.

Well, I guess that settles that, doesn't it? Couldn't be that Bailey's just a co-opted tool with an axe to grind; couldn't be that Murtha really did say something along that line, out of some misplaced false humility, as many people are wont to do.

I don't give a fuck if Murtha really did just get a scratch on the cheek from flying shrapnel or whatever. He went, and not only that, Vietnam was his second war. The guy dropped out of college to volunteer for the Korean War. Okay? He didn't get a fistful of weasel deferments, and he didn't get his daddy to pull the right strings to keep him stateside in the National Guard (which is obviously no longer the cushy stateside gig that it was 35 years ago). Kerry went. Al Gore went. Whether they were in the rear with the gear or not, whether they were wounded as grievously as the Fightin' Keyboard Kommandos think they should have been or not, they fucking well went, and that should be the end of it.

Just the fact that these animals are willing -- yet again -- to smear a good man who has the temerity to challenge an administration of deferment cowards, further exposes the rotten core of their vaunted ideology. Yeah, they're all about honoring the troops; funny how they never are them. Funny how, out of 11 Iraq War veterans currently running for Congress, nine of them are Democrat.

I'm sure it's all just coincidence, like everything else.