MUST-SEE VIDEO:
A Veteran Tells Off Murtha/Moran
Below is video from the C-SPAN coverage of a Town Hall meeting held
last Jan. 5, 2006 in Arlington, Virginia. The meeting was headed by
Virginia's Rep Jim Moran and was
billed as follows:
The town hall meeting is open to the public and Congressman Moran has
extended a special invitation to MoveOn members in his district and
nearby.
What: Iraq Town Hall Meeting With Congresman Jim Moran: The Road Ahead
in Iraq Featuring Congressman John P. Murtha"
The 'MoveOn' members refers to MoveOn.org, a liberal activist
organization. Some 130 of these town hall meetings were held across
the nation during that week in January.
However, this town hall meeting definitely did not go according
to plan...
[From
MichelleMalkin.com:]
Sgt. Mark Seavey confronted Democrat Reps. Jim Moran and John Murtha
at a town hall meeting in Arlington, Va., earlier this week and left
the moonbats momentarily speechless.
Greyhawk transcribed Sgt. Seavey's comments. I have now isolated
and captured the video clip from C-Span for
educational purposes and for posterity:
Play the video (.wmv file).
Sgt. Mark Seavey to Murtha and Moran: "I don't know who
you two are talking to but the morale of the troops is very high."
My favorite moments were the look on Rep. Jim
"Bad Boy" Moran's face when Sgt. Seavey challenged the Dems'
"demoralized troops" meme and noted that Moran didn't bother to send a
single word of praise or attend a homecoming event when 200 of his
Moran's constituents returned from duty in Afghanistan...
...and the look on Murtha's face as Moran scrambled to move on to
a friendly moonbat questioner...
Below is the text of Sgt. Seavey's confrontation of Murtha and
Moran
at the Jan. 5, 2006 Townhall Meeting in Arlington, VA:
SGT. SEAVEY, speaking to John Murtha: "Yes sir my name is Mark
Seavey and I just want to thank you for coming up here. Until about a
month ago I was Sgt Mark Seavey infantry squad leader, I returned from
Afghanistan. My question to you, (applause)
"Like yourself I dropped out of college two years ago to volunteer to
go to Afghanistan, and I went and I came back. If I didn't have a
herniated disk now I would volunteer to go to Iraq in a second with my
troops, three of which have already volunteered to go to Iraq. I keep
hearing you say how you talk to the troops and the troops are
demoralized, and I really resent that characterization. (applause) The
morale of the troops that I talk to is phenomenal, which is why my
troops are volunteering to go back, despite the hardships they had to
endure in Afghanistan.
"And Congressman Moran, 200 of your constituents just returned from Afghanistan.
We never got a letter from you; we never got a visit from you. You
didn't come to our homecoming. The only thing we got from any of our
elected officials was one letter from the governor of this state
thanking us for our service in Iraq, when we were in Afghanistan.
That's reprehensible. I don't know who you two are talking to but the
morale of the troops is very high."
Worst of All Worlds
John Fund, On The Trail / Opinion
Journal / June 26, 2006
"He's "a male Cindy Sheehan" and "a one-man wrecking crew" on ethics.
Is Murtha the man to lead the Democrats?" writes John Fund a recent
column. [LINK
to entire column]
[EXCERPS]
Mr. Murtha has been sticking his foot in his mouth a lot lately. He
accused Marines in Iraq of murdering civilians "in cold blood,"
contradicted himself in the same breath by saying they had
"overreacted," and asserted that higher-ups covered up the purported
crime without backing his statements up. He told a startled Tim
Russert of NBC that U.S. troops withdrawn from Iraq could be
"redeployed" to Okinawa, Japan, whence they could return "very
quickly" to Baghdad--which is 4,899 miles away. And more than once he
has offered these examples of presidential leadership: "In Beirut,
President Reagan changed direction. In Somalia, President Clinton
changed direction."
...
If Jack Murtha, a backroom operator who is blunder-prone when speaking
publicly, is Democrats' idea of fresh leadership, the party is in real
trouble. Far from advancing the Democratic argument that Republicans
have bred a "culture of corruption" while in power, Mr. Murtha's
leadership bid would open a Pandora's box of questions about his own
record.
In 1980, prosecutors named Mr. Murtha an "unindicted co-conspirator"
in the Abscam scandal. The FBI captured him on tape saying he wasn't
interested in taking a $50,000 payment from agents posing as Arab
sheiks "at this point," but he was open to further discussions. The
House Ethics Committee cleared him, but E. Barrett Prettyman, the
committee's special counsel for the Abscam probe, questioned the
panel's competence, likening it to "a misdemeanor court faced with a
multiple murder." Mr. Prettyman abruptly resigned his post the same
afternoon the committee voted to clear Mr. Murtha. While Mr. Prettyman
continues to refuse to discuss the case, he told Roll Call newspaper
in 1990 that it would be "a logical conclusion" that he resigned over
the committee's exoneration of Mr. Murtha.
In direct contrast to Sen. McCain, whose experience in the 1990
Keating Five scandal turned him into a good-government reformer, Mr.
Murtha's brush with infamy stirred in him a pit-bull conviction that
members of Congress deserve more protection from ethics probes. In
1997 Mr. Murtha joined with Rep. Billy Tauzin, a Louisiana Republican,
in blocking outside groups from filing complaints directly with the
House Ethics Committee. He also unsuccessfully pushed for a law that
would require the Justice Department to reimburse the legal bills of
any member of Congress it investigated if it was shown the probe was
not "substantially justified"--a privilege no other American has.
Small wonder that Gary Ruskin, director of the liberal Congressional
Accountability Project, told Roll Call that "when it comes to
institutional policing of corruption in Congress, John Murtha is a
one-man wrecking crew."
Mr. Murtha has been front and center in the controversy over earmarks,
the individual portions of pork members of Congress often secretly
secure for their districts or favored constituents. A Harper's
magazine study has concluded that "the most effective ally for the
earmark-seeker is a lobbyist who is actually related, by blood or
marriage, to a powerful member of an appropriations committee."
Rep. Murtha is the ranking Democratic member of the Defense
Appropriations Subcommittee and for the past three years has been the
House's top recipient of defense industry cash. Therefore, few in
Washington are surprised that his lobbyist brother, Robert "Kit"
Murtha, is an enormously successful "earmark specialist" for the
Beltway firm KSA Consulting. In recent years, Kit Murtha has brought
in a mother lode of earmarks for at least 16 defense manufacturers
with business before the Appropriations Committee.
Last year the Los Angeles Times reported that "most of KSA's defense
contractor clients hired the firm in hopes of securing funding from
Rep. Murtha's subcommittee, according to lobbying records and
interviews. And most retained the firm after Kit Murtha became a
senior partner in 2002." Kit Murtha told the Times that he saw Rep.
Murtha only infrequently but said the congressman knew he was a KSA
lobbyist. "I don't think that influences him," Kit said of his
brother. "I certainly would hope not."
VFTT featured on ChronWatch.com
"'Vietnam Vets for the Truth' Reorganize Into 'Boot Murtha' Campaign."
heralds the media watchdog website
ChronWatch.com:
[LINK
to entire article]
[EXCERPT]
Representative John Murtha (D-PA) has earned the ire of fellow
veterans, including retired Navy Captain Larry Bailey, the former
president of "Vietnam Veterans for Truth" (VVT), one of the
grass-roots organizations that so effectively opposed John Kerry in
2004.
Murtha's homestate Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
covers VFTT / BootMurtha
Vets For The Truth / Boot Murtha is already making an impact where it
counts... in Murtha's own back yard. Pennsylvania voters awoke Sunday
morning to find an article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette titled
"Iraq war changes game for Murtha, Anti-war stand puts him in unusual
spot." The article details the controversy swirling around their
Representative – and describes the "agitation" Murtha has stirred: [LINK
to entire article]
[EXCERPT]
One manifestation of the agitation against the Johnstown Democrat is a
flowering of anti-Murtha Web sites, such as murthamustgo.com.
murthalied.com and bootmurtha.com. Raw Story, an Internet news site,
has reported that the operators of these sites include some of the
same figures active in the criticism of Mr. Kerry's war record in the
2004 election.
Murtha's hometown newspaper
'filling up' with readers' opines
Back in Rep. John Murtha's home town of Johnstown, PA, a ground swell
of letters to the editor and online forums has begun, as reported
recently by the Johnstown newspaper, "The Tribune Democrat": [LINK
to entire article]
[EXCERPT]
The political debate over the military effort in Iraq has divided our
nation. Johnstown Congressman John Murtha has led a Democratic Party
assault on President Bush and his administration.
This
newspaper’s editorial page and online forums have filled up with the
opinions of our readers – some supporting the president and others
backing Murtha’s stance.
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