MURTHA ON HADITHA

Rep. Jack Murtha held a press conference on May 17, 2006 and discussed the massacre at Haditha. He was naturally vilified by the war whores, as MediaMatters noted. Here I will provide some excerpts from Murtha's presser because they are relevant to the case of Cpl. Trent Thomas.

EXCERPTS:

Secretary Rumsfeld says progress in Iraq is evidenced by how many satellite dishes he sees on a rooftop. Now, what's wrong with that? They only have 2.9 hours of electricity. So if they have satellite dishes, they can't watch them 21 hours a day.

This trivializes the situation that our Marines and many of our soldiers are facing every single day. Every convoy's attacked. Every convoy's attacked. IEDs (are) exploding all around them. (They’re) being shot at every day. (They’re) watching their buddies die. (They’re) unable to trust the Iraqis. They don't know who their friends are and who the enemies are.

They're under constant and severe stress.

This war is coming at a huge consequence, the unspoken consequence of an overstretched and overstressed force.

[On Haditha] It's much worse than reported in Time magazine. There was no fire fight. 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.

So it's a very serious incident, unfortunately. It shows the tremendous pressure that these guys are under every day when they're out in combat.

(There is) stress and the consequences. You saw the other day where we have so few people. I think it was today's paper (that) they have an eight-page report that I looked at that shows some people with psychological problems are being given drugs and sent back into combat. That's how short they are. And we don't have enough troops.

The general in Haditha area told me when I was there -- this was last August -- he said, "I don't have enough troops to do my mission."

QUESTION:

If U.S. soldiers killed innocent women and children, obviously they're responsible, but you alluded to a sort of broader responsibility for something like that. Can you explain that?

Congressman Murtha:

Yes, exactly. I feel that the tremendous pressure and the redeployment over and over again is a big part of this. These guys are under tremendous strain, more strain than I can conceive of. And this strain has caused them to crack in situations like this.

This is going to be a very bad thing for the United States. But the point is, it's not caused only by the troops, it's caused by the fact there's so few of them, and they go out every day, and 42 percent of them don't understand what the mission is.

I mean, I don't make excuses for them, I'm just understanding what their problem is.

[ON WAR COSTS]

Now, why is the Army hurting when we put so much money into supplementals? It's hurting because the cost of contracting out where they don't have enough troops…which is sometimes three times as much for the people doing the same job. In other words, you got a guy making $140,000 standing beside somebody making $40,000 or $50,000.

And so O&M costs have skyrocketed, so they're running out of money.