Murtha gets Swiftboated

I heard about this on C-Span this morning. That bastion of objective reporting, the Cybercast News Service (formerly the Conservative News Cast), posted this yesterday.

Are we at all surprised about this? Someone publicly disagrees with our glorious leader and by a complete and total coincidence the conservative press smears in response. Marc Morano and Randy Hall begin this way:

Having ascended to the national stage as one of the most vocal critics of President Bush's handling of the war in Iraq, Pennsylvania Democratic Congressman John Murtha has long downplayed the controversy and the bitterness surrounding the two Purple Hearts he was awarded for military service in Vietnam.

Murtha is a retired marine and was the first Vietnam combat veteran elected to Congress. Since 1967, there have been at least three different accounts of the injuries that purportedly earned Murtha his Purple Hearts. Those accounts also appear to conflict with the limited military records that are available, and Murtha has thus far refused to release his own military records.

We've seen this before, haven't we?

It's interesting to note the close placement of "Abscam" articles to this drek on the CNS website. It's also interesting to note that Dennis Roddy of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has already written about this:

Soon the Swift Boaters will be afloat, suggesting that Mr. Murtha's Vietnam service was a charade (he won a Bronze Star), and that his Purple Hearts were undeserved. The Purple Heart gambit has been played before, first in 1982, then just last year. The answer to this nonsense will be the one that gave Mr. Murtha such cache as both a candidate and a member of Congress: big wound or small, he got it in Vietnam. He was there. They were not.

The second brick destined to crash through the Murtha family parlor window is Abscam. Mr. Murtha was one of eight members of Congress lured to a Washington townhouse by a team of FBI agents posing as representatives of a fictitious Arab sheik. They handed out briefcases filled with $50,000 in return for helping the sheik gain residency in the United States.

Mr. Murtha is on videotape telling the agents, "Not interested," but inviting the sheik to invest a few million in his struggling hometown, where unemployment reached 25 percent.

The fun part is to see how the CNS "News" service selectively quotes Dennis Roddy in their Abscam story. They write:

According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, "Murtha was one of eight members of Congress lured to a Washington, D.C., townhouse by a team of FBI agents posing as representatives of a fictitious Arab sheik. They handed out briefcases filled with $50,000 in return for helping the sheik gain residency in the United States."

Take a look at what they do next. Instead of going with Roddy's next paragraph, they travel all the way to Brattleboro, Vermont for a remarkably similar, though now with an added hygienic insult, follow-up. Here's Roddy next paragraph:

Mr. Murtha is on videotape telling the agents, "Not interested," but inviting the sheik to invest a few million in his struggling hometown, where unemployment reached 25 percent.

And here's how CNS news followed Roddy's quotation. Not the similarities and the differences. Says alot about the objectivity of the CNS "News" service, don't it?

Noting that Murtha "is not squeaky clean," the Brattleboro, Vt., Reformer reported that the congressman "did not take the cash" offered by the agents. Instead, "he asked the fake sheik to consider investing some money in his struggling home town, Johnstown."

It's like they feel they just had to get in the "he's not squeaky clean" line before pointing out that Murtha did not take the cash. Here's Roddy again:

Mr. Murtha's probity might have been in doubt at that moment. Certainly he played the political coquette, suggesting they might do business later.

But where his companions were stuffing their pockets, he was trying to figure out how to get a fake prince to open a factory in Johnstown. Among agents of the government operating a fantasy, Mr. Murtha was attempting to get something real accomplished. That is what he is like.

I have to admit that I have not been able to find the quotation in question at the Brattleboro Reformer website. I've tried "Murtha +Abscam" and "Murtha +skeik" got no hits in response. I am not outright accusing the CNSNews service of making up the quote, but I'd also like to be able to see it in context. If anyone can find a copy of the article, please send it along.

In the meantime, here's something at the Brattleboro Reformer that does mention Congressman Murtha. It's from late December of last year:

The Downing Street Memos showed the Bush administration was determined to attack Iraq even though there was no evidence of weapons of mass destruction, no evidence of links to foreign terrorists and no evidence that Iraq posed a direct or indirect threat to the United States.

That no investigation took place shows the impossibility of integrity in a one-party Congress. The news that the United States operated secret prisons and employed torture on detained "suspects," most of whom were never charged with any crime, was a deep embarrassment. Equally embarrassing was the clumsy attempts to smear one of the most hawkish member of Congress, Pennsylvania Democrat John Murtha, for suggesting a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. The spectacle of Republicans who never served in the military attacking a decorated combat veteran was a sorry one. [emphasis added]

Back to the Swiftboating. Here's Congressman Murtha's response:

This afternoon, CNSNEWS.com published an article entitled "Murtha's War Hero Status Called Into Question" on its website. The article questions the validity of my purple hearts. This is my response:

"Questions about my record are clearly an attempt to distract attention from the real issue, which is that our brave men and women in uniform are dying and being injured every day in the middle of a civil war that can be resolved only by the Iraqis themselves."

"I volunteered for a year's duty in Vietnam. I was out in the field almost every single day. We took heavy casualties in my regiment the year that I was there. In my fitness reports, I was rated No. 1. My record is clear."

The story was reported this morning by the Washington Post:

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.

And how much of the Swiftboat attacks were actually true? That's right - none. But let's try to take a look at this logically. As with the Swiftboat attacks on Kerry's record, if these attacks against Murtha's record are true, then the whole record keeping system of the Marines has to be called into question.

Why does the CNSNews service hate the Marine Corps??

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