Outrage!… Navy Names Ship After "Cold-Blooded" Cut-n-Runner John Murtha

Navy Secretary Ray Mabus will name an amphibious warship after famed cut-and-runner and slanderer John Murtha who passed away in February.

Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) smeared innocent US Marines serving in Iraq.
Murtha gave several interviews after an antiwar story broke in TIME Magazine saying that the US marines killed innocent civilians “in cold blood.”
The story was later linked back to Al-Qaeda operatives.
Murtha was a willing dupe and never apologized to the innocent Marines.

Exonerated Haditha Marine Lance Cpl. Justin Sharratt filed charges against Rep. John Murtha in September 2008 in Pennsylvania.
7 of 8 marines had their charges dismissed after being slandered by John Murtha.
One marine awaits justice.

Photos via Defend Our Marines
John Murtha slandered these innocent Haditha Marines. Their lives will never be the same thanks to John Murtha and John Murtha refused to apologize to these marines after they were exonerated.
Murtha was a disgrace to the military.

SSgt Frank Wuterich, the remaining defendant in the Haditha case, will go on trial on September 13, 2010.

Now he will have a ship named after him.
The Navy Times reported:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi praised the Navy’s decision to name an amphibious warship after Rep. John Murtha, but the formal announcement Friday added fuel to an already smoldering backlash online.

Murtha — “our dear Jack,” as Pelosi referred to him — deserved the honor as a tireless advocate for troops generally and Marines in particular, she said, and she recalled admiring his rapport with them.

“Whether on the battlefield, or on the bedside, he thanked them for their courage, listened to their concerns, and asked them for comment — and he answered their needs, and responded to their calls, whether it was for body armor, up-armored vehicles… radios, you name it,” Pelosi said. “In those minutes [together], he bonded with them especially because he would share his own personal military service with them, and cared for them as a father. They knew it, and they returned his respect.”

Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, who technically is the only person in the government with the power to name U.S. warships, also praised Murtha’s history of service. He unveiled an official illustration showing an amphibious transport dock marked with the hull number “26” named John P. Murtha. It will be the first in the San Antonio class not named for an American city.

Despite the encomia from Pelosi and Mabus, thousands of Web users remembered a different Murtha — the one who opposed the Iraq war and accused Marines in 2005 of killing Iraqis “in cold blood” — when reacting to the announcement about the ship named in his honor. A Facebook group called People Against Naming A Navy Ship USS Murtha had 1,336 members as of Monday morning, and it was becoming a clearinghouse for angry comments and homemade cartoons criticizing Murtha.

Posters on the Facebook page said Murtha, who served in the Marine Corps during the Korean and Vietnam eras, “betrayed the brotherhood,” that naming a ship for him was a “slap in the face” and that if the Navy wanted to name a ship for him, it should have chosen “a nice, stinky garbage scow.”

Let’s hope the ship has good speed to cut-and-run in the face of danger.

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Jim Hoft is the founder and editor of The Gateway Pundit, one of the top conservative news outlets in America. Jim was awarded the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award in 2013 and is the proud recipient of the Breitbart Award for Excellence in Online Journalism from the Americans for Prosperity Foundation in May 2016. In 2023, The Gateway Pundit received the Most Trusted Print Media Award at the American Liberty Awards.

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