Murtha’s Accusations Questioned By Presbyterian Minister
I wonder how John Murtha gets himself out of this one. It turns out that Kilo Company had a pair of pastors embedded with them when the supposed massacre happened, including the father of Kilo company’s executive officer. Here’s what Reuters is reporting:
A Presbyterian minister who was an embedded reporter with his son’s U.S. Marine company, which is accused of killing 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha, said soldiers in private moments gave no indication anything horrible happened in the town. Rather, the young men in Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment talked about earlier intense fighting in Fallujah and other wartime ordeals. “I would think that if it was as bad as everybody is making it out to be, I’d have heard something about it when I was there,” said the Rev. Ben Mathes, 53, whose son, 1st Lt. Adam Mathes, is Kilo company’s executive officer.
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The father spent 12 days with the unit in January in Haditha as a reporter with the Sacramento, California-based K-Love Christian Radio Network. He also ministered to the troops. “It was freezing cold and everybody gathered around this kind of metal fireplace where we chopped up wooden pallets and burned them and we’d sit there and talk about home and family and the deepest things with these kids,” he said in an interview on Thursday. “Not once did anything come up that something horrible had happened. They talked about the first battle of Fallujah and things that haunt them. They’d talk about they had mortars land right beside them that were duds and three landed right beside them and a third one went off and it injured the buddy next to them and they didn’t get hit.”
He said he also did not feel animosity from Iraqis he encountered while on patrol with Kilo company in Haditha. “You would think that if something horrible had happened they would just disappear or just have nothing to do with these folks,” Mathes said. “They came out on the streets and brought us bread and tea and invited us into their homes. The businessmen would have them come into their shops.”
Red flags started went of with me as I was reading this. First, the fact that nobody in Kilo company said anything to these pastors after telling them about “things that haunt them” strikes me as odd. Secondly, doesn’t it seem odd that the people of Haditha “came out on the streets and brought us bread and tea and invited us into their homes” shortly after this so-called massacre?
Christopher Price, a Georgia-based Presbyterian minister who traveled with Mathes to Iraq, also reported he saw no signs of bad feelings between Iraqis and Kilo company. The elder Mathes, the president of a Christian ministry that focuses on areas along remote foreign rivers, said his son was overseeing the company’s base during the November killings and was not facing any charges.
That isn’t to say that they aren’t critical. Here’s their target:
“We have leaders who are hired by our country to lead us, who sent my kid to war and then they are back here bad-mouthing him and saying things they have no idea if it’s true or not to get a little (TV) face time,” he said.
Such criticism hurt the morale of soldiers already under great pressure, especially those now in Iraq, Mathes said. “How do you think it makes these kids feel, to come in exhausted, scared sometimes, maybe wounded, maybe having been in some type of combat exchange and turn on the TV set and be told they are just full of crap and they snapped and are just not worth a damn?” he said. “Why in the world would any young person want to continue to defend our county if that is what they are hearing?”
Gee. Who might be a leader who was “hired by our country to lead us, who sent my kid to war and then they are back here bad-mouthing him and saying things they have no idea if it’s true or not to get a little (TV) face time”? I can’t imagine who’d do such a despicable thing. This I know, though: Whoever did that should be fired this November.
Technorati Tags: Murtha, Haditha, Mathes, Kilo Company
Cross-posted at Murtha Must Go
Cross-post at LetFreedomRingBlog
June 10th, 2006 at 10:50 pm
[...] Cross-posted at California Conservative [...]
June 11th, 2006 at 1:16 pm
The Haditha incident is turning out quite similar to the Zarqawi death. First, the marines are totally guilty. Then, bits and pieces start being made public that make the thread of accusations tatter ever so slightly. Finally, the cloth of accusation falls apart because none of the accusations add up to anything except a fantasy tale.
Zarqawi is dead. According to the MSM line, he never even heard of Iraq until the US invaded the country. It was then that he headed there to fight the infidels.
Now the MSM line is that GW had a chance to kill Zarqawi in Iraq in 2002, because GW knew where he was making riesen (sp?), a particularly nasty WMD. The leftists are wondering why our military didn’t take him out then?
Which is it? Was he not there in 2002, and was the leader of an insurgency, or was he there making a WMD in 2002 and not killed then? Can’t have it both ways.
Final note: If the evidence Murtha has was presented in court as to the guilt of the marines, the judge wouldn’t even let it go to a jury - it would be thrown out on its face. As Murtha should be this fall by his constituents. And Pete Stark.
June 11th, 2006 at 7:08 pm
Just re-read this post, and have a slightly different reaction this time:
Why would anyone left-of-center and beyond pay attention to these guys? After all, they’re just Christians…
June 12th, 2006 at 7:24 am
[...] California Conservative provides an account of a Presbyterian Minister embedded with the Marines at Haditha. [...]