California Conservative

According to this article, the Thomas More Law Center has agreed to represent Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani in a civil suit against Rep. John Murtha if/when the charges against him are dropped. Here’s some of the details from the article:

The Michigan-based Thomas More Law Center is representing Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani (USMC), who has been charged with not fully investigating the events at Haditha, Iraq, and failing to report a Law of War violation, in the aftermath of the November 19, 2005, incident that led to the death of 24 Iraqi civilians. Spokespersons for the legal group hope the convening officer in the investigation will throw out the charges as he already has for two of the six other men charged in the case. Chessani is the highest ranking officer charged in the case.

Congressman Murtha, a prominent war critic, last year accused U.S. Marines of shooting and killing unarmed civilians near the scene of an attack on a military convoy, then going into two homes and shooting others. According to Brian Rooney with the Law Center, Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich, one of the other defendants in the investigation, is already suing Murtha for those comments. Rooney argues the Pennsylvania Democrat should be held accountable for taking the word of Iraqi insurgents and calling the Marines “cold-blooded murderers.”

“Staff Sergeant Wuterich’s attorneys are suing Congressman Murtha for liable for saying that the Marines were cold-blooded murderers, so that suit’s still ongoing,” the attorney explains, adding that the Law Center is considering taking similar action.

“We’re exploring our options…in that regard because Murtha said that officers covered this up, which is explicitly naming our client as covering it up,” says Rooney. “So once we get through with this court-martial, and hopefully it goes our way, then we’re going to look at whether or not we should take a hard look at Congressman Murtha as well.”

If charges are dropped against Lt. Col. Chessani and Sgt. Wuterich, Rep. Murtha could be looking at spending alot of time in a courtroom in the near future. John Murtha should be held to account for leveling these serious accusations against the Haditha Marines. Based on this timeline, it’s obvious that Rep. Murtha has a difficult time keeping his story straight. It isn’t a stretch to think that he’s having those troubles because he’s basing his opinions on ideology instead of verifiable facts.

Here’s one of the things I pointed out in the timeline:

GIBSON: Jonathan just mentioned, there’s no charges yet filed against any of the Marines that were in this outfit, but Jonathan mentioned a moment ago, defense lawyers are already saying, well, there’s drone video and there is actual radio traffic to higher-ups that will give a different picture than you have been talking about of this incident. What do you know about that?

MURTHA: I can only tell you this, Charles. This is what the Marine Corps told me at the highest level. The Commandant of the Marine Corps was in my office just last week, so you know, I know there was a cover-up someplace. They knew about this a few days afterwards and there’s no question the chain of command tried to stifle the story. I can understand why, but that doesn’t excuse it. Something like this has to be brought out to the public, and the people have to be punished.

This point was also mentioned in the article:

In comments during a June 2006 interview with ABC’s Charles Gibson, Murtha stated, after a meeting with high-level Marines: “I know there was a cover-up someplace. They knew about this a few days afterwards, and there’s no question the chain of command tried to stifle the story.”

The first time I read that sentence, I couldn’t believe my eyes. As I’ve said elsewhere, if you know that a coverup happened, you’d be able to state specifically where the coverup happened and who was involved in the coverup. You might even produce a timeline or flowchart showing who was involved in the alleged coverup.

It’s my opinion that, if you can’t produce such things, then you don’t really know that a coverup happened. You might suspect that a coverup happened but that isn’t the same as knowing it, is it? I haven’t seen anything in news articles or in my personal investigation that says Rep. Murtha has any verifiable proof of his allegations. That leads me to believe that Rep. Murtha’s allegations will never be proven.

I’ve often reminded commenters here that “allegations aren’t proof.” Allegations that aren’t backed up by eyewitness accounts or a taped conversation or an email are simply allegations. Let’s turn this around to see what the Haditha Marines can verify. Here’s what I wrote awhile back that fits into this conversation:

The battalion S2 officer made a full and complete report based on his monitoring of the day’s events and the intelligence he and others had amassed then and previous days. As we wrote at the time, the PowerPoint after-action report he sent up the command ladder proved to all the higher officers that the incident warranted no further investigation.

Jeffrey Dinsmore is the name of the S2 intel officer. Capt. Dinsmore testified that he heard gunfire coming into his observation station. He also scanned the video coming in from the UAV that was filming the firefight. That would be the firefight that Rep. Murtha said didn’t happen.

If the charges are dropped against Sgt. Wuterich and Lt. Col. Chessani, then I’d say that Rep. Murtha will be staring at a mountain of verifiable proof that contradicts the allegations he’s made against the Haditha Marines.

Based on this information, it’s isn’t surprising that Matt Mazonkey, his press person, won’t return my phone calls. The last thing that Mr. Mazonkey wants to do is try and defend Rep. Murtha against someone who’s got a command of the issues surrounding the Haditha Marines.

Unfortunately for his boss, his days of denial might soon end. The days of his having to defend himself in court might just be beginning.

Technorati Tags: John Murtha, Haditha Marines, Scandal, Thomas More Law Center, Jeffrey Chessani, Frank Wuterich

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 28th, 2007 at 9:23 am and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Corruption, Iraq, Law, Military, Subversives. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.