The "fever swamp," at "fever pitch"

It would appear that the Murtha resuscitation brigade does not only reside in Pennsylvania.

The Tribune News, from Tacoma Washington, has this:

Angry vets to ‘swift boat’ Rep. Murtha

New target for John Kerry critics

BRYAN BENDER; The Boston Globe
Published: August 6th, 2006 01:00 AM

JOHNSTOWN, Pa. – His depiction in the recruiting flier mailed to members of the American Legion leaves little room for interpretation: Congressman John Murtha, scowling and wrinkled, juxtaposed against the now-famous image of a young John Kerry testifying before Congress in 1971 about alleged U.S. atrocities committed in Vietnam.

Murtha, a 16-term Democrat, made “despicable” comments about Marines suspected of killing nearly two dozen Iraqi civilians in Haditha, according to the four-page handout. Therefore, the flier states, Murtha is no longer fit to serve in Washington.

The flier, seeking veterans to help work against Murtha’s reelection, is part of a “Boot Murtha” campaign launched last week by Vets for the Truth, a pro-Republican activist group that supports the Iraq war.

The Vets for Truth are not "pro-Republican". They are anti "smear-the-military" politicians, most of whom just happen to sport a (D) next to their name (surprise surprise!). Swiftboat Veterans for Truth, for instance, who never forgave John Kerry for his smearing Vietnam vets, had a good number of democrats among their ranks!

The group wants Murtha, a former Marine colonel who served in Vietnam, defeated for his blunt criticism of the war and his call to withdraw U.S. troops.

His critics were outraged by comments Murtha made in May, when he scolded the Marines under investigation for civilian casualties in Haditha.

Yes, they were outraged, and so was I! You go around pronouncing guilt without so much as reading a report or receiving official briefings, and that's a damned good reason to be outraged!

Some of the group’s members were part of a similar campaign against Kerry during his 2004 Democratic presidential campaign against President Bush.

Calling themselves Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, they boldly attacked the Massachusetts senator, accusing him of lying about his combat record in Vietnam and condemning him for claiming to have seen U.S. troops commit war crimes while he was there.

Yep...just so's I can refresh your memory (although it should be "seared, seared" in your memory by now)

They told stories that at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Ghengis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.

Anyway, back to the subject at hand:

“I called my buddies in the anti-Kerry movement from 2004,” said Larry Bailey, a former Navy officer and Vietnam veteran who runs Vets for the Truth and who worked closely with Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which included some who served with Kerry.

counterattack planned

Bailey vowed to hurt Murtha’s campaign the same way his group helped sink Kerry’s presidential bid two years ago.

“I will do my best to ‘swift boat’ John Murtha,” he said.

But this time, Murtha and his allies, including an irate Kerry, have planned a counterattack, ready to portray Bailey and his comrades as pawns of the White House and the Republican Party.

Yeah, just like we at MMG are pawns of the White House and Republican Party. But, when the light of truth shines upon you, I guess the best you can hope for is to attack the messengers, right Jean Francois?

With growing public doubts about the Iraq war, Murtha’s allies hope to convince voters to see the group as political tools who lack basic credibility.

“They are engaging in a pure political smear job,” Kerry said in a telephone interview Friday. “They have no respect for open debate.”

WRONG, Jean Francois! They have no respect for an elected official who calls himself an "ex marine" that willfully and wantonly violates the civil rights of due process for soldiers!

To them, Kerry said, honorable military service doesn’t matter: “If you don’t have the opinion of the president, (they) are going to tarnish your reputation. I think they are a disgrace and we will challenge them every time they raise their head, from one end of the country to the other.”

They are not a disgrace, Jean Francois. They, unlike Jack Murtha and yourself, are not the ones tarnishing the reputations of soldiers currently serving in harms' way:

And there is no reason, Bob, that young American soldiers need to be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, you know, women,..."(Jean Francois Kerry. Meet the Press, Dec 4, 2005)

But of course, the anti-war, anti-american, anti-anything-Bush-does-or-says fever swamp inhabitants press on:

...“This is classic Karl Rove,” said former Democratic Sen. Max Cleland of Georgia, who lost three limbs in Vietnam and lost his reelection bid in 2002 after similar attacks on his military service record. He believes Rove, the president’s chief political strategist, helped orchestrate the campaign that cost him his office, and “they are staying the course on the dirty tricks.”

Just as you and your ilk are "staying the course" on smearing our soldiers and their war effort, Mr. Cleland! You can't keep on blaming others for your own ineptitudes (Yeah, Rove was responsible for the last ice age, too, I'm sure!). There comes a time when one needs to look in the mirror. You may want to think about doing that sometime, Mr. Cleland.

eye on ‘reagan democrats’

Bailey hopes the Boot Murtha campaign will convince voters in the conservative bastion of rural Pennsylvania to turn against Murtha, who has received little Republican opposition in his 32 years in the House.

Pennsylvania’s 12th district, which Murtha represents, stretches from the middle of the state to the Ohio border in the west.

Encompassing suburbs as well as rural areas, the district could be a microcosm of national attitudes toward the Iraq war, say political analysts.

The district leans more than 2-1 in favor of Democrats, but most are socially conservative “Reagan Democrats”: voters who oppose abortion rights, support gun ownership and the military, and want Congress to pass tighter immigration laws. In 2004, Kerry took the district with 51 percent of the vote to Bush’s 49 percent.

Some deep-pocketed military veterans from other states have helped fund and organize the Boot Murtha drive, including Lewis “Jack” Peevy, a Georgia real estate developer and a retired Army colonel.

“It’s not so much what Kerry did – though his three Purple Hearts were for scratches – but it was what he did when he came back home,” Peevy told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in August 2004, referring to Kerry’s congressional testimony about having witnessed U.S. war crimes in Vietnam.

Exactly. Just as it's not what Murtha did while he was in the military, it's for what Murtha's currently doing in his unabashed, relentless no-holds barred quest for power.

Murtha, Kerry and other fifth-column democrats can run away from truth; but they certainly cannot hide from it.