The father of one of the accused Haditha Marines spoke to the coward Murtha the other day and he put up an account of the phone conversation at FR:
In a conversation with Congressman John Murtha, my questions still remain unanswered. With the help of the American people, I hope to find justice.
On Wednesday morning, July 17th I spoke with Congressman John Murtha via telephone from his Washington, DC office. We had a courteous conversation. I knew what to expect from a career politician and Congressman Murtha did not disappoint. Mr. Murtha avoided answering the hard questions and I was unable to press him for the answers. I wanted the conversation to remain amicable and decided to let him speak and avoid a heated confrontation.
At no time during the dialogue would Mr. Murtha acknowledge the impending exoneration of my son. I pressed him to use the word exoneration but the best I could get was “things seem to have gone well in your son’s Article 32. The General is a fair man and I believe he will do the right thing.” I replied, “ Lt. Col Paul Ware presented a strong recommendation for exoneration and we are anticipating Lt. Gen James Mattis following this recommendation.”
Mr. Murtha asked me if I had served in the military. He recalled his visits with injured Marines, soldiers and sailors. He said he supports our troops and it is the war he does not condone. Mr Murtha believes combat operations in Iraq have put an enormous strain on our Armed Forces. The stress of combat situations has led our troops to kill innocent civilians. I pointed out to Mr. Murtha, “ Our Haditha Marines are innocent until proven guilty.” It seems he is again denying our Marines their Constitutional rights of due process and the presumption of innocence. Mr. Murtha replied that we have a Marine(Mendoza) testifying that innocent women and children were killed in Haditha. I retorted that he is again believing the reports of the media and Mendoza was granted immunity for his lies. Mendoza has changed his testimony at least two times. NCIS may have threatened him with deportation and denial of US citizenship. This time I scolded him, “ I witnessed their(NCIS) conduct first hand in my son’s Article 32.”
I questioned Congressman Murtha as to his statements of 17 May 2006. On national television, in front of millions of Americans, he stated “ Marines killed innocent civilians in cold blood.” I asked him why he denied these Marines their Constitutional rights of due process and the presumption of innocence. Again the Congressman used his experience to side step the answer. Mr. Murtha stated his intentions were to point out the stress our military was under in Iraq. He replied we would not win the hearts of the Iraqi people by killing women and children. I again snapped, “ Our Haditha Marines have not been convicted of killing innocents and are innocent until proven guilty.”
I believe this conversation was the first step in obtaining justice for Our Haditha Marines. I did not expect Mr. Murtha to admit to or apologize for any wrongdoing in his role to railroad my son and his Marine comrades. The American people now know that his unfounded and untruthful allegations were used to further his political agenda. It is my intention to ask the Congress of the United States to censure Representative John Murtha and hold hearings to explain his conduct in respect to the Haditha incident. I will ask the American people to question his blatant disregard for the Constitutional rights of Our Haditha Marines. I will campaign to the voters of Pa Congressional District 12 to oust Representative Murtha from his elected office. The American people deserve better, we must demand better representation from our elected officials.
Darryl Sharratt
Proud American, Proud father of L/Cpl Justin L. Sharratt
Can you believe this blowhard? Because some innocent people were killed our Marines are now guilty of murder…listen, its very sad that they were killed but it was NOT the fault of our troops. The terrorists had so obviously used them as shields for their attack on our troops. If your gonna blame someone you blame the enemy for putting them there in the first place.
But not Murtha:
- "It [Haditha, Marines] is as bad as Abu Ghraib, if not worse." (Murtha, May 2006)
- They [the Marines/Military] knew the day after this happened that it was not as they portrayed it. They knew that they (Marines) went into the rooms, they killed the people in the taxi. There was no firing at all. And this comes from the highest authority in the Marine Corps, so there’s no question in my mind," (Murtha, May 2006)
- "… they [Marine] killed innocent civilians in cold blood." (Murtha, May 17, 2006 at news conference)
- "They actually went into the houses and killed women and children. And there was about twice as many as originally reported by Times." (Murtha, Reuters, May 19, 2006)
- "It’s [Haditha, Marines] much worse than reported in Time magazine." (Murtha, News.comAU, May 18, 2006)
Mr. Sharratt did a great job staying cool, not sure if I could of if I was in his situation but hopefully he and his son see some redemption soon. Every day that goes by makes the coward Murtha look more and more like a fool.
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