Dishonest Opponents Attempt to Lie Murtha Out of Office

by: Richard Allen Smith

Mon Nov 03, 2008 at 17:58:15 PM EST

Bill Russell, Murtha's challenger this cycle, has a new guest on the stump.  His name is Shawn Bryan, and he claims that Murtha disrespected his service at Haditha when Murtha described the actions of Marines there that allegedly killed innocent civilians:  

During the rally, Shawn Bryan, a former sergeant in the U.S. Marine Corps., said Murtha visited his unit in Iraq in 2005. At the time, Murtha told the troops "what a great job we did," Bryan said, only to see him tell his district back home he no longer supported the effort.

Bryan said he didn't put his life on the line for his country "just so some fat little bastard can come back and run his mouth."

There's one big problem with Shawn's argument here. If you are going to act offended by what you perceive to be an insult, you should probably make sure, first, that the offending party is actually talking about you.  In this case, John Murtha was talking about Marines who were actually at the Haditha killings, a group that does not include Shawn Bryan.

This bio notes that Shawn Bryan served in the 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines in Iraq.  That Battalion returned from Iraq in early October of 2005, over a month before the Haditha killings.

Last week, the group Vets for Freedom, which has been called a "Republican front group" by the non-partisan Center for Media and Democracy, began running this smear ad against John Murtha using the same feigned outrage technique:

The same problem exists in the VFF ad with at least one of their smear-jobbers:

Pimentel:  Congressman John Murtha visited my unit in Iraq,

Toland:  and reassured us of how proud he was of us,

Ledeen: Only to come home and call us cold-blooded murderers.

Toland:  Mr. Murtha, I'm proud of my service in Iraq.

Ledeen: I attacked to be attacked by the insurgents,

Toland:  Not from Congressmen at home.

Christopher Toland might be familiar with Shawn Bryan, being that they served together in the 3/25th Marines. Personally, I'd like to ask them if they sat next to each other on the plane ride home in September of 2005.

If Christopher and Shawn think back far enough, they'll remember that when Congressman Murtha visited their unit back in 2005, he was there to look into claims about insufficient body armor (sound familiar?). When he returned, Murtha immediately began working tirelessly in Congress to get more funding for better armor to protect Marines like Shawn Bryan and Christopher Toland.  They thanked him by throwing smears at him in exchange for political gain.

I received information on Toland and Bryan from a source within the 3/25th Marines.  The fact that Toland and Bryan returned from Iraq prior to the Haditha killings is confirmed by the links above.  Notable, though, is that they are just the guys we've been able to verify.  Their dishonesty calls into question the validity of the claims of the other two Veterans in the VFF ad.

It would take a great leap of the imagination to assume that Congressman Murtha's comments deploring the alleged conduct of a handful of Marines was misunderstood by Bill Russell, Shawn Bryan, Vets for Freedom and the rest of the wolf-criers on the right.  It was pretty clear to all of the combat Veterans here at VoteVets what Murtha meant.  Don't believe for a second that this is anything more than feigned outrage for political gain, a tactic we've seen from Vets for Freedom and their ilk far too often. What these operatives either are forgetting or don't care about is that when you exaggerate your service, such as insinuating that you were in Haditha at the time of the killings when you weren't, you are disrespecting the sacrifice of all honorably serving Veterans.

UPDATE: By the way, guess who is a blogger for Vets for Freedom?