Articles Worth Reading

Former paratrooper, Michael Fumento, has an excellent article in the Weekly Standard about some time he spent with 1st Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault)... of Band of Brother's fame. 1/506th is in the hellhole of Ramadi and Mr. Fumento points out that not many reporters know where the hell the action is:

To most of the media, Baghdad is where Iraq begins and ends. So naturally, they think Baghdad is the most
dangerous part of the country. Wrong. "The sheer scale of violence in Ramadi is astounding," wrote AP's Todd Pitman after spending time with several units there. Pitman arrived the same night I did. "One recent coalition tally of 'significant acts'--roadside bombs, attacks, exchanges of fire--indicated that out of 43 reported in Iraq on a single day, 27 occurred in Ramadi and its environs," he wrote in a dispatch. Track the weekly butcher's bill for all of Iraq and you'll often find that a third to a half of U.S. combat deaths are in this one city about a third the size of Baghdad.

Also, it appears that the Haditha massacre story continues to unravel. I got up today to see a front page article in the Washington Post detailing one of the Marine squad leader's story about that day. It begins:

A sergeant who led a squad of Marines during the incident in Haditha, Iraq, that left as many as 24 civilians dead said his unit did not intentionally target any civilians, followed military rules of engagement and never tried to cover up the shootings, his attorney said.

Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, 26, told his attorney that several civilians were killed Nov. 19 when his squad went after insurgents who were firing at them from inside a house. The Marine said there was no vengeful massacre, but he described a house-to-house hunt that went tragically awry in the middle of a chaotic battlefield.

"It will forever be his position that everything they did that day was following their rules of engagement and to protect the lives of Marines," said Neal A. Puckett, who represents Wuterich in the ongoing investigations into the incident. "He's really upset that people believe that he and his Marines are even capable of intentionally killing innocent civilians."

Read the entire article and know that Murtha is still a traitorous Asshat.