"Restraint almost cost me my life"

Even as "double-amputee Iraq-war vet [Sgt. Peter Damon] is suing Michael Moore for $85 million," asserting "the portly peacenik recycled an old interview and used it out of context to make him appear anti-war in Fahrenheit 9/11," former Dem Hawk Rep. John Murtha helpfully asserts "Haditha 'Worse Than Abu Ghraib,' War Crimes 'In Cold Blood'." If you had a choice, which one would you rather have defending you on the front lines?

"Restraint almost cost me my life," Capt. Andrew Del Gaudio, commander of Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment told USA Today, explaining the devil's dilemma at the heart of the asymmetrical warfare our forces are waging in Iraq, where the enemy doesn't play by the rules of war but knows that we will, while the world is watching:

Del Gaudio said he made a tough call after a roadside bomb killed four of his men in April. While securing the scene, he was shot at by a machine gun in a follow-up attack. When he aimed his weapon to return fire, he saw that the gunmen had a line of children standing in front of them and two men filming with video cameras. He held fire until the children moved out of the way but was shot in his hand, which was only inches from his face. "Restraint almost cost me my life," he said.

Then there are the Iraqi youngsters who actively scout for the enemy. "We used to go out on patrols and have the little kids count the patrols and all that stuff, and we couldn’t really do anything except grab them and throw them inside their houses," explained Lance Cpl. James Crossan in a controversial Seattle KING 5 TV interview that's the talk of the 'sphere. Crossan was in the passenger seat of the Humvee that got blown up by an IED in Haditha last November 19,* killing the driver, Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas, and precipitating the sequence of events that resulted in the killing of 24 Iraqi civilians, now being touted -- unfortunately, that's the apt word to describe their their barely-concealed BDS-induced glee -- by Murtha & Company as this war's My Lai massacre. We'd caught a bit of the interview yesterday and were heart sick that this young Marine appeared to be betraying his buddies, but nothing could be further from the truth. As Michelle Malkin -- who is information central for all things Haditha -- explains:

You should watch the entire interview (we've got a four-minute segment over at Hot Air) and then you should compare it with the selective MSM coverage--which is hyping the parts that damn the Marines most and ignoring the full context of Lance Cpl. Crossan's remarks.

Neil Cavuto, announcing a forthcoming segment on the subject this afternoon, suggested a double standard -- hardly a peep from the left flank about the enemy's routine atrocities, while any misstep on our part proves Bush=Hitler™ -- but that's the problem with asymmetrical warfare. The enemy knows he can count on the fifth column within our walls to cheer him on.

 

*Ironically, our own post last November 19, 2005, the day of the alleged massacre, was "Marines never do" -- illustrated with above photo -- a dissing of Murtha's cut-and-run philosophy.

Comments

[Teresa]

All I'm going to say about this is...

Murtha makes me sick to my stomach. What a low-down slimy weasel he is to betray our Marines that way. Over at Blackfive - many Marines are calling him an ex-Marine (no greater insult can ever be handed to any Marine).

[Scott]

I'll venture to make a prediction - if we stay the course in Iraq, it will be because we've fitted our soldiers and marines with video cameras a la police dashboard-cams, whose footage will be used in very public trials by Iraqi prosecutors using laws targeting human shield behavior (kind of like a more practical hate crime legislation), and the results of which will be aggressively pushed by US politicians including the prez - the end goal being to shame those who use this tactic.

Nothing will defeat this sort of behavior other than visibility and shame - until locals are made to understand that this is despicable behavior on the part of the terrorists, they will continue believing the cheap terrorist hype that the US is an imperialist invader - that picture squares so much more easily with their own experiences after all.

But everyone no matter how scared, suicidal or insane has the capacity to feel shame and recognize cowardice, and if we work hard enough to get the spotlight where it needs to be, we can expect to get a lot more tips, and make it much more likely that the average (middle eastern) newsreader will roll their eyes even as they blanch at the latest terrorist antics.

[Tara]

Murtha is a disgrace and it's no surprise the MSM media trot him out on all their news programs to betray out troops.

How this man lives with himself I don't even want to know.But to do what he did for political gain is simply vile.The investigation about the Haditha incident is still on-going and this awful man already has our troops convicted of "cold-blooded" murder.

He is a craven snake.