Posted at FreePA.org | Promoting Freedom in Pennsylvania:

John Fund wonders what the future holds for Democrats if Murtha is one of their leaders.

Murtha on foreign policy:

Mr. Murtha has been sticking his foot in his mouth a lot lately. He accused Marines in Iraq of murdering civilians "in cold blood," contradicted himself in the same breath by saying they had "overreacted," and asserted that higher-ups covered up the purported crime without backing his statements up. He told a startled Tim Russert of NBC that U.S. troops withdrawn from Iraq could be "redeployed" to Okinawa, Japan, whence they could return "very quickly" to Baghdad--which is 4,899 miles away. And more than once he has offered these examples of presidential leadership: "In Beirut, President Reagan changed direction. In Somalia, President Clinton changed direction."

Here's another take on the change of direction in Somalia: "After a few blows . . . [the U.S.] rushed out of Somalia in shame and disgrace, dragging the bodies of its soldiers." That was Osama bin Laden, in an ABC interview in 1998, the same year al Qaeda blew up the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, murdering more than 220. Two years later he struck at the U.S.S Cole off Yemen and killed 17 sailors. The next year his suicide bombers hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and killed more than 3,000 Americans.

Murtha on reform and corruption:

If Jack Murtha, a backroom operator who is blunder-prone when speaking publicly, is Democrats' idea of fresh leadership, the party is in real trouble. Far from advancing the Democratic argument that Republicans have bred a "culture of corruption" while in power, Mr. Murtha's leadership bid would open a Pandora's box of questions about his own record.

In 1980, prosecutors named Mr. Murtha an "unindicted co-conspirator" in the Abscam scandal. The FBI captured him on tape saying he wasn't interested in taking a $50,000 payment from agents posing as Arab sheiks "at this point," but he was open to further discussions. The House Ethics Committee cleared him, but E. Barrett Prettyman, the committee's special counsel for the Abscam probe, questioned the panel's competence, likening it to "a misdemeanor court faced with a multiple murder." Mr. Prettyman abruptly resigned his post the same afternoon the committee voted to clear Mr. Murtha. While Mr. Prettyman continues to refuse to discuss the case, he told Roll Call newspaper in 1990 that it would be "a logical conclusion" that he resigned over the committee's exoneration of Mr. Murtha.

Finally, Murtha on earmarks (and corruption):

Mr. Murtha has been front and center in the controversy over earmarks, the individual portions of pork members of Congress often secretly secure for their districts or favored constituents. A Harper's magazine study has concluded that "the most effective ally for the earmark-seeker is a lobbyist who is actually related, by blood or marriage, to a powerful member of an appropriations committee."

Rep. Murtha is the ranking Democratic member of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee and for the past three years has been the House's top recipient of defense industry cash. Therefore, few in Washington are surprised that his lobbyist brother, Robert "Kit" Murtha, is an enormously successful "earmark specialist" for the Beltway firm KSA Consulting. In recent years, Kit Murtha has brought in a mother lode of earmarks for at least 16 defense manufacturers with business before the Appropriations Committee.

Last year the Los Angeles Times reported that "most of KSA's defense contractor clients hired the firm in hopes of securing funding from Rep. Murtha's subcommittee, according to lobbying records and interviews. And most retained the firm after Kit Murtha became a senior partner in 2002." Kit Murtha told the Times that he saw Rep. Murtha only infrequently but said the congressman knew he was a KSA lobbyist. "I don't think that influences him," Kit said of his brother. "I certainly would hope not."

Have I mentioned that Murtha has an opponent?

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