John Murtha was a decorated Vietnam War veteran and it surprised many people that he was such a vocal opponent of the war in Iraq.

NOTE from Larry Scott, VA Watchdog dot Org ... Whether or not you agreed with John Murtha's politics ... he was a true friend of veterans. 

We have an article from Fox News and an obituary from The New York Times.

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Remembering John Murtha

Jack Murtha was a decorated Vietnam war veteran and it surprised many people that he was such a vocal opponent of the war in Iraq.

By Bob Beckel - FOXNews.com

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2010/02/08/bob-beckel-john-jack-m
urtha-pennsylvania-congressman-democrat-iraq/

Pennsylvania Democrat Rep. John "Jack" Murtha was certainly controversial but for the people in his district he did what congressmen are supposed to do – which is, to provide as many goods and services for his constituents as possible. He became the symbol of pork barrel spending in Washington but despite the criticism, Murtha always believed there was nothing wrong with pork and, in fact, it was your responsibility to get a much of the pork as possible.

Before he died, he was under investigation, yet again, for ethics violations. But this was nothing new for Murtha. He was constantly being scrutinized -- if not by the House Ethics Committee then by federal prosecutors or the Republican Party. In the end, it all rolled off Jack’s back. And he never seemed to buckle under the weight of the criticism. Think about it. He’s the only member of Congress who was able to build his own airport, in Johnstown, Penn. -- An airport which had virtually no flights and very few passengers, with the exception of Jack Murtha.

As much as he was criticized by his fellow colleagues in the Congress, it always amazed me, how many of them went to him when appropriations bills were coming up to ask for a pork chop or two for themselves.

Jack was decorated Vietnam war veteran and it surprised many people that he was such a vocal opponent of the war in Iraq. But he was beloved by veterans and veterans groups for his support for the Veterans Administration and VA hospitals and facilities that he put in appropriations bills over the years. He opposed the war out of conscience as a former warrior and as it turns out he was right.

Bob Beckel is a Democratic strategist and Fox News contributor.

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John P. Murtha, Iraq War Critic in Congress, Dies at 77

By DAVID STOUT

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/09/us/politics/09murtha.html?hp

WASHINGTON — Representative John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania, a gruff ex-Marine who was one of the most hawkish Democrats in Congress but who became an outspoken critic of the Iraq war, died on Monday in Arlington, Va. He was 77.

He died while under treatment for complications of gallbladder surgery, his office said.

The first Vietnam veteran to serve in Congress, Mr. Murtha voted in 2002 to authorize use of military force in Iraq. But he evolved into a leading foe of the war as it was conducted under the administration of President George W. Bush.

“The war in Iraq is not going as advertised,” Mr. Murtha said in November 2005, as he demanded an immediate withdrawal of American troops. He called the Iraq campaign “a flawed policy wrapped in illusion.”

Before speaking out on the war, Mr. Murtha was not much known outside Washington or his district in southwestern Pennsylvania. But he was alternately respected and feared by his colleagues, as he used his immense power on a military spending panel to funnel hundreds of millions of federal dollars into his hard-luck district, where prosperity had vanished with the decline of the coal and steel industries.

Mr. Murtha’s death came two days after he became the longest-serving congressman in Pennsylvania history, his office said, surpassing the record of Joseph M. McDade.

First elected in 1974, Mr. Murtha used his position as the top Democrat on the Appropriation Committee’s military subcommittee to reward or punish colleagues, depending on whether they went along with the special items, or “earmarks,” that he tucked into bills for the benefit of his 12th Congressional District. More often than not, they did.

The chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Representative David R. Obey, Democrat of Wisconsin, once described Mr. Murtha as someone “who likes to get things done with virtually no spoken words.”

Actually, Mr. Murtha understood the power of words quite well. “Let me tell you the facts of life,” he would tell balky legislators, as he recalled in a 2006 interview. “If you vote against this bill, you won’t have any input at all the next time.”

Nor was he the least apologetic about the political horse-trading in which he was so expert. “Deal making is what Congress is all about,” he said in that 2006 interview.

Mr. Murtha was the first Vietnam War combat veteran elected to Congress. While he steered huge sums to his district, he lived modestly in Johnstown, where he owned a car wash.

Mr. Murtha, who served five years in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives before going to Washington, was a protégé of Speaker Thomas P. O’Neill of Massachusetts, who may not have coined the phrase that “all politics is local” but surely embraced it. So did John P. Murtha, who once boasted on a campaign billboard that “The ‘P’ stands for power.” (It actually stood for Patrick.)

In some ways, Mr. Murtha was a man of contradictions. A slogan in his first campaign for Congress was “One Honest Man Is Enough.” Yet he barely survived the Abscam affair that ruined several politicians in the early 1980s. Mr. Murtha was shown on videotape turning down money from an undercover F.B.I. agent posing as a “sheikh,” but he expressed a willingness to revisit the money issue later.

Despite that awkward moment, he was never charged, and he eventually testified against two other Abscam defendants.

Early in 2009, he came under scrutiny again, when it came to light that federal agents had raided the offices of the PMA Group, a major Washington lobbying firm, in November 2008 as part of an investigation into potentially improper campaign contributions.

Mr. Murtha was among the lawmakers lobbied by the firm — no surprise, since the firm’s founder, Paul Magliocchetti, had worked for Mr. Murtha — and PMA’s executives and clients were major sources of contributions to Mr. Murtha’s campaigns. The firm’s specialty was helping clients obtain multimillion-dollar earmarks, Mr. Murtha’s stock in trade.

The PMA Group closed its doors in the aftermath of the investigation, and a Congressional ethics office declined to recommend formal investigations into the actions of Mr. Murtha and the other legislators. But the affair did nothing to dispel the impression that Mr. Murtha was not above running a political trading post.

Even Mr. Murtha’s own words did not defeat him. In October 2008, for example, he opined that some of his own constituents were “redneck” and “racist” and might have trouble voting for Barack Obama for president.

Trying to explain away his remarks, Mr. Murtha told local reporters that change was difficult for some people. “Particularly older people,” he went on, “they want change, but they don’t want to see things go too far.” That was a tactless thing to say in Pennsylvania, which then had the second-highest population of elderly people in the country, after Florida, according to The Almanac of American Politics.

But Mr. Murtha won handily anyhow, albeit over a political unknown. “You keep sending me back regardless of what I say,” he told his supporters on Election Night.

The special election that sent Mr. Murtha to Congress in February 1974 was watched for what it would say, if anything, about the strength of President Richard M. Nixon, who was being consumed by the Watergate scandal. Mr. Murtha won by fewer than 200 votes, out of some 120,000 cast, and he soon showed himself more comfortable with old-style, pork-and-parochial politics than with reformist themes ushered in by Watergate.

Born in New Martinsville, W.Va., on June 17, 1932, Mr. Murtha grew up in Mount Pleasant, Pa., about 45 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. He left Washington and Jefferson College in 1952 to enlist in the Marine Corps and go to Korea.

In a recent interview with The Johnston Tribune-Democrat, he recalled feeling that being in college just did not feel right while “there is a war going on; we are fighting the Communists.”

After graduating with a degree in economics from the University of Pittsburgh in 1962, he rejoined the Marines, serving as an officer in Vietnam in 1966 and 1967 and receiving a Bronze Star, two Purple Hearts and the Vietnam Cross of Gallantry.

Survivors include his wife of 55 years, Joyce; a daughter, Donna; twin sons John and Patrick, and three grandchildren.

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