Outrage: Marines Object to Putting John Murtha's Name on Amphibious Warship

John Murtha is an “unindicted co-conspirator” in 1980′s FBI-run Abscam sting who once claimed that Marines in the Iraqi city of Haditha “killed innocent civilians in cold blood.” The only thing Murtha should have named after him is a federal prison.

Time reported:

And that isn’t the worst of it, according to sailors and Marines: putting Murtha’s name on an amphibious warship designed to carry 700 Marines is outrageous, they maintain, given Murtha’s 2006 charge that Marines in the Iraqi city of Haditha “killed innocent civilians in cold blood.” (One of the eight Marines charged in the case still faces trial; six have had their charges dismissed and one was acquitted.) “Name a ship after a congressman who disgraced himself by rushing to judge that fellow Marines had committed murder in Iraq?”  Thomas Wilkerson, a retired Marine major general who now heads the non-profit U.S. Naval Institute, which advocates for the military’s maritime services, said Sunday. “Can you be serious?”