And Democratic Congressman John Murtha of Pennsylvania has died at the age of seventy-seven. He was the powerful chair of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. In 2002, Murtha voted to support the invasion of Iraq, but three years later he shocked many in Washington when he introduced a bill calling for the immediate withdrawal of US troops.

John Murtha: “I believe we should redeploy responsibly as quickly as possible. I feel very strongly we can’t desert Iraq, but we have to find a way to reduce our presence. We’ve actually become the enemy in some cases. When you look at what’s happened with our troops occupying the country when they said we’d be liberators, some of the military things that we have to do as military and some of the enemies we’ve made, we really lost ground. The incidents are increasing, rather than decreasing. We’ve got 130,000 troops, and we’re spending $8 billion a month, and we need to reduce our presence and let the Iraqis take over.”

Murtha’s congressional career was tainted by his close ties to the defense industry. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington listed Murtha on its most corrupt congressmen list for five years in a row.