John Murtha, 2006 News

typically hawkish congressman from Pennsylvania, continued to be the Democrats' voice of the antiwar movement, frequently criticizing the Bush administration's handling of the war in Iraq and the toll it has taken on U.S. troops. In May, he held a press conference to discuss a not-yet-released official military report that U.S. Marines had killed 24 innocent Iraqis “in cold blood” in the city of Haditha on Nov. 19, 2005. The military did not launch a criminal investigation until mid-March, four months after the incident, and two months after TIME magazine had reported it to the military. In the weeks after Murtha's press conference, several other allegations of civilian murders by U.S. troops surfaced, providing further justification for his calls for a pullout of troops from Iraq.