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By: Lachlan Carmichael
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President Barack Obama ordered flags to fly at half staff as he led tributes for a congressman whose influence in both domestic and foreign policy matters spanned more than three decades.
The conservative Democrat from Pennsylvania died peacefully in an Arlington, Virginia hospital with his family at his side, his office said.
Murtha played roles in the US overthrow of Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, in events that caused longtime strongman Ferdinand Marcos to flee the Philippines, and in funding CIA supplies of arms to anti-Soviet Islamic militants in Afghanistan.
Chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, Murtha was known by some critics as the "King of Pork" for steering some two billion dollars in taxpayer money to his district over the last 18 years.
Murtha voted in 2002 for the US-led invasion of Iraq in the following months but then set off a firestorm in Washington in November 2005 when he said time had come for US forces to leave Iraq.
In 2006, Murtha also issued explosive charges that US soldiers killed unarmed civilians in Haditha, Iraq and that the US military tried to cover it up.
The congressman's office said Murtha, first elected to the House of Representatives in February, 1974, died from complications from surgery to remove his gallbladder.
He was the first combat veteran of the Vietnam war to be elected to Congress.
"Jack's tough-as-nails reputation carried (from the US Marines) over to Congress, where he became a respected voice on issues of national security," Obama said.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates also paid the late lawmaker a fond tribute.
"I will always remember and be grateful for Congressman Murtha's personal efforts on behalf of the Afghan resistance fighting the Soviets -- efforts that helped bring about the end of the Cold War," Gates said in a statement.
Top US military chief Admiral Mike Mullen praised him by saying that US troops and their families "had no greater champion."
"No one understood the needs of our modern military better than (Murtha)," said Mullen. "And no one ever made a stronger case for those needs."
In the 1980s, Murtha worked with Texas congressman Charlie Wilson on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee to secretly provide funding for the Central Intelligence Agency to supply arms to the Afghan fighters, according to a biography from his office.
"Stinger missiles became successful in shooting down Soviet helicopters and aircraft and turning the tide for the Afghan resistance," it said.
In 1989, president George H.W. Bush named Murtha as chairman of the US delegation to monitor the elections in Panama, according to the biography.
Following widespread charges of fraud, Noriega removed the constitutionally elected president and declared his party winner.
Traveling several more times to Panama, his office said, Murtha helped relay messages to the "defeated" candidates from the Bush administration about support for a US military intervention in December 1989 that deposed Noriega.
The congressman became famous for funneling government money to his western Pennsylvania district, such as for the oversized John Murtha Airport just outside small Johnstown.
With two runways, a restaurant, lounge and fully-equipped air traffic control tower, the airport caters to all of three flights a day.
President Ronald Reagan named Murtha and Senator Dick Lugar as chairmen of a delegation to monitor the Philippine elections of 1986. They concluded the Marcos regime stole the election through fraud and manipulation.
Marcos fled the country and Corazon Aquino became president after Murtha's delegation convinced Reagan to delay certifying the election, Murtha's office said.
In 1982 and 1983, House speaker Tip O'Neill sent Murtha to Beirut to assess Reagan's decision to deploy US Marines to Lebanon during the civil war, and he warned how vulnerable they were before their barracks were blown up by militants in October 1983.
In 1975, then-president Gerald Ford asked Murtha to join the first congressional fact-finding mission to Vietnam following the pullout of US forces, and returned later to discuss Americans missing in action, said the biography.
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© 1994-2009 Agence France-Presse
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