"USS Cold Blooded Killers" (LPD 26)

USS John P. Murtha (LPD-26), will be the 10th San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock ship of the United States Navy. It will be named in honor of Congressman John Murtha (1932–2010) of Pennsylvania.
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Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, who by tradition actually gets to pick naval ship names, picked John P. Murtha last spring. But Mabus' decision has met steady opposition from many former sailors and Marines. They believe naming a vessel for Murtha rewards a lawmaker who both called for pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq in late 2005, and who has been implicated in bribery and pork-barrel politics. ...A spokesman for LAWYER Mabus says the Navy secretary has no plans to reverse course.
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Sailors and Marines are coming up with their own names for the Murtha. Right now, USS Cold Blooded Killers seems to be their top choice.
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On Friday, a former Murtha aide-turned-lobbyist was sentenced to 27 months in prison for evading limits on campaign donations; Murtha also was an "unindicted co-conspirator" in 1980's FBI-run Abscam sting.
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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?"
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The Congressional Research Service, which advises lawmakers on the darker corners of U.S. government operations, recently took note of the confusion. "Some observers in recent years have perceived a breakdown in, or corruption of, the rules for naming Navy ships," it said. "For example, the three-ship Seawolf (SSN-21) class of attack submarines—Seawolf (SSN-21), Connecticut (SSN-22), and Jimmy Carter (SSN-23) —were named for a fish, a state, and a president, respectively, reflecting no apparent rule."
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Submarines are always silent and strange.