California Conservative

Jack Murtha is at it again, reports the AP’s Dan Lovering. Here’s a sampling of his cut-and-run statements:

U.S. Rep. John Murtha, a key Democrat on military issues, on Monday defended his call to pull U.S. troops from Iraq, saying he was reflecting Americans’ sentiment. “The public turned against this war before I said it,” Murtha said. “The public is emotionally tied into finding a solution to this thing, and that’s what I hope this administration is going to find out.”

To suggest that there’s a huge groundswell of American support for cutting and running is belied by the fact that House Democrats ran for the hills when House Republicans called for a vote to show where each congressman stood on the issue of Murtha’s retreat/immediate withdrawal.

Murtha’s obviously heard from some military families who would rather see us withdraw but I haven’t seen anything to suggest that that’s anything but a tiny minority opinion.

It was rejected 403-3, but Democrats said the quick call for the vote was a political stunt designed to undermine Murtha’s comments. “The guys in Congress are scared to death to say anything because they might be vilified,” Murtha said. “The soldiers can’t speak for themselves. We sent them to war and, by God, we’re the ones that have to speak out.”

John Murtha’s right in saying that the vote was “designed to undermine” his comments but he couldn’t be further from the truth in saying that it was a political stunt. At his press conference, he called for an immediate redeployment with no flexibility in timing. That’s what the Sense of the House resolution addressed. In other words, the “political stunt” that Murtha’s refering to is forcing people to take a stand on the most important issue of our time. Imagine the gall of pinning people down to a consistent, coherent position on this life and death matter.

As for representatives being “scared to death to say anything because they might be vilified,” they’d better be scared to death for advocating a losing strategy in the GWOT.

“You can’t spin this. You’ve got to have a real solution,” Murtha said. “This is not a war of words, this is a war.” Aware that his comments last week would draw fire from conservatives, Murtha said he specifically asked more liberal members of his party not to step forward to support him.

Mr. Murtha, how dare you say that this is a real war when you’re advocating a full-fledged, unconditional retreat. You should and will get verbally slapped down for this statement, starting right here. And that, sir, isn’t spin. It’s fact.

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRing

This entry was posted on Monday, November 21st, 2005 at 6:55 pm and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Foreign Policy, Iraq, Middle East. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.