November 18, 2005

Swinging at Murtha

The Bush White House must be comfortable that Patrick Fitzgerald--who will work with a new grand jury--won't pop any more indictments on anyone. Ever since the President's pro-war speech last Friday the administration has been punching back against war opponents. Yesterday, one-time pro-war Democratic Congressman John Murtha called to "immediately redeploy U.S. troops consistent with the safety of U.S. forces." In other words, cut and run regardless of military morale or the impression of victory it would give America's Islamists enemies. Remember, Bin Laden was energized by the pullout from Somalia, and terrorists were embolden to attack Israel when she pulled out of southern Lebanon.

Press Secretary Scott McClellan shot out a terse four-sentence reply:

Congressman Murtha is a respected veteran and politician who has a record of supporting a strong America. So it is baffling that he is endorsing the policy positions of Michael Moore and the extreme liberal wing of the Democratic party. The eve of an historic democratic election in Iraq is not the time to surrender to the terrorists. After seeing his statement, we remain baffled -- nowhere does he explain how retreating from Iraq makes America safer.

Being a "media-shy congressman" I doubt Murtha will fire back.

For the most part Murtha doesn't approve of the way the war has been fought, not the war itself. That makes his critique different than other knee-jerk, Bush-bashing, anti-war Democrats. In his press conference Murtha said, "We spend more money on Intelligence that all the countries in the world together, and more on Intelligence than most countries GDP. But the intelligence concerning Iraq was wrong." With still few indications of what happened to the WMDs that is the case. However, the Congressman went on to say, "It is not a world intelligence failure. It is a U.S. intelligence failure and the way that intelligence was misused." Oh, contraire, Congressman. During the run-up to the war no one doubted Saddam has WMDs. The U.N. thought so, the Russians, the French (one minister admits he was paid off by Saddam), the Germans, and the Brits all did. In the Clinton administration a host of people worried publically about Saddam's WMDs. The only one who said Iraq was WMD-less was Saddam, and his track record was awful.

"The Murtha Plan For Iraq"