One Utah

Every beach landing is a frontal assault, the kind of thing the U.S. Army abhors– remember the first 20 minutes of “Saving Private Ryan”? The U.S. Marines train specifically to go straight in without a lot of support, because sometimes there’s no other way. I think that’s where Congressman John Murtha (D-PA), a 30-year veteran Marine officer, is coming from. He declared, in November 2005, that “the U.S. can not accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily” and it was time to get our troops out of there. “The public,” he has said repeatedly, “is already ahead of us on all this.” Most Washington politicians were behind Murtha– way, way behind.

As Murtha probably expected, a frontal assault on President Bush and his unwinnable war of choice triggered this administration’s standard “kill the messenger” response. Bush surrogates tried calling him a coward, questioning his patriotism and his combat service record. They tried to paint him as corrupt, based on the fact he refused a bribe during Abscam 26 years ago. It didn’t work. Murtha fought the swiftboaters, and blew them out of the water last November. Now he chairs the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense. “I will be recommending an aggressive pursuit of action that will allow us to reduce our military presence in Iraq at the soonest practicable date,” he says.

The Senate is unable to even bring to the floor a non-binding resolution against Bush’s escalation policy, and a worthy effort to rescind the October 2002 Authorization for the Use of Military Force is probably not going to go far. Murtha’s approach is to use the budgeting process– appropriations for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan must pass both houses of Congress, and Bush cannot veto the bill without de-funding the occupation of Iraq.

Now that Murtha is ready to do something to force re-deployment, as opposed to simply pointing out that the war has been a failure, the Fox News talking heads are more enraged than ever, “hysterical” according to Arianna Huffington yesterday on the Huffington Post. Last Sunday, Brit Hume tried to claim that John Murtha is senile, saying: “This guy is long past the day when he had anything but the foggiest awareness of what the heck is going on in the world.” Hume called Murtha an “absolute fountain” of “naivete.” Here’s Arianna’s comment:

I’m curious, Brit. As you look out over the political landscape, ready to heap your scorn on a political leader who might not be “well-informed” about Iraq and who doesn’t seem to have the “foggiest awareness of what the heck is going on in the world,” does your eye really settle on Jack Murtha? Not the guy who says he can’t judge whether Iraq is in a civil war while “living in this beautiful White House”? Just asking.

Sean Hannity apparently has decided that if you can’t kill the messenger, at least you can distort the message until it’s unrecognizable. Murtha intends to make funding for new combat deployments conditional on unit readiness (the Bush administration has criminally neglected training and support in order to send more troops to Iraq). Hannity calls this “taking away the equipment of troops in harm’s way.”

Oh, did I mention that neither Brit Hume nor Sean Hannity ever served in the military?

UPDATE: Over on DailyKos, BarbinMD says: Murtha’s plan “terrifies the Republicans because it would force them to choose between continuing their mindless support of Bush’s war, or actually voting in the best interest of the troops they so often claim to support. And of course that’s why the attack dogs are out in full force…”

This entry was posted Tuesday, February 20th, 2007 at 11:44 am and is filed under 4th Estate (Media), George W. Bush, Iraq, National Politics, Republicans, This Blog, War. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.