Posted on 11/17/2005 4:20:47 PM PST by churchillbuff
Don't know how many of you caught Rep. John Murtha's very angry, very moving speech just now in which he called on the White House to institute an immediate withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. CNN didn't air the entire thing, but as I listened to it, I could feel the ground shift. Murtha, as you know, is not a Pelosi-style Chardonnay Democrat; he's a crusty retired career Marine who reminds me of the kinds of beer-slugging Democrats we used to have before the cultural left took over the party. Murtha, a conservative Dem who voted for the war, talked in detail about the sacrifices being borne by our soldiers and their families, and about his visits out to Walter Reed to look after the maimed, and how we've had enough, it's time to come home. He was hell on the president too.
If tough, non-effete guys like Murtha are willing to go this far, and can make the case in ways that Red America can relate to -- and listening to him talk was like listening to my dad, who's about the same age, and his hunting buddies -- then the president is in big trouble. I'm sure there's going to be an anti-Murtha pile-on in the conservative blogosphere, but from where I sit, conservatives would be fools not to take this man seriously.
(Excerpt) Read more at corner.nationalreview.com ...
This is so transparent, so organized.
The demands that we get out RIGHT NOW, IMMEDIATELY etc.
Is it OK if we at least wait until after the parlimentary election next month before we cut and run? /s
Aside from abandoning the Iraqi people, proving to terrorists that we can be rolled, and guaranteeing that the war effort was for nothing, could we at least wait until the completion of the election timetable if nothing else?
Do these dim traitors even know there is an election scheduled and that both the Bush WH and our own common sense tell us that violence will increase during the run up?
Or are they afraid that this election, like the others before it, will be a huge success so are keeping those waters as muddied as possible?
They are trying to forestall a good result in the December 15 election. That is why they are ramping up the story about torture cells in Baghdad. This is going out over Al Jazz to all the Sunnis. Ironically, they all have TVs. I hope it has the effect of making them turn out for the election to save their asses.
Everyone assumed that Max Cleland was wounded in combat until he started grandstanding about his military record.
Not everyone. Some of us already knew that.
"You and Murtha belong at a different website.
Tell me how his arguments for an immediate withdrawal are valid and credible and not a politically timed grandstand while the pres is overseas.
So what if he is a Nam vet. BFD.
He is one of the assholes calling for a draft.
He is throwing a hissy fit because he cannot personally micromanage this conflict from his armchair in DC.
Screw him and the horse he rode in on, senator or not.
He does not speak for current veterans, and active duty folks."
I was going to post... but, you know, this says it all.
Churchillbuff is doing a pretty good job for a liberal. After a few more years he/she may even achieve Murrymom's iconic-like stature.
CB still has a way to go, though, but today's anti-Bush, anti-war post helps quite a bit and nudges him up a few milligrams on the FR liberal bullometer.
May the saints preserve them both......they keep our debating skills razor sharp.
Leni
Exactly. They are afraid of the good news. The more shrill the attacks, the more you know we are winning. The Dems are trying to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory once again to gain political advantage. America loses, the Dems win.
But the truth about them did not become common knowledge to most Americans until decades after the fact, perhaps not even now.
Murtha is a more obscure person than either of them.
I will not proceed on the assumption that someone who stabs our troops in the back has a clean record. That's a silly assumption to make when someone has already openly displayed complete moral turpitude.
The lesson of Vietnam is that Vietnam fell because a Democratic Congress ended miliatry support of the South Vietnamese government and refused to let Ford hammer the North Vietnamese tank columns that were lumbering down the highways. The Democrats had bought the Kerry story that the American military was an instrument of the devil. They still believe that. Corollary to that was the belief in the goodness of the enemy. Nixon contributed to this by opening relations with Mao. In a way that was as cynical as Hitler's pact with Stalin.
More likely we will have to make a decision about the Kurds. Right now we have their good will and can use their area to put pressure on the Iranians AND the Turks.
If that is your criterion, then there are plenty of ex-Generals and Admirals out there who fit the bill, e.g., Zinni, Powell, McPeak, Crowe, Scowcroft, and Hoar, just to name a few. Maybe they have phony war records as well.
Maybe you're grasping at straws in your obsession with your hero, Johnny "Cut and Run" Murtha.
The only thing Murtha "breaks" is wind.
North Korea and China would DESTROY US! Murtha wants us to be LOSERS....he's an old tired man who has NO VISION!
Agree. On June 19, 1973, the U.S. Congress passed the ase-Church Amendment which forbid any further U.S. military involvement in Southeast Asia, effective August 15, 1973. The veto-proof vote was 278-124 in the House and 64-26 in the Senate. The Amendment paved the way for North Vietnam to wage yet another invasion of the South, this time without fear of U.S. bombing. The US effectively stopped funding the South Vietnamese military effort.
We had steady draw down of troops concluding on March 29, 1973 when the last remaining American troops withdrew from Vietnam as President Nixon declares "the day we have all worked and prayed for has finally come." January 27, 1973 marked the last American soldier to die in combat in Vietnam, Lt. Col. William B. Nolde.
The Democrats had bought the Kerry story that the American military was an instrument of the devil. They still believe that. Corollary to that was the belief in the goodness of the enemy.
The Dems didn't buy Kerry's story. They used it as a fig leaf to get out of the war and save their political hides. They wanted to disassociate themselves from Johnson's war, which became Nixon's war. Of course, they don't want to be held responsible for what happened aftre we left and the MSM gives them a pass.
Nixon contributed to this by opening relations with Mao. In a way that was as cynical as Hitler's pact with Stalin.
Nixon was trying to stabilize and regularize relations with the PRC, particularly after the political vacuum of our departure from Vietnam. When Nixon visited China in February 1972, there were around 70,000 US troops in Vietnam.
Carnage aside, what happens to AQ after we leave? Does Murtha believe that they will leave as well? Iraq is part and parcel of the WOT. We are fighting the same people who took down the WTC on 9/11 along with the insurgents.
The Democrats DESPISE Bush because he's a CHRISTIAN......period.
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