Check the full context here, 2d para: http://www.breitbart.com/news/2005/11/18/D8DVAQ6O3.html
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1525014/posts
"Our troops have become the enemy. We need to change direction in Iraq," said Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, a Democratic hawk whose call a day earlier for pulling out troops sparked a nasty, personal debate over the war.
Did Murtha actually say those exact words.
What an asinine thing to say. OF COURSE ARE TROOPS ARE THE ENEMY OF THE TERRORIST!! That is exactly the way WE WANT IT!
Murtha's just the latest in the Parade of Yay-Hoos the Dems have spent some three years trotting out to sour Americans on the war and thereby "get even" with President Bush. He has served his purpose, and since he is yet another failure, will be quickly tossed aside by his handlers.
king traitor!
Can you imagine the great ads this kind of stuff is going to produce in '06?
With any luck, this is the last time we hear from this Vietnam "hero". His fifteen-minutes have come to an end.
>> "A disgrace," declared House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. "The rankest of politics and the absence of any sense of shame," added Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 House Democrat.
Wow.
The way I look at it, If OUR troops were the friends of the enemy......THAT would be a problem.
The MSM will now procede to give Murtha the same "big kiss" treatment that Jim Jeffords got when he changed his party in 2001.
Dateline NBC, Sixty Minutes, Barbara Walters and Larry King are going to battle to " Get the Guest".
We will two weeks of this shameless pontificating of this man
This is not news. Murtha flaked out on the liberation of Iraq even before Congress approved it. In September 2002, a month before the congressional authorization, an outfit called Veterans for Common Sense reported that Murtha was "questioning a war-powers resolution that even most Democratic leaders seem reluctant to oppose":
"All of us want to get rid of Saddam," Murtha says. But he believes that [President] Bush "went about it the wrong way." . . .Murtha says a key reason for questioning a second Iraq war is strategic. He's worried that it would cost the United States not only money and lives, but also important allies. By moving without international support, Bush could alienate Arab allies, and "we could lose access to the intelligence we need to fight the war on terrorism." . . .
Nothing he has seen in intelligence reports has convinced him that Bush needs to rush through a resolution, Murtha says. Even so, he has not decided how he will vote.
Murtha ended up voting in favor of the liberation. Then, in May 2004, as the Associated Press reported, he called for more troops:
"We cannot prevail in this war as it is going today," Murtha said yesterday at a news conference with House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi. Murtha said the incidents of prisoner abuse in Iraq were a symptom of a problem in which U.S. troops in Iraq are undermanned, inadequately equipped and poorly trained."We either have to mobilize or we have to get out," Murtha said, adding that he supported increasing U.S. troop strength rather than pulling out.
Murtha had rather eccentric views about where the increased troop strength should come from. As we noted in October 2004, he was one of only two members of Congress to vote for a bill that would have reinstated the draft--a bill opposed even by its sponsor, grandstanding Charlie Rangel.
An exchange with Margaret Warner on last night's "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer," though, suggests that Murtha has simply taken leave of reality:
Warner: But may I ask you, sir, if you believe--[the president] says--for whatever reason, Iraq has become the center of terrorism - that if the U.S. appears to retreat in the face of that, that it will be a blow to the American fight against radical Islamic terrorism? What do you say to that?Murtha: Well, I say that the fight against Americans began with Abu Ghraib. It began with the invasion of Iraq. That's when terrorism started. It didn't start when there was criticism of this administration. This administration doesn't want to listen to any ideas.
So according to Murtha, "terrorism started" either in March 2003 (with the "invasion of Iraq") or in May 2004 (when the Abu Ghraib miniscandal came to light). One wonders where he was in, say, September 2001. One wonders, too, how a political party can keep a straight face while putting him forward as a spokesman on national security.
Sounds like he's suffering from the onset of early Alzheimer's.
I believe that Rep. Murtha meant something along the lines of, "We have seen the enemy and he is us."
I think he also called American SOldiers the "catalyst for violence" in Iraq.
Given that polls show this to be the case and that there is obviously some popular support for the insurgency, it is disingenuous to foam at the mouth about Murtha's remark.