(CBS) The vast majority of American troops will be out of Iraq by the end of this year. Who says so? Congressman John Murtha says so, and he explains his plan to make that happen to correspondent Mike Wallace.
The 73-year-old Democrat from Pennsylvania is a much-decorated war hero from Vietnam and Korea; a heavyweight in military matters in the Congress who stunned the Bush White House last November by calling for the withdrawal of all American troops from Iraq.
I was watching this in a restaurant tonight. I asked my wife if I could barf now. She said "no", so I had to turn around and stop watching the show.
"One of the problems they have with enlistment is because they continually say how well things are going and the troops on the ground know better," Murtha adds
I hate to tell old Bourbon Breath, but re-enlistment is so high that even with the earlier problems with first time enlistments (the goals for which have been met more recently) that the overlevel of the Army has been maintained.
So the troops that are on the ground, and know the truth, are re-enlisting in larger than expected numbers. Meanwhile, due to Mr. Unwinable War and his Komrades at Code Pink, first time enlistments have suffered. After all, who wants to go fight in a war that's supposedly "already lost", and isn't important to the US anyway.
His other theme is that the "insurgents" are not terrorists, that there are few if any terrorists in Iraq, and those few all came after we went in. Of course that's not what we are hearing from people on the ground, but heck what do they know?
I have to give CBS a little credit, they do report that they did not find any troops that agreed with Murtha, and that most thought the mission both worthwhile and going well. But of course Murtha had the answer to that to. He didn't say "they are too dumb to know any better", but what he said was pretty much equivalent. Go read the story for yourself, if you have a strong stomach.
But to give you another taste, he said
"But you just can’t sit back and allow this war to continue on without a clear exit strategy. That’s the reason I’m so strong about this. I feel a mission here, with my experience, that, that I have to help the president find a way out of this thing."
Try winning as an exit strategy. It works every time.
I missed this post last night. It was awful to watch.