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The sound you hear is the sound of election-conscious Democrats tiptoeing away from Rep. John Murtha. As they once did with Cindy Sheehan, whose own Democratic-orchestrated popularity peaked when she demanded U.S. troops leave "occupied New Orleans," Democrats perhaps are realizing their mistake in pumping Mr. Murtha's antiwar views all over the televisions of ordinary Americans who now associate him with their party. According to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, at a panel discussion in Miami on Saturday, Mr. Murtha said that the "American presence in Iraq is more dangerous to world peace than nuclear threats from North Korea or Iran."...

Rep. John Murtha (D.-Pa.) appears to be suffering "Daschle-itis," a figurative disease which makes entrenched incumbents become national celebrities and, in the process, risk alienating the voters that put them in office. Since seizing his party's anti-war mantle, Murtha has become a great draw for Democratic fundraisers, helping his party boost its prospects for a congressional takeover. Naturally, this helps his party-leadership bid as well. But at the same time, his outspokenness made him a huge target for the Internet right. His district went for John Kerry with only 51% in 2004. What originally seemed like a long-shot bid by...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senate Democrats presented two plans for winding down U.S. involvement in Iraq on Monday, one to pull out U.S. combat forces by July 2007 and another to begin withdrawing this year without a deadline for completion. With an election looming in November, Republicans branded the two plans as defeatist and evidence of Democratic disarray. The Senate was to debate the amendments on Tuesday in the annual defense policies bill. "Three and a half years into the conflict, we should tell the Iraqis that the American security blanket is not permanent," said Sen. Carl Levin (news, bio, voting...

The only thing more pathetic than the Democrats' floundering disunity on the war is their timing. They have renewed their demands for a precipitous withdrawal in Iraq at a time when even they would be hard pressed to deny that the momentum has changed against the terrorists. Don't get me wrong. I think we have been winning all along in Iraq, despite the wall-to-wall negative coverage. But recent developments must surely give the naysayers pause as well. The death of Iraq terrorist chieftain Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was a watershed event. That we were able to find this elusive leader in...

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., will this week introduce legislation to pull the majority of U.S. troops out of Iraq by the end of 2006, his office announced. Kerry will offer an amendment to the 2007 defense authorization bill. The recent trend in Iraq has been to increase rather than decrease American troops. Earlier this month the U.S. military announced that 3,500 troops -- two battalions of a brigade that was being held in Kuwait as a back up force -- had been deployed to Anbar province, the heart of the insurgency. Those battalions joined another that had already been called...

Some Democrats, breaking ranks from their leadership, today said the death of terrorist leader Abu Musab Zarqawi in Iraq was a stunt to divert attention from an unpopular and hopeless war. "This is just to cover Bush's [rear] so he doesn't have to answer" for Iraqi civilians being killed by the U.S. military and his own sagging poll numbers, said Rep. Pete Stark, California Democrat. "Iraq is still a mess -- get out."

At Moran's Arlington Forum, Pa. Democrat Again Urges Pullout In an emotional two-hour public forum in Arlington last night on the Iraq war, one of the Bush administration's chief critics, Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), renewed his call for an immediate pullout, saying, "We've become the enemy." Murtha, a blunt-spoken decorated war veteran, has become a hero to the antiwar movement after he was denounced as a coward for his call to bring U.S. troops home from Iraq. Murtha's views had drawn sharp criticism earlier in the day from Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff....

Let me guess. These words were taken out of context.

The DRUDGE REPORT has learned from a top GOP operative that the Republican National Committee will provide state parties with a web video prior to release tomorrow afternoon that shows a white flag waving over images of Democrat leaders making anti-war remarks. The ad is in response to the controversial comments Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean and 2004 Democratic Presidential nominee John Kerry made earlier in the week. A Democratic strategist who had the web ad described to her said, “This is way over the top but we have no one to blame but Dean, Kerry and others who continue...

Top Dems leave as protest nears Party split between anti-war activists and prominent critics STEVEN THOMMA Knight Ridder Posted on Fri, Sep. 23, 2005 WASHINGTON - As the anti-war movement arrives in Washington this weekend, many Democrats are leaving. Nationally known Democratic war critics, including Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, Russell Feingold of Wisconsin and John Kerry of Massachusetts, won't attend what sponsors say will be a big anti-war rally Saturday in Washington. **SNIP** En route to Washington for the rally, anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan protested outside Clinton's New...

Cindy Sheehan may be the Rosa Parks of the anti-war movement. But that didn't stop members of the New York Police Department from marching into the crowd of about 150 people gathered in Union Square Monday to hear her speak and yanking away the microphone. The NYPD pulled the plug just as Sheehan was calling on the audience

GLENWOOD SPRINGS - Reflecting the national divide over the war in Iraq, a Glenwood Springs church has decided that the country's most well-know war protester, Cindy Sheehan, is not welcome to speak there. The decision sends organizers scrambling for another local speaking venue for the mother of a soldier who died in Iraq. Sheehan, who has garnered much media attention after camping out near President Bush's vacation home in Crawford, Texas, had been scheduled to speak at the First United Methodist Church in downtown Glenwood Sept. 16. Church member Dean Moffatt, who had helped arrange to let Sheehan speak at...

Gordon has declined to reveal other information about Harper, including her age, how she met Kucinich or how long they have been a couple Wedding guests included Cleveland Mayor Jane Campbell, some of Kucinich's colleagues in Congress and actors Shirley MacLaine (search) and Sean Penn (search). MacLaine and Kucinich are longtime friends, and Penn endorsed Kucinich for president last year.

The Fallen Hero and the Living Traitor By Lt. Col. Gordon Cucullu FrontPageMagazine.com August 2, 2005 Here is yet another case of the kind of bizarre juxtaposition that continues to characterize the Vietnam War well into the first decade of the new century. I refer on the one hand to the recent loss of Admiral James B. Stockdale, a highly decorated Navy aviator and prisoner of war of the North Vietnamese for seven grueling years. His funeral services were held, appropriately, on the Navy carrier the USS Ronald Reagan with the full military honors the Medal of Honor winner deserved....

See Dick talk. See Hanoi Jane talk. Mark Malaszczyk July 29, 2005 She is nipped. She is tucked. She is enhanced. And she is BACK. Sixty-seven year old Actress/Activist Jane Fonda has announced that she will launch a cross-country bus tour to protest the war in Iraq, scheduled for March 2006. "I've decided that I'm coming out," she said. Green tea drinking, tofu-eating, Birkenstock-wearing, pale, emaciated vegans with multi-colored ribbons all over their tattered backpacks are rejoicing across America, running to get a second tattoo on their lower back and a ninth piercing in their left ear in tribute to...

FRANCE -- "Hanoi Jane" Fonda seems to have tired of her moniker. The wilted flower child who firmly established her place in American history when she mounted a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun has decided it's time to teach a whole new generation to blame America first. If she actually goes through with her plans for a new protest movement, she may well become known as "Jihadist Jane." It has a better ring. More alliteration. Fonda says she wants to criss-cross the nation in a bus powered by vegetable oil, advocating the end of U.S. military operations in Iraq. She's inviting...

Jul 25, 9:04 AM (ET) (AP) Jane Fonda poses for a portrait at the Four Seasons Hotel Sunday, April 10, 2005, in Los Angeles.... Full Image SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) - Actress and activist Jane Fonda says she intends to take a cross-country bus tour to call for an end to U.S. military operations in Iraq. "I can't go into any detail except to say that it's going to be pretty exciting," she said. Fonda said her anti-war tour in March will use a bus that runs on "vegetable oil." She will be joined by families of Iraq war veterans...

Jane Fonda has worked as an actress and then retired, gotten married and divorced several times, condemned cosmetic surgery and then had eye lifts and breast implants (and later had the implants removed). The list of reversals is a long one, but in one area of her fabled life Fonda has remained resolute. She refuses to pass up an opportunity to take a stand against American foreign policy when U.S. service men and women are fighting totalitarian forces in the world. Famous for posing, smiling, in a photo on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun, Fonda is now planning a national...

The VFW is asking for names for Jane Fonda's vegetable oil powered bus tour in March. What say you Freepers? Post them here and then go to the VFW's website and share it with them.