Saturday, February 17, 2007
John Murtha's "alarming ignorance about conditions in Iraq"
Those aren't my words, they are the judgment of the editors of The Washington Post.
Mr. Murtha's cynicism is matched by an alarming ignorance about conditions in Iraq. He continues to insist that Iraq "would be more stable with us out of there," in spite of the consensus of U.S. intelligence agencies that early withdrawal would produce "massive civilian casualties." He says he wants to force the administration to "bulldoze" the Abu Ghraib prison, even though it was emptied of prisoners and turned over to the Iraqi government last year. He wants to "get our troops out of the Green Zone" because "they are living in Saddam Hussein's palace"; could he be unaware that the zone's primary occupants are the Iraqi government and the U.S. Embassy?
My words would be "dumber than a bag of rusty hammers."
The WaPo moves quickly from attack to despair disguised as wishful thinking: "It would be nice to believe that Mr. Murtha does not represent the mainstream of the Democratic Party or the thinking of its leadership." It would also be nice to believe that withdrawal from Iraq will improve the strategic position of the United States. After all, easy decisions are, well, so much easier than hard decisions.
More links here.
13 Comments:
By 
, at
Sat Feb 17, 06:05:00 PM:
Aren't Murtha's views reflective of views of Generals who cannot speak their mind publicly?
By 
TigerHawk, at
Sat Feb 17, 06:20:00 PM:
Only according to Anonymous sources.
More seriously, you can always find a general who does not want to fight the war being fought, especially when it is an unpopular war back home. I've been a fan of General Petraeus since early in the war, have followed his career since, and have no doubt that when he believes the jig is up he will say so.
By SR, at
Sat Feb 17, 06:21:00 PM:
If the "Generals who cannot speak their mind publicly" are equally clueless, then we are better off for their silence. Anyway, if they can't speak their mind, then how does anybody know what their views are?
By SR, at
Sat Feb 17, 06:22:00 PM:
If the "Generals who cannot speak their mind publicly" are equally clueless, then we are better off for their silence. Anyway, if they can't speak their mind, then how does anybody know what their views are?
By , at
Sat Feb 17, 06:55:00 PM:
Aren't Murtha's views reflective of views of Generals who cannot speak their mind publicly?
No.
By Purple Avenger, at
Sat Feb 17, 06:57:00 PM:
Aren't Murtha's views reflective of views of Generals who cannot speak their mind publicly?
One would expect hundreds of resigned general officer commissions were that the case.
By , at
Sat Feb 17, 08:25:00 PM:
No, Murtha's views are not reflective of my views.
By , at
Sat Feb 17, 09:13:00 PM:
On Nov 8, 2006, we opened wide the doors to the insane asylum and freed these idiots, who promptly had their way with us in WASH. And we expected better......? I didn't. We are getting what the American electorate voted for then, and should have expected now, but didn't........
Shame on US......
By K. Pablo, at
Sat Feb 17, 11:03:00 PM:
Dumber than a June Bug. I didn't know what that meant until I moved to The South. Now I know, and it's pretty dumb.
By Gordon Smith, at
Sun Feb 18, 09:51:00 AM:
So, Hawk, you're saying that if, tomorrow, Petreaus were to say, "Our best course forward is to redeploy troops elsewhere, while leaving troops in place for training purposes. We are in the center of a Sunni/Shia civil war exascerbated by all manner of foreign fighters, and our presence is more problematic than helpful."
Then you would say that we ought to get out of Iraq?
Is this right?
And if he did, would Murtha have been right?
And when/if the surge doesn't work, what then? Will we move the goalposts yet again?
By allen, at
Sun Feb 18, 10:43:00 AM:
Posted elsewhere, but Mr. Murtha brings it to mind here.
For those with an extra fifteen minutes, read this most cogent rebuff of moral equivalency to come down the pike in many a day. It is equally applicable to Islam or Global Warming.
For example, consider this gem:
“This is one of the incidental rewards of cultural equivalence; it blunts the critical senses and levels all values until people who know nothing about any given subject feel entitled to assert things about that subject with great confidence and a whiff of righteousness. One can, as Ian Stewart warned, believe whatever one wants.”
Blunting the Senses in the Name of Fairness
H/T LGF and the Elephant Bar
Link
By , at
Sun Feb 18, 08:20:00 PM:
Leave it to liberal policians to screw up everything with their screwball ideas
By , at
Wed Feb 21, 12:09:00 PM:
if, tomorrow, Petreaus were to say, "Our best course forward is to redeploy troops elsewhere...
Then you would say that we ought to get out of Iraq?
That depends. Would he also immediately discredit himself by suggesting a redeployment to a base 5000 miles away from which we would have response times measured in minutes? A base in a country that wants nothing more than for the current flock of US troops based there to get out of there?
See, it's all in the way that it's stated, and Rep. Murtha (Dumbass - PA) hasn't got the credibility to be making such statements, much less screwing around with purse strings and deployment requirements (rules which should be left completely up to military leaders to decide) intended to hamstring the CiC.
I doubt that you can see the difference, though.
