’)Hawkish dem congressman, former marine, calling for immediate withdrawl from Iraq…
“The war in Iraq is not going as advertised… our military is suffering, our country is at risk…”
>> Dem Video on “No Confidence” vote against Bush
>> John Aravosis: “This speech should mark a turning point for the debate on the Iraq war for the Democratic Party and the Congress.”
>> AP: House Democrat calls for immediate troop withdrawal
And how does the Republican base react to Rep. Murtha?
“Declare the Democratic party a seditious organization and ban it . Remove all by loyalty declaring Dems from their offices .”
“Another democrat has become a traitor and is giving aid and comfort to the enemy. He and the other democrats are responsible for the death of American military personnel. And American civilians if the terrorist are allowed to win.”
“The country needs a couple of show trials for treason. Jay Rockefeller, who in effect warned Saddam that we were coming, is a prime candidate. He gave Saddam time to hide the WMDs in Syria or elsewhere. Make an example of Sen. Rockerfella. Try him for TREASON.”
Prepare the padded cells.
>> And you got to love the freaking Speaker of the House making fun of our allies who have to fight terrorism: “We must not cower like European nations who are now fighting terrorists on their soil.” Way to stick the shiv in our palls, Hastert.
Did he claim the president took us to war for oil or to line the pockets of Halliburton? Did he claim he voted for the war based on false information provided by the president?
Nope. He called for an immediate withdrawal.
That’s the cue for “some” to start hollering “Cut and run!”
I notice none of the Amen chorus is here to call Rep. Murtha unpatriotic. Or, that he had the same info the President had. Or, that he’s an American hating lefty who should be tried for treason once Bush finally stops being meek and brings back the Sedition Act.
Why is that, I wonder?
JWG gets it, but no one else does. The problem with the Democrats is that there aren’t enough John Murthas, who are capable of delivering a message without sounding like Gore Vidal, having a hissy fit.
Instead, the party has been taken over by loons who shout shrill and mendacious slogans that turn off anyone who isn’t already a convert.
And most of the rest of them are wishy-washy opportunists, who went from Iraq hawk in August to dove in November, only because the poll numbers shifted. Yeah, that’s someone I’d really like to see voting on foreign policy and national security issues.
Actually, I was just wondering what Tuco had to say when Zell Miller was being a shrill mendacious loon at the RNC.
Haw. Project much?
I thought it was a bit over the top. Now, do you want to try to read my mind some more?
Murtha has at least one of his facts wrong -
“Oil production and energy production are below pre-war levels. Our reconstruction efforts have been crippled by the security situation”
The facts -
2.25 million bbl/day (2004 est.); note – prewar production (in 2002) was 2.03 million bbl/day (2004 est.)
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/fields/2173.html
What’d I say?
Is Hastert calling Murtha a quitter?
“Now, do you want to try to read my mind some more?”
You’re sounding kind of shrill, Tuco. Wanna go for mendacious?
In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act – George Orwell.
It’s dangerous to be right when the government is wrong – Voltaire.
Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices – Voltaire.
We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it – Edward R Murrow.
As soon as I saw the story, I thought, “Oliver will be all over this. Now, it is becoming like Viet Nam. The Democrats are yelling, “Cut and run!” “Cut and run!”, and the Republicans are saying, “We can’t quit now!”
History has already shown us what happened in Viet Nam, and who was right. Do we really want a Baathist return to power, or an Islamist Iraq? Do we want hundreds of thousands more Iraqi dead, because they “collaborated”?
What’s it going to be, Democrats? Abandon freedom – loving Iraqis?
The question you have to ask yourselves is this: Can the Democrats support bugging out of Iraq, and wipe the stench of death off themselves by Labor Day, 2006?
No, Oliver, I didn’t miss a thing… I was in the Army from 1966 to 1970, when you were a teenager — or younger.
I was in Viet Nam from 1969 to 1970.
I came home the day we finally invaded Cambodia. Instead of saying “It’s about time!” As I and a fellow soldier did — in unison — when we saw the headline in Honolulu, the mainstream press went crazy, making us the bad guys. Congress started doing everything they could to prevent Nixon from backing up the South Vietnamese.
In case you missed it, the North Vietnamese won. Hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese were killed. Thousands escaped in anything that would float. It was a disaster, all right: A disaster for American morale, a disaster for our image abroad, and worst of all, a disaster for millions of Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians.
The Democrats had control of that war from 1961 – 1968; it wasn’t a “GOP War.”
One could construct a similar question by substituting Republicans for Democrats and “staying the course in” for “bugging out of.”
A more interesting question is: Should one calculate the value of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians in terms of electoral wins and losses?
So, you’re saying that the GOP is just about as right on Iraq as it was on Vietnam? Then we should get the hell out of there now. In case you missed it, Vietnam was a giant black hole that sucked the life out of too many American soldiers and destroyed thousands of families. No amount of right wing revisionism is going to erase the fact of the lives given up for the ill conceived dreams of the “best and brightest”.
No, I pose the question to the author of this:
A more interesting question is: Should one calculate the value of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians in terms of electoral wins and losses?
Quaker, that is definitely a question for the Democrats to answer.
Dude, I wasn’t even born yet (I was born in ‘77, I wasn’t a teenager till 1990). Yes, the North Vietnamese won. Better them than our soldiers getting picked off to move the line an inch there and an inch there. The vietnamese war was started by a Dem and escalated by a Dem, then a Republican took it and kept it going on. It was a bipartisan mistake of epic proportions, a battle that took much too much of a generation too soon for no good reason. But it is the right that’s currently trying to rewrite the history and make it into a good fight, on par with WWII when Vietnam will never be that and we can’t ever allow ourselves to think that lest we make the same mistakes again.
Good for Murtha. It’s about time that someone in a position to have his voice be heard finally admit that this war, like Vietnam, is not winnable. In fact, almost every objective indicator says that we’ve already lost.
The deadly combination of an underestimated enemy in the insurgency, and lack of popular support here at home, has made it unwinnable. That was the recipe for failure in Vietnam, and it sure looks like history is repeating itself.
Save a bit of face, and get the hell out. I said as much last week….anything short of that dishonors our troops.
JK
Quaker: The reason why the Democrats have to answer the question is because they’re the ones who want to bug out.
It should be clear to everyone that
1) Bugging out would be disastrous for the Iraqis, and disastrous for is in terms of our war on terrorism…
What could we do, where could we go next, if we leave Iraq now?
and
2) And, it should be clear that we may have lost some moral standing and diplomatic leverage in the world, because of our involvement in Iraq. Imagine our standing after our 4th diplomatic defeat in 30 years — Viet Nam, Iran, Haiti and Somalia.
I can’t believe I’m having this discussion again, 30 years later. It would be so easy to say, “Who cares about Iraq?” and “Bring our boys home”, but this time we have to worry about terrorists coming here. You can say our safety is an illusion, because our men are getting killed in Iraq, but what will you say when they are home, and people are getting killed here by terrorists emboldened by our failure to finish our mission in Iraq?
Abraham Lincoln Bush
I want to know: Whose rights have these dissenters ever stood for? What part of “all men are created equal” do they not understand? Are they racists who believe they are better than their brown-skinned brothers in Iraq?
Don’t tell me you’re okay with this Oliver .. if anyone needs a padded cell, he does. If we left Iraq now, not only would Iraq be screwed so would we.
ian: You’re young. Go sign up.
Frank: Why would it be a disaster? You know why there’s this hardcore insurgency? Us. No, if we pull out it won’t be all candy canes and puppies, but we’re not accomplishing anything in Iraq by using the blood of our soldiers to hold the country together. Our soldiers would be much better served eliminating the terror threat in Afghanistan, etc. as they are currently rebuilding themselves more strongly than before 9/11 because we’re stuck in Iraq.
Imagine our standing after our 4th diplomatic defeat in 30 years Viet Nam, Iran, Haiti and Somalia.
Yes, you’d think we’d stop repeating the same mistakes, no? Staying in Iraq is repeating the mistake.
History has already shown us what happened in Viet Nam, and who was right.>>
OK, I’ll bite — who was right about Vietnam? Bush? Cheney? You? Target?
(My keyboard is sitting on a cheap desk that was manufactured in Vietnam. Target is benefitting from the cheap labor there.)
Oliver, so are you .. however, I’d doubt you pass training. After one footsteap you would be completely out of breath. Just because I agree with some — not all — of Bush’s war policies does not mean I should sign up. However that comment you made had nothing to do with the conversation. We’re talking about jeopardazing the safety of our country and Iraq even more if we pulled out. Stop spewing your DNC talking points.
That’s as foolish as me telling you to go join the socialist party just because you share their values.
ian: Always with the personal attacks, I see the Reich’s Youth Program is proceeding at its usual pace. You are the one advocating increased and continued war in Iraq from the safety of your keyboard. If you believe so much in it, sign up. Put yourself on the line. Otherwise, shut up.
Oliver, why shouldn’t that work for you, too? You’re the one constantly advocating for a more aggresive military strategy (read: bomb the hell out of them) against countries like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
Don’t you think you should refrain from advocating this until you’ve served your country in uniform?
Bugging out would be disastrous for the Iraqis, and disastrous for is in terms of our war on terrorism&
Well, our staying there certainly hasn’t been a picnic for the Iraqi’s either. What we need to do is pull out our troops, develop a schedule for America to pay restitution for the destruction we’ve caused, work with the international community to stabilize the region that we destabilized, and send out top commanders to the Hague (Rumsfeld, Cheney, Richard Myers, etc.) for war crimes against Iraq.
And, please, there is no war on terrorism. It’s just a buzzword tactic created by the GOP – terrorism is a tactic, not an enemy. It’s just impossible. It’s about as phony as the “War on Drugs(R)”
Frank_D said: “I came home the day we finally invaded Cambodia. Instead of saying It s about time! As I and a fellow soldier did in unison when we saw the headline in Honolulu, the mainstream press went crazy, making us the bad guys.”
That’s because YOU WERE one of the bad guys.
buma: History has shown those who have eyes to see. Why don’t you ask “Sgt. Fury” Murtha?
Very clever, sirkowski, spoken like a true liberal.
See, all you lefties, he speaks for you…
You made the trip worthwile, scumbag…
Supporting the troops, indeed…
Has the DU site crashed or something? The crazies are getting pretty thick on this thread. Spew all you want but we WON’T be pulling out of Iraq tomorrow, or the next day. And you call yourselves the “reality based community? Indeed.
Oliver says: “always with the personal attacks”.
WTF?
I don’t want to be like you and act immature, but you are the one who started them. You can dish it out but take it in. Anyways, Oliver I was not advocating the war in my first post, I was simply saying that if we pull out now that it would be worse if we stayed there. This guy is so left-wing that even those to the extreme left-wing are distancing themselves from him.
And the hypocrisy in your comment is noted with the “Reich remark”. I am a Jew you moron.
Are those goalposts as heavy as they look?
Here’s your original comment:
Your original framing was NOT in terms of what’s best for Iraq, or what’s best for America’s moral standing in the world. (Those are, in fact, valid questions that should be answered by those who seek to “stay the course” as well as those who think our usefulness in Iraq has ended.) Your original comment was cast in terms of what’s advantageous from a partisan perspective.
It is to that framing that I reply:
That anyone, Democrat or Republican, would play at war for political advantage confirms my most cynical suspicions about the American political system.
Then you are uninformed as to what Rep. Murtha has proposed.
Beyond that, you have once again cast your question in a way that treats the lives of American soldiers and Iraqi citizens as figures on a political ledger. That is an argument characteristic of the campaign operatives in the White House, not one that is of concern to decent people.
I’ll put it another way, then:
The problem the Democrats face is : How will they support bugging out, which IMHO would be per se precipitously, thus resulting in unbelievabe chaos and turmoil in Iraq — at best — or civil war, with, of course, untold casualties — at worst; and, then recover from the same political blowback that has cost them the White House and both houses of Congress for so many years?
If this confirms your “most cynical suspicions about the American political system,” then, all I can say is, “You need to get out more, Quaker.”
I am not concerned with what you think “decent people” think. I am a decent person, and I know what people who are not decent think. I do not, nor will I ever, presume that people who label themselves liberal, or for that matter, “anti – war”, are automatically decent.
If I heard Cong. Murtha correctly, he is either uninformed or deranged. We either fight the war, or we leave. Congressman “Sgt. Fury” Murtha wants it both ways. As the “Church Lady” used to say, “How conveeeenient!”
I am a decent person, and I know what people who are not decent think
It’s amazing that everyone thinks he’s a decent person. Whatever. To support attacking Cambodia is a sign to me that one is not decent. Claiming how goddamn decent you are is a sign you’re not decent — let your actions and words speak for themselves, without your own labels.
However, I’m convinced you’re a just a parody of a right winger, something some joker down at Daily Kos thought up. I mean, shilling for Condi Rice? You actually think Dick Morris is serious, that “Condi for President” isn’t just a sham to appeal to suburban voters that the Republican party isn’t a group of redneck racists, even though this bloc would in fact desert at the polls preventing this from actually happening?
Claiming how goddamn decent you are is a sign you re not decent let your actions and words speak for themselves, without your own labels.
Where did you find that bit of wisdom? On a bubble gum comic? Or a fortune cookie?
Why should I be the only person who doesn’t know I’m decent? That’s not humility, that’s lack of self – awareness. You’re confused.
The rest of your comment is typical left – wing stereotyping: All republicans are “redneck racists”. Wait and see, bigot, wait and see.