Quotes provided by DailyKos.com
Last week we read this from the Washington Post:
Rep. John Murtha, who heads a subcommittee with jurisdiction over defense spending, told reporters he hopes to add a provision to the bill that would forbid the Pentagon from sending additional troops "unless they have adequate training and unless they have adequate equipment."
Then there was Politico with this:
Top House Democrats, working in concert with anti-war groups, have decided against using congressional power to force a quick end to U.S. involvement in Iraq, and instead will pursue a slow-bleed strategy designed to gradually limit the administration's options.
After being picked up by many news outlets ( Wall Street Journal, U.S. News & World Report, for starters ) the slow-bleed strategy took off in a different way which was intended to make Murtha and the rest of the Democrats look bad. That has not worked yet, so now we get this.
Robert Novak:
Murtha has shaped party policy that would cripple Bush's Iraq troop surge by placing conditions on funding. That represents the most daring congressional attempt to micromanage ongoing armed hostilities since the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War challenged President Abraham Lincoln.
It seems all but certain that Democrats will pass what Murtha frankly calls an attempt to prevent funding of the surge. Improbable though it may seem, blunt and brassy Jack Murtha is moving close to command over U.S. policy on Iraq.
The Beltway Boys:
And this Murtha resolution is clever in that it pretends to be pro-troops and anti-war, in reality would deny troops that are already in the field fighting for their lives the reinforcements they need in order to survive and possibly win.
Investor's Business Daily:
The party of John Murtha shamelessly seeks to defund and defeat U.S. troops on the battlefield and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. The Congress the terrorists wanted is doing their bidding.
Now it's the House of Representatives' turn, led by Rep. John Murtha, who believes the fine young men and women we send to defeat terror and our sworn enemies are cold-blooded killers.
We find it scary that the Democratic and terrorist game plans are indistinguishable.
Brit Hume:
That sound bite from John Murtha suggests that it’s time a few things be said about him...Look, this man has tremendous cache among House Democrats, but he is not — this guy is long past the day when he had anything but the foggiest awareness of what the heck is going on in the world.
I could go on with more but I think that you get the point. The GOP/Media smear group is out in full swing gunning for John Murtha and the Democrats in general.
I'm waiting to see what Murtha and the Dems are going to do about it. Will they just sit back and be quiet as they have been known to do quite often or will they become vocal themselves and set the record straight?
This is what really scares the GOP and has brought out the chiefs of smear against Murtha
The legislation I'm putting together, first of all, puts restrictions on the President, on the administration, saying you can't send people back into battle until they've had a year at home. Now they should traditionally have two years at home...They must have the equipment and the training and they must be certified by the Chiefs of the various services before they can go back. Second, we can't extend people. Now if they can't extend people, if they can't send people back that don't have equipment and so forth, they can't continue the surge is what it amounts to. [...]
What I've found in readiness hearings we're having, I found that in the United States, we only have 3/4 of the units that are prepared with the equipment they need and they're not training on the equipment...If they don't train on equipment, if they don't train on their radios, the armored Humvees, there's different feel to them. There's more chance of accidents, there's more chance of vulnerability to enemies, so they need to train on that equipment and then take it with them...They're going to have to certify to us that they are ready and they're going to have to stop the extensions. DailyKos
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