Murtha Goes After Rove
18 June 2006 9:35 am by Taylor Marsh
UPDATE: C&L now has the video.
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If it's an election season it must be time for Karl Rove to deliver the latest Republican salvo of insanity.
We all know, as Andrew Card said long ago, that you don't break out a new marketing
plan in August. But the Republicans are in so much trouble they can't wait until
next September. So Karl Rove has now spoken out of desperation, using desperate
tactics for a desperate
president.
It's “cut and run” on Iraq, says one of the Republicans' countless
chickenhawks. Men who love to talk about staying the course in Iraq, when they
themselves have never fired a bullet in defense of this country in their miserable
spineless lives.
“Stay and pay” is how John Murtha described the current Iraq
policy, when speaking with Tim Russert today, which came in response to Karl Rove's latest political
belch from New Hampshire. But he didn't stop there. If all Democrats sounded
like Murtha, we'd sweep into office next November like the reckoning of the
righteous warrior.
“… He's in New Hampshire. He's making a political speech.
He's sitting in his air conditioned office on his big fat backside saying
stay the course. That's not a plan. I mean, this guy, I don't know what his
military is, but that's a political statement. This is a policy difference
between me and the White House. I disagree completely with what he's saying.
Now let's give you an example. When we went to Beirut, I said to
President Reagan get out. The other day we were doing a debate and they said,
Beirut was a different situation, we cut and run. We didn't cut and run, President
Reagan made a decision to change direction cause he knew he couldn't win it.
Even in Somalia President Clinton made a decision we have to change direction.
Even with tax cuts, when we had a tax cut under Reagan, we then had a tax
increase because we had to change direction. We need to change direction.
We can't win a war like this. This guy is sitting back there criticizing,
political criticism, getting paid by the public taxpayer, and he's saying
to us we're winning this war and they're running. We have to change direction,
that's what we have to do. You can't sit there in the air conditioned offices
and tell these troops who are carrying 70 pounds on their back, inside these
armored vessels and hit with IEDs every day, seeing their friends blown up,
their buddies blown up and he says stay the course? Yeah, it's easy to say
that from Washington, D.C. … … The public is way ahead on this.
The public is 2 to 1 against what we're doing and they want to change direction.
That's the thing I see the most.” – Rep. John Murtha on “Meet the
Press”
Murtha's “stay and pay” analogy is correct, not only in human and
familial cost, but in the cost to our country in prestige, respect and actual
dollars; not to mention that Bush's current political strategy on Iraq is the
worst foreign policy disaster since going into Iraq in the first place.
President Bush wants to hand Iraq off to the next president in 2009 so he
can escape accountability, plain and simple. We must not lose sight of what's
actually important to the Republicans. It's politics, period. Karl Rove is simply
trying to provide a political haven for the president's disastrous policies
in Iraq. Let's face it, Rove doesn't know a thing about Iraq, let alone military policy. He's just trying
to save his boy Bush.
Sitting on his fat backside, Karl Rove is the very embodiment of a
chickenhawk. Pathetic partisan pop offs like “cut and run” do not
explain how to move forward in Iraq.
I'd like to have Karl respond to this
document from Khalilzad, and tell the women and even the men that this is
a “democracy.” They've still got no power in large sections of the
country, wait in lines of gas for 12 hours, face kidnappings, and they do not
trust their own security forces. In addition, Iraqis cannot be seen cooperating
with Americans. How is staying in this country going to change the situation?
As for life outside the Green Zone, it is described as “emotionally draining.”
Murtha is right. Bush, Rove and the Republicans have NO PLAN in Iraq. But they
have a hell of a slogan aimed straight at the Democrats. If we do not fire salvos
back, just as Murtha did today with Russert, we will not inspire people to vote
in November. If we don't it will be the biggest political failing since Democrats
voted for the Iraq war in the first place.
