House Democrat calls for immediate troop withdrawal

To say we need to get the troops out is just pandering to public opinion. Hello - we all already know that and want to get the troops out as soon as possible. Passing a bill won't make a difference - it might though get the dems some votes next fall.

If the Dems want to take a position - then they should have the courage to take one that's actually bold and adds some value. Murtha isn't a coward - he's a politician. But he needs to offer us something useful - not more "Bring the troops home" B.S. - which they can't even vote for when the republicans give them the chance to.

 

NewYorker, I respect you as well, but you really need to look into this more, including just what Murtha introduced as a resolution, why he did it, what his record is, and just what the Republicans put out as a resolution themselves. It's not as simple as you appear to think it is.



Keep D&D Civil.

 

Murtha on Meet the Press:

http://movies.crooksandliars.com/nbc_mtp_murtha_051120a.wmv
or
http://movies.crooksandliars.com/nbc_mtp_murtha_051120a.mov

 

true, and i think the democrats and MSM need to look at Murtha's record a little more critically as well. certainly he served honorably in Vietnam, but his proposal is not honorable, nor is he the "staunch war hawk democrat" he's been made out to be.

 

The Con-quista-myopia-dor has spoken, and I must respond.

The resolution the Republican leadership put up for vote in the middle of the night called for immediate withdrawal. If you listened to Murtha, he called for a redeployment of US troops to the rear and replacing them with Iraqi troops on the front lines. That is why everyone voted against the Republican measure. It took Murtha's pronouncement completely out of context.

Rep. Murtha is the only member of Congress who has the ear of the Generals in the Pentagon. He knows more about war than anyone else in Congress, the Senate or the White House. Rep. Murtha's call last week should be a red flag to the Bush Administration, because it reflects the Pentagon brass' belief that we have done all we can militarily in Iraq, that the solution in Iraq will come politically and not militarily from here on out, and that it is time to bring the troops home and turn things over to the Iraqis.

After all, if the Iraqi troop training numbers cited over and over by this Administration are true, they have more than enough troops ready to take over, don't they?

 

The difference is that to pull them out immediately will cause a huge power vaccum and collapse. Please read the wording of Murtha's bill. He isn't asking that, nor is the there anything in it that is pure politics. It is far from pandering to public opinion.

I'm not sure where you got your information from about Murtha or his bill, but please read the bill itself. Read or even better watch Murtha's comments about the bill. Then please let whoever you got your information from know that they were wrong in their assessment.

Again, if it is pure politics with nothing redeeming about it, why couldn't the GOP just debate them?

 

Hence the Pentagon's call to start troop drawdown.

Defense official: Rumsfeld given Iraq withdrawal plan
Plan calls for troops to begin pulling out after December elections

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The top U.S. commander in Iraq has submitted a plan to the Pentagon for withdrawing troops in Iraq, according to a senior defense official.

Gen. George Casey submitted the plan to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. It includes numerous options and recommends that brigades -- usually made up of about 2,000 soldiers each -- begin pulling out of Iraq early next year.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/11/18/iraq.plan/index.html

 

basso are you going to question Casey's patriotism for wanting to start bringing troops home?

 

more than Johm Mccain, or the democrat candidate for president in 2004, whose name escapes me, but i seem to recall he spent a could of months somewhere near cambodia...

 

bringing troops home in and of itself is not a bad idea, but quitting before the job is done certainly is. i'm happy to defer to casey's expertise in this area, and it fits with what has been the pentagons plan all along. much different plan than murhta's unilateral withdrawal.

 

Which just proves to me that you don't even know what Murtha is proposing.

 

Perhaps more than McCain....definitely more then that other guitar-playing dude!

 

Murtha's proposal coincides perfectly with what was posted from Casey.

 

Most experts that I have heard speak, along with many soldiers and contractors, believe that there will be a nasty civil war there no matter when we leave.

BTW, can you define any metric we could use to measure when the "insurgency is being fought adequately by the Iraqi army?" That is all I am really looking for. I just want some way to measure when we have accomplished the mission and can bring the boys home. So far, nobody has given any such metrics and as such I would be more inclined to err on the side of caution and bring the boys home now. That would be preferable to a never ending deployment in Iraq.

 

The metric is when the Iraqi government can say "We now have this under control"

 

Bad metric, because they will never say this as long as there are American troops on the ground to do their fighting for them. It's exactly the same scenario as the South Vietnamese during the Vietnam War.

 

You're happy to defer to anyone who's not a Democrat and is making their proposals through the apparatus of the Bush Administration. You are equally happy to give us the same distorted (that's being charitable) view of Murtha's proposal that is the current line being used by the Administration. With all due respect, don't go throwing around charges of partisanship, because that is exactly what you're doing yourself.



Keep D&D Civil.

 

and look how well that worked for the south vietnamese.

 

We still have troops in Germany and Japan 60 years after WWII ended...

 

Those troops were there to prevent Soviet expansion.