Republicans slap down John Murtha and his Media Toadies...

Huge news when Democrat John Murtha came out and declared that we should evac out of Iraq ASAP. But why? Look at the news Murtha made back on May 6th, 2004:

Signaling a new, more aggressive line against the Bush administration’s policy on Iraq, Rep. John Murtha (Pa.), the House Democrats’ most visible defense hawk, will join Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) today to make public his previously private statements that the conflict is “unwinnable.”
{link via Slate here: http://www.slate.com/id/2130405/&#murtha}

So this "Democratic Hawk" has been declaring the war "unwinnable" for over a year and a half, right? Well, he has been questioning it for much longer - this is dated September 2002:

...the powerful backroom dealmaker [Murtha-ed.] finds himself in an even more politically lonely position: questioning a war-powers resolution that even most Democratic leaders seem reluctant to oppose. ''All of us want to get rid of Saddam,'' Murtha says. But he believes that the younger Bush ''went about it the wrong way.''
Bush's father ''had his coalition built before he came to Congress,'' Murtha says. As a result, most of the Persian Gulf War's cost was shared by U.S. allies.
{link: http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/index.cfm?Page=Article&ID=1}

OK, reasonable doubt. No issue here. This is interesting as well, from the same story:

Nothing he has seen in intelligence reports hasconvinced him that Bush needs to rush through a resolution, Murtha says. Even so, he has not decided how he will vote. Although he has doubts about the president's plans, Murtha says he's reluctant to leave his commander-in-chief isolated in the face of the international community.
''I don't know whether it was intentional or not, but he has put the country in such a box,'' Murtha says.''He can say, 'You'll undercut me if you don't vote for this resolution.' ''

So Murtha can honestly say he doubted the intelligence that led us to war from day one. Good for him; although he cannot say "Bush lied". He may have only voted for the war to show unified support in the face of an enemy; again, no issue here. But the media cannot make his demand to withdraw troops out to be such a major betrayal. Even though he did vote for the war, it is obvious his support was lukewarm at best.

The media uproar was just an example of "piling on"; the MSM is looking for its tipping point, its Saigon moment, and it is doing whatever it can to create one. They did create a tipping point, but not the one they intended. Bush and the Republicans finally started to fight back against the scurrilous charges being made by the Democrats; charges dutifully reported as fact by their liberal lackeys in the press.

And yesterday's vote on Congressman Murtha's proposal was not a 'political ploy", no matter how many times the media used that in its reporting. Congress took his troop withdrawal proposal, and put it to a binding vote. The fact that all but three Democrats voted against the proposal shows us clearly what we've known all along: The Democrats are playing politics with the war; they know a pullout would cause massive chaos and loss of American prestige for a generation, but they will hammer away at it as a way to hurt the Commander-in-Chief. The Democrats will risk emboldening the terrorists and endagering our soldiers in order to score politcal points. Vile, vile, they are...

Based on the above info; I have no problems with John Murtha's support/lack of support for the war; his decision-making process seems to be at least somewhat honestly thought out, or was, up until this past week. And although Murtha is not a coward, the policies he is currently presenting are cowardly. Cutting and running before a job is done, without heed for the consequences, always is...

And what damage has George Bush done by allowing things to come to this point; by allowing the Dems, Libs, and MSM to pound away at the war for weeks without answer? Penjman has an analysis:

...remaining silent for so long in the face of attacks against the reconstruction and war effort, the Bush Administration allowed support for the war to wither away and deteriorate to alarming levels...They probably figured that the antiwar rhetoric would have little impact in the public mind and that it would be laughed out of the court of public opinion within short order.

Sometimes, this indeed is what happens. But other times, a meme takes hold and changes public opinion in a fundamental way. When that meme is unchallenged, it changes the entire nature of the debate. By refusing to challenge the antiwar meme, the "Bush Lied!" and "We Went To War For Halliburton!" claims, the Administration made those claims more believable in the minds of many. And now it faces the deleterious consequences in poll after poll of American public opinion regarding Iraq.
{link: http://www.noendbutvictory.com/?p=61}

Bush is fighting a two-front war; a loss on one side presages a loss on both...he'd better be aware of it.

UPDATE: Oh, That Liberal Media! has a real in-depth piece more specifically on the media's distortion of Murtha and the resolution vote here: http://www.thatliberalmedia.com/archives/005345.html#005345