As John Murtha’s call to bug out in Iraq has become the voice of the Democratic Party, it is all the more important to understand what he’s saying. Jeff Goldstein sends out the “Help wanted” call for translation of Murtha’s remarks on Meet the Press yesterday. Eric Pfeiffer responds to the call in today’s Washington Times: “Murtha claims support for Iraq pullout plan.” The Wall Street Journal also lends a hand: “Iraq and Congress: The Murtha withdrawal policy is a counsel of defeat.” At FrontPage, Peter Collier and David Horowitz reunite to help out: “The party of retreat and defat.”
UPDATE: Reader Dale Armstrong writes:
Don’t you find it interesting that one of the most powerful Congressmen is advocationg the “redeployment” of US forces from Iraq to Okinawa, when the link here shows that the US has, since October of last year, agreed on a major reduction of Marines in Okinawa after years of contention, from Okinawa to Guam!
No US forces are going from Iraq to Okinawa! It’s a shame that such an “expert” on the military and the Corps as Murtha, has no clue as to what’s going on inside the US Military!
Dr. Girish Patel has also forwarded a small image of a world map illustrating the distance from Washingon to Baghdad and Japan.
Dr. Patel comments:
About Rep. Murtha’s call to redeploy the troops to Okinawa: Did I understand correctly that he thinks that they can respond “quickly” from Okinawa?
The American schools do not teach geograpy. It will be difficult for the American people to comprehend the distance from Baghdad to Japan and I thought a visual may help. I am attaching an image of the world map. I hope your readers will not need this, but you should find this useful in educating some of the moonbats.
JOHN adds: Mad Jack Murtha has been exposed, I think. I think the real significance of Murtha’s Okinawa blunder is that it reveals the unseriousness of his concept of “redeployment.” Remember how, when Republicans characterized Murtha’s proposal as “cut and run,” Murtha and other Democrats reacted angrily? No, no, they said: the proposal is to “redeploy” our troops where they would be ready to return to Iraq if necessary. Murtha’s casual and obviously half-baked suggestion that our troops could be stashed in Okinawa confirms that “redeployment” was always a fraud. Murtha’s proposal (and the Democrats’) is cut and run, pure and simple.
UPDATE: While we’re beating up on Murtha–nowhere near as much as he deserves–check out Tom Bevan’s Murtha’s Fuzzy Math on RCP.
And Captain Ed has come up with an important fact that I hadn’t been aware of: Murtha didn’t just blurt out his reference to Okinawa in an unfortunate senior moment. No! He really meant it. Or, at least, he’s been saying it since last December:
Now, my plan says redeploy to the periphery, to Kuwait, to Okinawa, and if there’s a terrorist activity that affects our allies or affects the United States’ national security, we can then go back in.
Murtha locates both Kuwait, which borders Iraq, and Okinawa, which is over 5,000 miles away, on “the periphery.” Of what? Asia, apparently. And Murtha is the Dems’ leading spokesman on military tactics! It’s one more indication of how unserious the Democrats are on any issues relating to national security.
Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.