John Murtha: Completely Clueless

Yesterday, John Murtha was on Meet The Press. We watched it, but when we went on a hunt for the transcripts we could not find them. When we finished listening to John Murtha, we looked at each other in utter amazement. This man was an intelligence officer in the Marines, and he showed anything but intelligence yesterday.

(Hat-Tip: Captain Ed Morrissey for the link to the transcript.)

Aside from the bloviated beginning where Rep. Murtha goes through ALL of the problems he sees in Iraq (which I found to be interesting that much of it is about oil; were we not the ones who wanted the oil?) but then Tim Russert plays the following soundbite from Karl Rove on June 12:

MR. ROVE: Like too many Democrats, it strikes me they are ready to give the green light to go to war, but when it gets tough and when it gets difficult, they fall back on that party’s old pattern of cutting and running. They may be with you at the first shots, but they are not going to be there for the last tough battles. They are wrong, and profoundly wrong, in their approach.

Which I see no problem with this assessment. They have been shrieking about leaving Iraq for the better part of a year. They were the ones whgo withdrew funds from Nixon and Reagan, and forced their hands. Now they want to do it again, and others in Congress keep standing in their way. But this is what Rep. Murtha had to say in response to that:

REP. MURTHA: He’s, he’s in New Hampshire. He’s making a political speech. He’s sitting in his air conditioned office with his big, fat backside, saying, “Stay the course.” That’s not a plan. I mean, this guy—I don’t know what his military experience 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, let’s—give me, give you an example. When we went to Beirut, I, I said to President Reagan, “Get out.” Now, the other day we were doing a debate, and they said, “Well, Beirut was a different situation. We cut and run.” We didn’t cut and run. President Reagan made the decision to change direction because he knew he couldn’t win it. Even in Somalia, President Clinton made the decision, “We have to, we have to change direction. Even with tax cuts. When we had a tax cut under Reagan, we then had a tax increase because he had to change direction. We need to change direction. We can’t win a war like this.

This guy’s sitting back there criticizing—political criticism, getting paid by the public taxpayer, and he’s saying to us, “We’re, we’re winning this war, and they’re running.” We got to change direction, that’s what we have to do. You can’t, you can’t sit there in the air conditioned office and tell these troops they’re 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.

It is also easy to say that when you know what you are talking baout, and as we will see later, Rep. Murtha does not know what he is talking about. For the record, I would like nothing better than to have my brother back home--safe and sound. However, he is fighting this war. He is fighting Taliban and al-Qaeda elements in Afghanistan. And as along as we are deployed I will support his endeavors, and pray for his safe return everyday.

Yes, Rep. Murtha is correct on one point: War is Hell, as the old saying from General Sherman states, but these men and women knew the risks. They knew they were not being deployed to Club Med or Puerto Vallarta. They were being sent on a mission to remove a brutal dictator from power--a dictator that had ties to not only our enemy but a number of other terrorist organizations, as well. We knew that there would be quite a bit of shooting and bombing, and that we would lose troops. But it seems that while those that live on over there do mourn, the loss of a brother or a sister only reinforces their mission.

MR. RUSSERT: But in 2004, you had a view that was much different than you had now, and this is what you wrote in your book: “A war initiated on faulty intelligence must not be followed by a premature withdrawal of our troops based on a political timetable. An untimely exit could rapidly devolve into a civil war, which would leave America’s foreign policy in disarray as countries question not only America’s judgment but also its perseverance.” Aren’t you now advocating that?

REP. MURTHA: Yeah, you’re absolutely right. That’s what I said then. And I think in the early stages, you have to judge that. But there comes a time when you got to change direction. There comes a time when you have to say to yourself, “OK, we’ve done everything we could do, we can’t win this militarily.” That’s why—and I talk to the military leaders, I talk to the troops, I go to the hospitals all the time.

So there’s two reasons that I felt it was absolutely essential we change direction. One is the troops themselves and what they’re going through and the fact that 42 percent of them don’t even know what the mission is. And, and the second thing is the long-term stability of this country, our inability to prevent another war because we don’t have the resources. A $50 billion dollar backlog of equipment shortages and so forth. You just have—at some point you just have to change direction.

And if you’re not winning, if you’re losing, and that’s what’s happening. We’re, we’re—when I say losing, we’re, we’re losing ground over there and, and we have inadequate forces. We went in, the first place, we didn’t have any reason to go in. We didn’t have a threat to our national security. That’s been proven. Second, we went—inadequate forces to get it under control in a transition to peace. Third, the third thing was, no exit strategy.

I, I’m convinced, though, Tim, I believe this, I believe the president’s sounding tough, but the president’s also saying it’s now up to the Iraqis. You watch what I’m saying. He’s saying—and the vice-president and the president of Iraq, 80 percent of the Iraqis want us out of there. And the vice-president, president of Iraq said, “We want a time table to get out.” That’s what we need and the president knows that and that’s what he’s going to come up with.

I would love to see his sources for those statistics. Eighty percent of Iraqis want us out of there? That is not what the troops are saying, and that is not what our diplomats are saying, either. The government wants us to stay there to finish training their troops, and the civilians want us there because our presence alone is a security measure against these animals. Forty-two percent of our troops do not know what the mission is? That I could understand in Somalia where President Clinton switched from security to nation building, but this has always been the same effort from day one. We remove Saddam, deal with the terrorists get the Iraqis on their feet, and leave. End of story. Why is that such a difficult concept to comprehend?

The timetable to get out is the most retarded, ridiculous idea that I have ever heard. This came up six months ago when fools like John Murtha and John Kerry started pushing for this. The problem is that if we set such a date, the idiots in Congress will blab that information out. Some soapbox, grandstanding press conference where they would pat themselves on the back for getting the president to agree to such a move, and while they are doing that our enemy is marking the date on the calender, and going into hiding. They will do precisely what the North Vietnamese did. They will wait us out, and strike as we are leaving. And I am sure that nothing would satisfy the Left's hearts more than to see a replay of Saigon, 1975.

And, of course, he cannot simply answer the question without bringing up more gloomy tidings about our troops. (I am surprised that he did not drop Haditha in, for good measure; political hacks/whores like him generally would, and he has been doing that for the better part of a month already.) Our troops have good morale, and have almost everything they need. The idea that our military is somehow "broken" is laughable, at best. At worst it is farce worthy of Mel Brooks' attention. Could a broken military have trained as many Iraqis as they have (over 200,000 at last count, according to Senator Inhofe), could continue work on rebuilding as quickly as we have (remember that much of the country is up and running at its normal capacity), could have ensured three successful elections (including the one on their constitution), and taken out target #1 in Abu Musab al-Zarqawi? I suppose that is what John Murtha means when he says our military is broken.

MR. RUSSERT: You did say, however, in ‘05, “Our military has done everything that has been asked of them. The U.S. cannot accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily.” The fact is the capture of—or the killing of Zarqawi was a military accomplishment. So the military could do more.

REP. MURTHA: Well, it was a military accomplishment from outside the country. We, we bombed, we bombed it. The, the information came from the Iraqis to the Iraqis to the U.S., and then we bombed where he was. And it—so it came from the outside.

Oh Hell, Rep. Murtha does not even have a clue as to how the intelligence came into our possession in the first place. We had three major sources as to where al-Zarqawi was hiding. The Jordanians gave us information (because al-Zarqawi had put a contract out on the King of Jordan; not a smart move), it came from Iraqis--Sunnis, to be exact--on the ground, and from one of his own people who had been caught, and sang like a stool-pigeon. He is perfectly capable of giving "intimate" details regarding Haditha to the media (thereby guaranteeing unfair treatment by civilians, and continued demonization from the antiwar nuts), but he cannot get the simple details of a bombing mission correct?

And now we move onto the crux of the ire shared by Thomas and I over this interview. Again, Tim Russert cites Karl Rove:

MR. ROVE: Congressman Murtha said, “Let’s redeploy them immediately to another country in the Middle East. Let’s get out of Iraq and go to another country.” My question is, what country would take us? What country would say after the United States cut and run from Iraq, what country in the Middle East would say, “Yeah. Paint a big target on our back and then you’ll cut and run on us.” What country would say that? What country would accept our troops?

MR. RUSSERT: What’s your response?

REP. MURTHA: There’s many countries understand the importance of stability in the Middle East. This is an international problem. We, we use 20 million barrels of oil a day. China’s the second largest user. All these countries understand you need stability for the energy supply that’s available in the Middle East. So there’s many, many countries.

MR. RUSSERT: Who?

REP. MURTHA: Kuwait’s one that will take us. Qatar, we already have bases in Qatar. So Bahrain. All those countries are willing to take the United States. Now, Saudi Arabia won’t because they wanted us out of there in the first place. So—and we don’t have to be right there. We can go to Okinawa. We, we don’t have—we can redeploy there almost instantly. So that’s not—that’s, that’s a fallacy. That, that’s just a statement to rial up people to support a failed policy wrapped in illusion.

I will leave the logistical details to Captain Ed. I am not in the military, and do not know nearly that much about such things. However, from a strategic standpoint, John Murtha is so wrong he is dangerous. Again, will Qatar and Kuwait accept the fact that with US troops there they will essentially have a target painted on them, as well? That is doubtful, at best. And as for Okinawa (an idea that Rep. Murtha brought up six months ago, according to The Stakeholder) that is anything but "over-the-horizon."

MR. RUSSERT: But it’d be tough to have a timely response from Okinawa.

REP. MURTHA: Well, it—you know, they—when I say Okinawa, I, I’m saying troops in Okinawa. When I say a timely response, you know, our fighters can fly from Okinawa very quickly. And—and—when they don’t know we’re coming. There’s no question about it. And, and where those airplanes won’t—came from I can’t tell you, but, but I’ll tell you one thing, it doesn’t take very long for them to get in with cruise missiles or with, with fighter aircraft or, or attack aircraft, it doesn’t take any time at all. So we, we have done—this one particular operation, to say that that couldn’t have done, done—it was done from the outside, for heaven’s sakes.

Froggy over at Blackfive has a neat graphic showing what countries we would be flying over to get to Iraq. That, of course, is a straight line (the shortest distance between two points) and adds this bit of knowledge that I suppose Rep. Murtha did not take into account:

The straight yellow line extending across the middle of China and Iran is the distance from Okinawa to Baghdad as the crow flies which is approximately 4200 nautical miles. Obviously, the Chinese and the Iranians wouldn't be cool with that, but let's just roll with it. The max combat range for the F-16 with external fuel tanks and 2000 lbs of ordnance is 740 nautical miles so that's like a minimum of SIX midair refuelings in EACH direction.

This little display is hardly worth putting together, but I did it to demostrate that this man is dangerously deluded and not at all serious about an issue of critical national security significance.

Michelle Malkin weighs in on the Okinawa option by bringing this story up from 2003:

Okinawa's governor demanded U.S. forces leave the southern island, as residents marked the 58th anniversary Monday of the final land battle of World War II between U.S. and Japanese forces.

"We ask that the United States and Japan boost efforts to relocate U.S. bases from Okinawa and revise the U.S.-Japan security pact," Keiichi Inamine said in a speech.

And she also points to this story from 2005, as well:

The United States and Japan agreed Saturday to step up military cooperation and substantially reduce the number of Marines on the strategically important southern island of Okinawa. The agreement calls for the phased withdrawal of 7,000 Marines from Okinawa to the Pacific island of Guam, a move that is expected to take six years.

There are 14,460 Marines in Japan, the largest Marine contingent based overseas. Nearly all are located on Okinawa, ideally situated for dealing with potential problems in the Pacific, such as a possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Okinawans have long complained of crime ,crowding and noise associated with the Marine bases.

And this little display by John Murtha with Tim Russert only continues to show just how dangerous this sort of thinking is. They seem to have all sorts of ideas regarding retreat, and have not thought a single one of them through. Again, where would we "redeploy over-the-horizon?" Okinawa is pretty far, in terms of major support should things go bad (and they will if we follow this sort of strategy). And based on the two stories above--both from USA Today--Okinawa is not an option either. Think about how much longer it would take us to help out in Iraq if they were redeployed to Guam?

John Murtha is doing precisely what his extremist constituents want. He is hyping this idea up, and doing his best to show that his party is right when they are clearly and carelessly incorrect. He talks about the loss of life, and the low morale, but he does not take into account the problems that will most assuredly rise if we take this course of action. Not only would we abandon an ally--one that still needs our help right now--but we will be sending the same message to the world that President Clinton did after the fiasco in Mogadishu.

Our enemies cannot hold the belief that if they kill enough of our troops that we will run home to mommy. They have to understand that when you are against this nation, in a war, that we will fight them to the best of our abilities to achieve victory. The days of cutting and running in this nation are done. If we return to that sort of a position--the same position the Left forced us into over Vietnam--then we can expect another 9/11, or worse, in the coming years.

Marcie

ADDENDUM: Rep. Murtha is not running for reelection unopposed in Pennsylvania. He is going up against Diana Irey. This will be a hotly contested camapign, and Ms. Irey needs all the support she can get to defeat Mr. Cut-and-Run. It is time that a message was sent to the retreat-and-defeaters in the Democrat party that this sort of rhetoric and behavior does not sit well with America. Please, stop by her site, and contribute to the race so that nuts like John Murtha can retire into the obscurity they deserve.