While Hillary Clinton continues her "Hard for Me To Say I'm Sorry" tour, and John McCain frets over a bloody"Tet" offensive, Iraqi style, that turns Americans against the war (although at this point the supporters are pretty much limited to McCain, Joe Lieberman and Rudy "Say Anything" Guiliani), thank God for John Murtha and Nancy Pelosi. If The Politico has it right, Pelosi and Murtha are determined to slowly force an end to the Iraq war. Murtha is planning to attach a provision to an upcoming military spending bill that would restrict the deployment of troops unless they have appropriate training, equipment and numbers. He's also planning legislation to limit the number of tours of duty and the length of those deployments. There's more. Read the details here.
It's a relief to see some of the Democratic leaders actually trying to lead. Watching the House debate on the meaningless, nonbinding resolution against the surge, I can't help but wonder why there is so much timidity. You have the vast majority of Americans firmly anti-war, as this CBS News poll shows, with two thirds of those polled saying a surge won't improve the situation, and another two thirds disapproving of Bush's handling of the war. And over at Gallup, the news is much the same. The American people are very clear about wanting out of the war. Maybe we don't need leaders in Congress--we need followers.
By the way, anyone want to guess when Hillary Clinton will abandon her strategy of refusing to acknowledge that her war authorization vote was a mistake? The question dogs her wherever she goes, and it's become part of the daily campaign story. And yet she continues to say
"I have taken responsibility for my vote. The mistake was by this President who misled the Congress."
Yes, but 23 of your Senate colleagues were not misled--they voted against the war, so that excuse feels kinda lame.
Arianna noted that James Carville defends Hillary's war vote by reminding us she went through the trauma of 9/11 as Senator from New York. That creepy conflation of 9/11 and Saddam Hussein isn't new, or even recent; she said it in her Senate floor speech on October 10, 2002, during debate on the war authorization:
"And finally, on another personal note, I come to this decision from the perspective of a Senator from New York who has seen all too closely the consequences of last year's terrible attacks on our nation. In balancing the risks of action versus inaction, I think New Yorkers who have gone through the fires of hell may be more attuned to the risk of not acting. I know that I am."
You'd think Karl Rove wrote the speech.
Speaking of the Boy Genius, hard to tell whether he had a hand in the big presentation of the "evidence" that Iran is meddling in Iraq.
It had the peculiar mixture of arrogance and cluelessness that are the hallmark of so many of Rove's moves, and yet in its clumsiness, you can almost catch a whiff of Karen Hughes. Either one of them is capable of thinking that the best way to enhance America's credibility at home and abroad would be with a no-names, no cameras, deep background military briefing offering no actual proof of Iranian government involvement.
Why didn't the anonymous sources just do their briefing in ski masks?
And because it's Valentine's Day, here's a link to new details on Hookergate, as revealed in the second indictment of military contractor Brent Wilkes, who is accused of bribing former Congressman and Top Gun Randy "Duke" Cunningham.
Happy Valentine's Day!