Russert 'Meets' Murtha

Tim had Rep. Murtha on MTP today. The exchange was pretty good. Transcript here.

Teaser here:

(Videotape, November 16, 2005)

VICE PRES. DICK CHENEY: The president and I cannot prevent certain politicians from losing their memory or their backbone. But we're not going to sit by and let them rewrite history.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT: "Losing your memory or your backbone." What would you say to the vice president?

REP. MURTHA: Well, I tell you, Cheney's a friend of mine. We work very closely together. He was a good secretary of Defense, but he's wrong. They should have fired people. The president should be furious with this--the people that work for him giving him bad intelligence. We spend more on intelligence than any country in the world. We spend more on intelligence than the whole world spends together and our intelligence was wrong. There's no question we're going in the wrong direction and we're not winning. The incidents have increased and the economic indicators--oil, which was supposed to pay for all of this, is below prewar levels. There's nothing that's happening that shows any sign of success.

And the biggest problem is this illusion that--I remember going to Iraq a month or so after the invasion when they said it was all over. And one of the members said to Ambassador Bremer, "What do you think about this cleric named Sistani?" And he turned to his expert, and you know what she said? She said, "Oh, he's just a minor cleric." Now, two weeks later that guy had 100,000 people in the street. That's the kind of information they were acting on. They've been overly optimistic and illusionary about their policy. We got to--this is not a war of words, this is a real war where people are getting killed. Fifteen thousand people have been wounded, and half of them are desperately wounded, blinded, without their arms.

I mean, it breaks my heart when I go out there and see these kids. I see wives who can't look at their husbands because they've been so disfigured. I saw a young fella that was paralyzed from the neck down and his three children were standing there crying with his wife and his mother. So this is a real war, which--we have to find a solution. We--and since there's no progress, we've got to find a way to let the Iraqis take over.

I don't know what kind of resolution would be best for all concerned over the Iraq debacle. From all accounts, what we're doing is simply not working. Some change in strategy is obviously needed.

I'll admit that whilst I had thought Murtha had 'a set,' I thought he was ranting about matters of which he knew not. I no longer feel that way.

He may be wrong in calling for an immediate troop withdrawal to the periphery of the conflict, but he's certainly on target that something major needs to be done.

Dick Cheney is a sweet man. Glad to see he's in charge. Cough *chickenhawk* cough.