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On All Things Considered, Melissa Block’s piece, Murtha: Military Supports Call for Iraq Withdrawal , is an extended conversion with the Democratic Congressman, Jack Murtha, who is a hawk and supporter of the military, who has called for withdrawing US troops from Iraq.

A Vietnam veteran and retired Marine Reserves colonel, Congressman Murtha spent a long time weighing his decision, but it is based on his personal evaluation of the situation by actually going to Iraq and talking to the troops on the ground.

Of interest was his evaluation that officers are not reporting their concerns to the Pentagon because they don’t want to be fired like General Eric Shinseki, for disagreeing with the civilian leadership at the Department of Defense.

General Shinseki, the then Army Chief of Staff, testified before Congress that more than a quarter million troops would be needed for the war against Iraq, but his opinion was discounted by Pentagon officials and his replacement was announced 14 months before his retirement. When giving your honest opinion results in losing your job, honest opinions become few and far between.

In the end, no serving Army general would accept appointment as Chief of Staff and Rumsfeld was forced to recall General Peter Schoomaker from retirement to fill the position.

As Congressman Murtha notes “stay the course” is an easy thing to say sitting in an air conditioned office. There is no plan; there is no course. The troops don’t know why they are in Iraq or what they are supposed to be doing other than staying alive to leave.

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Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in 1955;

The first AIDS case was diagnosed in 1981;

All Hat and No Cattle went on line in 2000.

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The short version of this rant can be found by reading Bush’s view of Iraq doesn’t square with reality, analysis of the speech by Calvin Woodward of the Associated Press.

Charles of The Fulcrum explains why this is years late in his post of The Decision Making Cycle, but then he’s a veteran, and this administration expects applause and approval, not opinions from those who have military experience.

Lurch at Main & Central has Part One and Part Two on what a withdrawal from Iraq will look like given the privatization that has taken place in Rumsfeld’s Pentagon. We have a much worse situation than Vietnam on our hands, which is why Jack Murtha wanted a Rapid Reaction force in position in his plan.

‘Noz at Rubber Hose looked at the Shubbery’s Powerpoint presentation and notices that it doesn’t actually go beyond “stay the course”, with no real definition of “victory”.

Bob Geiger of Yellow Dog Blog reminds people of what the Shrubbery’s supporters really think about veterans.

Jo Fish at Democratic Veteran tells you about the latest attempt to patch the cracks in the military caused the military’s failure to recruit sufficient people.

If you missed it, CNN’s article, U.S. to stay in Iraq till[sic] war is won, is a standard media report.

Bush characterized the U.S. enemy in Iraq as “a combination of rejectionists, Saddamists and terrorists.” The terrorist group, he said, “is the smallest but the most lethal” of the three.

“Our strategy in Iraq is clear,” Bush said. “Our tactics are flexible and dynamic. We have changed them as conditions required and they are bringing us victory against a brutal enemy.”

The last time Bush appeared before a crowd that wasn’t handpicked or constrained by employment from expressing their real feelings, was the last debate during the election. Those debates were the only time the man had to deal with those who disagreed with him in years.

A minor quibble, can’t they hire a graphic designer? The retro Time magazine cover of National Strategy for Victory in Iraq is atrocious. There is no real content, so they should have spent some time making it look important and serious.

They don’t provide any real definition of what “victory” means, they still don’t have any “metrics”. They talk about numbers of Iraqi troops, but they have repeatedly had to revise those figures, so they have no meaning. They keep changing the base point for all of their other figures on electricity, oil production, and other infrastructure levels and they have been caught doing it, so those numbers are worthless.

The real metric is “where can you safely go in the country”, i.e. how much of the country is actually secure? Kurdistan has remained secure, and the Shi’ia have secured some of the South, but the Sunni and mixed population areas show no signs of improvements.

At least the Shrubbery finally admitted that the “terrorists” represent the smallest group, although he still refuses to understand that “foreign troops on Iraqi soil” is the one unifying element in this mess.

I was going to be nice and not bring this up, but the Shrubbery injected 9/11 into this, so: yes, the midshipman all entered after the attacks on the World Trade Center as it was more than four years ago, and Osama bin Laden is still at large. We had three chances to take out Al Zarqawi and we didn’t do it. Why should anyone believe that this administration is serious about the War on Terror™?

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