Reply #14: Okay .... now I'm going on surmises and assumptions ..... [View All]

[Stinky The Clown]

.... Murtha, just tonight, was on Hairballz. While I didn't parse out what he said, he still sounded pretty much as in the statement I excerpted. i.e.: "Out Now"

Now to that letter ..... I could say it was politics and I would probably be right. But if you read it, it isn't inconsistent.

Murtha's formal statement: "To immediately redeploy U.S. troops consistent with the safety of U.S. forces."

From the Levin-Reid letter: "In the letter, House Democrats joined with their counterparts in the Senate to back a proposal put forward in June by Sens. Jack Reed of Rhode Island and Carl Levin of Michigan to begin a phased troop withdrawal this year. The proposal failed in the Senate but garnered 38 Democratic votes." (emphasis is mine)

Both cite a more or less open-ended schedule for a sooner rather than later troop withdrawal.

As I said, Murtha, as recently as today, is sticking to his "Out Now" mantra. I suspect he either signed the letter for political unity or actually read what it said, and could technically support it as being consistent with his earlier position.

(Wouldn't it be great if we were debating something that might actually be in the works rather than parsing two statements that are generally in line with our thinking, but have virtually no chance to move anywhere unless we retake one house of our government??)