Murtha Takes the Fight to Bush
"Murtha says, 'Iraq is not about terrorism; it's about civil war'. And our presence there is only fueling the fire.
'Iraq is not enhancing the war against terror,' Murtha said at a lunch in New York on Wednesday (at roughly the same time Bush was making his claims in Kentucky). 'In fact, just the opposite is true: Iraq is hurting our prospects for winning the fight against terror. We've become the issue over there. Abu Ghraib and Fallujah have hurt us badly. That's why we need to take ourselves out of the equation.'
..."If the War in Iraq and our continued large military presence was actually succeeding in driving a stake into the heart of Al Qaeda, the terrible loss of life and limb and the quarter of a trillion dollars we have spent in Iraq to date would be worth it. But I believe that President George H.W. Bush's National Security Advisor, General Brent Scowcroft, was right when he observed that the way we are handling the War in Iraq is 'feeding' terrorism, not eliminating it. Our heavy military presence in Iraq is the single most important reason our radical enemies have been able to recruit fresh new suicide bombers and terrorists and garner a measure of support from the Iraqi people. Even by the administration's own numbers, our current policy is creating as many or more terrorists than it is eliminating. It is simply not working.""
- posted by geoff @ #