Murtha trying to salvage his investment with moon-battery

Before Rep. John Murtha hatched a plan with Nanci Pelosi to spearhead the call for troops to come home, from what I read he had a lot going well for him; especially a good reputation. Now here at the tail end of his career he seems to have been talked into "taking one for the team". I am sure it was sold to him that he would get a lot of media glory and possibly go down in history as a great peacemaker and the one that dealt the final blow to the Bush Administration. In the first days it looked like he just might do that. Fortunately, the GOP grew a spine and pulled their now famous "stunt" which effectively broke Murtha's momentum which has yet to recover. In fact as a martial artist uses the weight and force of his attacker against him, the Bush Administration has taken that attempt at momentum and turned it to his advanatage.

With his momentum in pieces and Bush's support numbers rising, Murtha sees his gambit shifting to the losing column. Instead of retiring from Congress gracefully, he is now in risk of becoming a laughingstock. Sure the media and far left still think he is wonderful, but they thought that of Cindy Sheehan, too. Sheehan is swiftly making the shift to quack and laughingstock and Murtha should take a hint from that sad affair.

I don't know if Murtha is speaking for himself or if Nanci Pelosi has arranged for him to have handlers, but his latest comments make me think the latter is a possibility. Murtha claims 'the Army is "broken, worn out" and "living hand to mouth" '. So now he has to insult our troops by making up lies about them. Everyone I have heard coming back from Iraq has had nothing but good to say about our troops. This was an obvious and clear attempt to demoralize them during time of war and is disgusting if not treasonous.

Murtha then seeing that Bush already sees next year as possible to bring troops home makes yet antother statement with the purpose of taking credit when it happens. Murtha states, "I predict he'll[Bush] make it look like we're staying the course." Murtha is attempting to paint a picture of Bush caving under pressure and trying to reconcile that with staying the course. Trying to paint Bush as weak and running out of ideas, etc. We have seen in the last few weeks that Bush is far from weak.

Basically Murtha as is the template with all liberal Democrats is working to salvage the investment they have made in an Iraqi failure. Having gone down this path, Murtha must defend it or turn back. To turn back means he must admit he was sucked in by Pelosi and company. Either way he is likely to become a laughingstock and that is sad given his reputation prior to this whole dark episode in his career.

Update: Having reviewed a fuller context of Rep. Murtha's statements I will retract the points above related to his comments on the army being "broken and worn out". The full context clearly shows that he was not speaking of the troops themselves. The AP story I derived this sentiment from was irresponsible to have pictured it the way they did.

I will wait to see where Murtha goes from here to see if he bases future actions or words on an investment in his original call to withdraw the troops. Until then, my apologies for not finding the full context of these words before writing about them.