An addendum to my post from yesterday evening and to Joe’s great round-ups (see links below):
At AMERICAblog, John Aravosis reveals that the Pentagon (White House?) is already swift-boating Murtha. Not that we could honestly have expected anything else. This is how they deal with their opponents, with those who dare to question them.
Digby responds here.
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As some of you may know, Vice President Cheney has recently rushed not only to the defence of torture but to the defence of the mess for which he himself is particularly responsible as one of its chief architects. Indeed, he has called the Democrats’ suggestion of pre-war intelligence manipulation “one of the most dishonest and reprehensible charges ever aired in this city”. (How you do spell hyperbole? Methinks he doth protest too much.)
Well here’s Murtha, “a decorated Korean War and Vietnam combat veteran” on Cheney et al. (from the AP): “I like guys who’ve never been there that criticize us who’ve been there. I like that. I like guys who got five deferments and never been there and send people to war, and then don’t like to hear suggestions about what needs to be done.”
As Roger Waters put it in his highly underrated album Amused to Death, a brilliant anti-war protest, people like Cheney possess “the bravery of being out of range”.
There is still a need for debate and discussion on what to do in Iraq. But let’s listen to people who have been there, to the McCains, the Hagels, the Murthas, not to those who have no clue, the Cheneys, the Rumsfelds, and, yes, the Bushes.
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There’s craziness all over, but here’s a right-wing insanity alert (perhaps a Malkin Award nominee for Andrew Sullivan):
Michelle Malkin stand-in Lorie Byrd: “This war has become the Democrats’ best hope for 2006 and they are going to do whatever it takes to get the maximum advantage from it. The more American lives that are lost between now and then, the better they think it will be for them. That is the sad truth. Hopefully, not even the mainstream media will not be able to disguise that strategy.”
Or: Democrats want American troops to die.
It’s truly and utterly shameful that so many on the right hold this astonishingly partisan and ignorant view. But that’s only because so many of them have lost their minds. With respected hawks like Murtha pulling away from the war, slandering their opponents may be all some Republicans have going into 2006.