{"id":27680,"date":"2011-05-19T04:35:21","date_gmt":"2011-05-19T04:35:21","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-03-05T12:25:32","modified_gmt":"2020-03-05T17:25:32","slug":"murtha_retreat_surge_is_working","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2011\/05\/19\/murtha_retreat_surge_is_working\/","title":{"rendered":"Murtha Retreat: “Surge Is Working”"},"content":{"rendered":"
RUSH: Yesterday in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, Representative John Murtha held a video conference with reporters to talk about his trip to Iraq, from which he just returned.<\/p>\n

MURTHA: I — I think — I think the surge is — is working.<\/p>\n

RUSH: What? What did I hear? Can we play that again? Do we have that available or did it vanish into the ether?<\/p>\n

MURTHA: I — I think — I think the surge is — is working.<\/p>\n

RUSH: He said the surge is working. Jack Murtha says the surge is working. I don\u2019t care whether he\u2019s now doing a CYA because the truth is obvious. The fact of the matter is this hurts Democrats. Nancy Pelosi — I don\u2019t know this — my guess is she is furious, my guess is that Harry Reid\u2019s furious, because Murtha was the spear taker, Murtha was out there catching the spears everybody was throwing because he was leading the charges. He\u2019s in a safe district and he was leading the charge and the surge isn\u2019t working and our troops are criminals, and they\u2019re rapists, and they\u2019re murderers, and they\u2019re muggers, and this sort of thing. Now he says the surge is working. This could not be worse for the Democrats. James Clyburn, who is the House whip, and he\u2019s chairman I think of the Congressional Black Caucus, said some months ago, ‘As a party we\u2019ve got real problems if this thing turns around.\u2019 And they do have real problems with this.<\/p>\n

Harry Reid, even now, offering legislation, as you know, to try to curb future Iraq funding unless it\u2019s tied to troop withdrawals. He\u2019s just been undercut here by Murtha, as has Pelosi.<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: All right, here\u2019s a little more on Jack Murtha, from Politico.com: ‘Murtha\u2019s Comments on ‘Surge\u2019 are a Problem for House Democrats.\u2019 Murtha, as you know, ‘one of the leading anti-war voices in the House Democratic Caucus, is back from a trip to Iraq and he now says the ‘surge is working.\u2019 This could be a huge problem for Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other Democratic leaders, who are blocking approval of the full $200 billion being sought by President Bush for combat operations in Iraq in 2008… a stark reversal from\u2019 previous positions. I know a lot of people think he\u2019s just playing CYA here, because what\u2019s happening on the ground is obvious and it\u2019s at such variance with his prior positions. Whether he\u2019s CYA or not with whatever he\u2019s saying here, he was the spear-taker. He was the guy catching the arrows out there because he was safe. Now, he\u2019s blown the cover here. It does present the Democrats with a problem. Previously, back in July, Murtha had said it\u2019s delusion. In fact we\u2019ve got some sound bites from Murtha in the past. This is Meet the Press, March 4th, 2007. The question from Russert: ‘Do you believe that unless the violence subsides, our troops should come home within six months?\u2019<\/p>\n

MURTHA: Yeah, they\u2019re in a civil war! We\u2019re caught in a civil war! Any way you look at it it\u2019s a civil war. I supported, uh, an extra 200,000 troops in Vietnam when I came back from Vietnam. Uh, it did work. This is not working. It — it\u2019s one of those things, the surge just won\u2019t work, and that\u2019s what we believe, and I think in the end, they can\u2019t say you\u2019ll see what will happen. There\u2019s too much optimism about this whole thing. We need to get this thing out of the way!<\/p>\n

RUSH: That\u2019s just back in March. And now Murtha is saying, ‘I think the surge is working.\u2019 May 1st of this year, Hardball with Chris Matthews. Question: ‘Why wouldn\u2019t the [General Petraeus] tell the truth? Why is he blaming it on Al-Qaeda, the people who blew up the World Trade Center? Why is he doing that?\u2019<\/p>\n

MURTHA: This whole war — ever since I diverted the attention away from where Al-Qaeda started, eh, eh, the Taliban in Afghanistan — the war in Iraq — where we should have stayed. Ever since that time, uh, they — they were trying to tie this in to terrorism. All of us know there\u2019s, uh, there\u2019s, uh terrorism all over the world.<\/p>\n

MATTHEWS: But he\u2019s not — but, Congressman, he\u2019s not a PR man. He\u2019s not a flak for the White House. He\u2019s a general in the field. Why would he be…<\/p>\n

MURTHA: Wait a minute. Wait a minute.<\/p>\n

MATTHEWS: You\u2019re saying he\u2019s singing this song of the ideologues.<\/p>\n

MURTHA: I\u2019m saying he came back here at the White House\u2019s request to purely make, uh, political statements. That\u2019s what I\u2019m saying. There\u2019s no question in my mind about it!<\/p>\n

RUSH: He\u2019s talking about General Petraeus. Now, you know, all this is off the board now. The surge is working. Democrats are fully discredited. As I said earlier this week, ‘We now know, it\u2019s blatant: They are not qualified to lead this country.<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: Phil in Smyrna, Delaware. Welcome to the EIB Network, sir. Hello.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Yes. I just want to bring up a quick point about Murtha, you were talking about earlier. I was under the impression that he might be agreeing with the status of the war in Iraq so that the troops come out.<\/p>\n

RUSH: I don\u2019t care. I don\u2019t care about their motivation. I really couldn\u2019t care less about his motivation right now. These people do not have a clover\u2019s leaf of credibility to stand on. I don\u2019t care why he said it. If he thinks saying the surge is working is going to help get the troops out, he\u2019s wrong. All he\u2019s done is infuriate Nancy Pelosi and put a cog in the wheel. Remember, it\u2019s still primary period time and MoveOn.org out there is still threatening to find candidates to run against Democrats who are not properly fealty on the anti-war issue, and so you\u2019ve got Harry Reid and Pelosi still offering these meaningless resolutions to de-fund or not provide money to continue, in the midst of success. In the midst of a road to victory, Democrats are still trying to come up with ways to keep money from the troops to force Bush to pull \u2019em out, and Murtha now says the surge is working. I don\u2019t care if it\u2019s personal. I don\u2019t care if it\u2019s CYA. I don\u2019t care if it\u2019s a dirty little trick to try to get the troops out of there. The fact is, this is exposing the Democrats as incompetent themselves.<\/p>\n

Mrs. Clinton is running a competence election. ‘We can do it better. We are this, we are that.\u2019 She hasn\u2019t done anything right, from health care, to managing the Paula Jones case; bimbo eruptions are about it, and she missed a couple. She missed more than a couple. The idea these people are more competent — look at the programs they\u2019ve given us: Social Security, Medicare, the war on poverty, we\u2019re going broke because of these programs, not the military, we\u2019re going broke because of the redundancy of programs that keep way too many productive Americans on the dole. There\u2019s nothing competent about liberal Democrats whatsoever. They\u2019re the most incompetent, destructive people running around. I don\u2019t care about their good intentions, folks. They are ruining this country! They are literally ruining it, and for us to sit around all cowering in the corner in fear because we think she is going to win and so forth and we can\u2019t win a competence election, give me a break! Can\u2019t win a competence election, these people couldn\u2019t spell ‘competence\u2019 if they had to to survive.<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: Jack Murtha has clarified his remarks, ladies and gentlemen. Let\u2019s go back to the audiotape. This is yesterday in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Murtha held a video conference with reporters to talk about his recent trip to Iraq.<\/p>\n

MURTHA: I — I think — I think the surge is — is working.<\/p>\n

RUSH: ‘House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee Chairman John Murtha (D-Pa.) has taken the unusual step of publicly clarifying his remark that the ‘surge is working\u2019 in Iraq.\u2019 You just know that Nancy Pelosi had steam and smoke coming out of her ears. ‘The clarification came after House Republicans circulated an article about Murtha\u2019s comments written in Friday\u2019s edition of his home-state Pittsburgh Post-Gazette after a teleconference from Murtha\u2019s Johnstown, Pa., office. In addition to saying that the surge is working, the Post-Gazette reported, Murtha called the Iraqi government ‘dysfunctional\u2019 and said, ‘The thing that has to happen is the Iraqis have to do this themselves. We can\u2019t win it for them.\u2019 … This morning Murtha issued the following statement through his spokesman: ‘The military surge has created a window of opportunity for the Iraqi government. Unfortunately, the sacrifice of our troops has not been met by the Iraqi government and they have failed to capitalize on the political and diplomatic steps that the surge was designed to provide. The fact remains that the war in Iraq cannot be won militarily, and that we must begin an orderly redeployment of U.S. forces from Iraq as soon as practicable.” Play number seven again, Mister Broadcast Engineer.<\/p>\n

MURTHA: I — I think — I think the surge is — is working.<\/p>\n

RUSH: That just can\u2019t stand in the Democrat Party. Some Democrats might be able to say it and not have Nancy Pelosi go nuts. When Murtha says it, he has to clarify. So he\u2019s made a pointed effort to get this clarification out, and he has done so, and there will be nobody to convince me otherwise that he was taken to the woodshed. He was taken to the woodshed by Pelosi and her minions in there in the speaker\u2019s office.<\/p>\n

END TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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