Gasbag Patrol: Meet the Press/ 02-19-06

Meet the Press isn’t my usual gig but somebody else had George Steffie this week so I got stuck watching Russert. And it came on both East and West Coast feeds at the same time because of the Olympics, so I was obliged to be watching, taking notes and absorbing the meta of it all without either sufficient caffeine or an opportunity to review. So if you like a mix of Cranky, Incoherent, Illegible and Japanese Theater Forms, you’ve come to the right place. Read on….[update: rude Wolcott item added!]

Opening “interview” was Tweety vs. Chertoff, Master of the Homeland Security Universe.

[Note: After this babbleburble to NBC he used his superpowers to race over to the DC ABC studio to pretty much repeat the performance word for word on GeorgeSteffie, and I think i saw he was going to perform for Wolfie on CNN later. I think we can safely assume he’s on Major Calm Down, Pay No Attention To Those Drowned People Behind The Curtain, All Is Calm, All Is Bright, Now Shut The Fuck Up patrol this Sabbath.]

As to the interview itself, it was unmitigated horseshit in the traditional Kabuki stylized form.

—Mistakes Were Made.

—Lessons Were Learned.

—Language Is Spoken Entirely In The Passive Voice.

—[Xan pauses to smack self in face as the spell was starting to gain power over her.]

Summation: Brownie is a Disgruntled Ex-Employee is why he is saying those rude things; I was right to order him to stay in Baton Rouge because he was out riding around in helicopters and I couldn’t get hold of him when *I* wanted to; those umpty-zillion trailers sitting in a bog in Hope, Arkansas [gee, wonder who decided to stage this debacle in Bill Clinton’s birthplace?] are NOT going to waste but if they are it’s the fault of those rotten State’N’Local Officials, and besides if we don’t use them on the Gulf Coast we will haul them again halfway across the country to help victims of wildfires. Or something. Really. Trust us. Oh, and our new motto? “We’ll Do Better Next Time!” (yeah, direct quote.)

And oh, there’s no problem with letting the United Fucking Arab Emirates run security in our nations largest East Coast port cities, because Our Procedures Were Carefully Reviewed. I swear to God that’s exactly what he said, twice no less.

Tweetie can do a half-decent interview sometimes, but this was not one of those occasions. In fact it was beyond worthless. I got the distinct feeling that both “questions” and responses (they were not anything you could call “answers” that’s for sure) were written out by both of them in advance and simply read off the papers in front of them. Japanese Noh theater has more spontenaeity and Kabuki has vastly better makeup and costuming, so I recommend you watch those next time instead.

The roundtable was a little more interesting. Mary Matalin [whose overall role in Dick Dangerous’ Doddering Debacle is discussed over at E&P] was cranking the wheel of the Titanic as hard as she could to make the story about How Mean The Washington Press Corps Is. And how Out Of Touch they are, because they are effete coastal snobs who just Don’t Understand how Things Are Done on rural Texas fiefdoms like the Armstrong Ranch.

Even the state Democratic chairman, she tried real hard to say at least six times, said that Everything Was Done Just Right. (The attempt to make this a Bipartisan Cover-Up was quite ignored by all, but perhaps the Texas Dems need a new chairman who can avoid giving aid ’n’ comfort ’n’ all. Just sayin’.)

David Gregory, who was seated next to her, gave some smiles while she was talking that indicated he has a new sharpening job on the ol’ professional fangs, and Maureen Dowd was actually on her game today.

Matalin’s backup on the Forces of Darkness side was some schmuck I had to google as I had never heard of him: Paul Gigot, who runs the Wall Street Journal’s notoriously pro-fascist editorial page, and also runs TV shows into the ground repeatedly (his current one failed on CNBC, and just recently failed on PBS, so of course has been picked up by Fox, that bastion of welfare for the wealthy. Cruel details here).

Anyway, Gigot’s take was that this story was only a story because of the extreme hatred of Dear Vice Leader by the DC Press Corps, which should have been talking about something of greater importance all week like the need to invade Iran, or how Al Gore is clearly the Antichrist for making a truthful speech in Saudi Arabia. He was thereafter pretty well ignored too for being a bozo.

David Gregory at this point made his ritual apology for hurting Wee Scotty’s wee feelings by actually asking for, like, answers to questions. Then he pulled the fang covers back off and the real rumble began.

Russert read off some polls, concluding with the one that has 58% of the public thinking Vice Dear Leader is too secretive about things. Maureen Dowd picked up the ball and drove for the basket:

Cheney acts like The Phantom (I am assuming she meant the comic-strip guy with the purple body suit, not the Of The Opera guy since we have no indication Cheney can sing and don’t really want to find out.) He moves in secrecy, he works in hiding. The shooting incident allowed the public to see how he operates in real time.

[She sets up…she shoots:]

Dick Cheney and the Administration work in secrecy, blowing off the rules of democracy, they filter the news to their liking. This [shooting] incident shows bad political judgement by a control freak.

[She scores!]

Oh my, Matalin is so very not amused. This is not going as she had planned it. Russert follows with another poll, the same one we’ve seen for months, noting that the overall approval rating for Vice Dear Leader is stuck in the ditch at 29%. Is DVL, he asks, going to be much help for Thug candidates this fall?

Her response…how to describe this? Ever seen a cat do something really stupid, like jump onto a desk not realizing there’s a piece of paper there, so the cat slips and falls ass-over-teakettle onto the floor, and immediately starts to [bathe] [bathe] [bathe] furiously so as to not let on that anything untoward happened?

That’s what Mary did, except she went [sneer] [sneer] [sneer], rattling off examples of How Powerful Vice Dear Leader Continues To Be that I couldn’t write them down fast enough to recount here. But nothing untoward happened, really!

And she finally calmed down enough to be coherent to hiss at Maureen that it was just outrageous to blow the wounded feelings of the DC press corps into the statement that Vice Dear Leader, or Dear Leader himself, was contemptuous of the hallmarks of democracy! David Gregory was just being pissy because he wasn’t the first one called. This is much ado about nothing. Talk about something else.

Russert showed a clip of Hillary Clinton, who he said [tiresomely and inaccurately] was the “presumed candidate’ in ’08. Hill noted, quite consisely, that this was the way this Administration works, to withhold information “on matters large and small.”

Matalin: Hillary blew a chance to be sympathetic! Let’s talk about how bad Hillary is, why don’t we?

Miss Matalin, it seems, is new to the English language because she is not acquainted with the term “metaphor.” Both Dowd and Gregory attempted an impromptu ESL class to point out that this is the way the Dear Leaders, one and all, deal with everything they do, they evade the press and when they do talk they evade the truth.

[I paraphrase here as it got a bit McLaughlinesque for a minute and no transcript is yet available. I think it was at this point that Matalin used the “press is on a jihad against Cheney” line, which drew unexpected hooting that she didn’t seem to expect. That’s about as close to a blood-libel line as you can get, accusing the press, or anyone for that matter, of being in the pocket of Osama et al. Dowd, from off-camera, could be heard to say “Have you been saving up for that line?” Betcha money that when a transcript is available, that won’t be in there. That’s why you gotta watch these shows….]

A question, possibly from Russert: If the Armstrongs had said, we can cover this up, keep any information at all from getting out, would they have tried it?

Matalin: Nononononono! We were just waiting to get the Good Facts so people wouldn’t be confused by Bad Partial Facts.

Russert at this point noted that “there was a push” (apparently from Administration sources) to “encourage” people to talk about the Gore speech in Saudi Arabia. No followup.

The wrapup saw Gregory noting that the whole incident revealed some clear signs of “tension” between the Dear Leader(s) offices as well as the White House press corps. This is “healthy.” Grigot managed to advocated “fighting secrecy” but this should be done only on important stories, not unimportant ones. Matalin basically said the same thing and again advised us that the Vice President of the United States Shooting a Man in the Face was an unimportant story of no consequence.

Glad we could clear this up for you. Join us next week when our guest will be Der Gobernator off Kahleefonia, Ahhhnold! (True guest tease, but rude accents added. Try the veal, and don’t forget to tip your server!)

***

I must append this goody from James Wolcott on the same show discussed here, which goody I didn’t see until this had been posted already. I am glad I stayed away from such, um, unkind matters as Miss Matalin’s dress, demeanor and general appearance, because Wolcott does it so much better than I could ever hope to do:

Mary Quite Contrary

I only caught the bitter end of Meet the Press so I’m not sure what provoked Mary Matalin’s pout-fest (I’m sure Arianna will issue a full forensics report later), but she made quite a petulant spectacle of herself, shaking her head from side to side in silent, lemon-puss disagreement whenever Maureen Dowd and David Gregory made mildly critical comments about Shotgun Cheney. (Another prominent deployer of The Disapproving Headshake is sister conservative Kate O’Beirne, who wields it to upstage other panelists and ensure herself additional face-time: after her reaction shot, the host invariably calls on her next to vocalize her mute dissent. “Kate, I noticed you nodding your head…”—as if anyone could not notice!) Even without the immature pouting and pissy expression, Matalin would have been a car wreck in repose: With a bad haircut topping a mistaken facelift and a ghastly floral pin that looked like spray-painted aluminum, she looked like the Beltway’s Madwoman of Chaillot. Maybe defending the defensible is getting to her, and the acid reflux has gone to her brain.

Hee hee hee..

Meet the Press / Casey, Murtha

Tim Russert AKA Pumpkinhead AKA Timmeh AKA Lil’ Russ, was extra feisty today.

He threw a couple Bush quotes cleverly rephrased as questions at Gen. George Casey who got nailed, and then did his best to defend his Commander In Chief’s lies with the Jedi Mind Trick “these are not the droids you’re looking for” defense.

Murtha is always a blast to watch in action. He shot back without hesitation whenever Pumpkinhead recited standard GOP talking points that send other Democrats into fits of hemming, hawing and tourette’s-like outbursts of “subject needs more investigation”.

Casey segment quotes from my notes, not transcript. Murtha segment quotes are from the transcript which appeared about 3 hours after the show.

Talking points are in bold, borrowing Lambert’s technique.

Segment 1: General George Casey

Casey: [Last week’s] Operation Swarmer was designed to keep pressure on Al Qaeda, and the Iraqis that support them. Weapon caches were found, people were detained.

Pumpkinhead mentions an upcoming Time article: “How Operation Swarmer Fizzled”.

Casey: We picked up one or two of the high value folks we were looking for.

These are not the Major Combat Operations you’re looking for

Watch for the setup…

Pumpkinhead: Will there be any more major combat operations in Iraq?

Casey: Um, yeah. After their sound defeat in Fallujah, they’ve learned what happens when they mass against us.

Pumpkinhead plays the clip of Chimpy’s “mission accomplished” speech on the aircraft carrier: “major combat operations in Iraq have ended”.

Nailed! [/Colbert]. Casey beats a quick retreat, contradicting what he said seconds earlier.

Casey: Swarmer was not a major combat operation. It was conducted in an almost deserted area. It might have looked worse than it was.

Casey: Let’s put Iraq in perspective and let’s not pay so much attention to what happened in the last 3 weeks, think about the great things that have happened in the last 3 years: Saddam is on trial, the political process is moving along. With each election, the level of participation increased, the level of violence decreased.

That is a flat out lie, isn’t it?

This is not the Substantial Troop Reduction you’re looking for

Casey: It has happened, we’ve downramped X formations so we have 7 to 10,000 less. The process has started.

Pumpkinhead: So when you say substantial reductions, you’re talking 10,000, 15,000 troops?

Casey: I use the world “fairly substantial.” I don’t think we’re done and I didn’t put a time frame on it.

This is not the Civil War you’re looking for

Pumpkinhead: Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said yesterday that Iraq is in a civil war.

Casey: I don’t think he is correct. Civil war is not happening, is not imminent or something that will happen. But the situation is “fragile”.

Pumpkinhead: US ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad wrote an article in the LA Times saying the 2003 invasion of Iraq opened a Pandora’s box. If the US pulls out sectarian violence could turn into civil war.

Casey: We’re working on it.

This is not the Timetable you’re looking for

Pumpkinhead: President Chimpy has said he plans to turn over most of Iraq to Iraqi troops by the end of 2006. But President Chimpy previously said that setting a timetable would send the wrong message to the enemy.

Casey: It’s not a timetable. It’s a benchmark, a very achievable benchmark but I don’t see it as a timetable.

This is not the fantasyland war planning you’re looking for

Pumpkinhead quotes Casey’s statements from November 2005: “What the Iraqis need is time. They need a few more years to work through their differences. Our presence here gives them that time. ..”

Casey: It depends how you define major american presence, it’s going to be a gradual decrease.

Pumpkinhead: In April 2003 General Tommy Franks said to set a plan to withdraw all troops by the end of the year. Did you ever think we would still be here with 130,000 troops, all the dead?

Casey: Uh, kinda. I thought we would be there for a couple of years.

These are not the “Last Throes” you’re looking for

Pumpkinhead: Do you believe the insurgency is in it’s last throes?

Casey: We’re seeing some shifts in the insurgency. We’re seeing more of a willingess to sit down and talk about things.

These are not the Negotiations with Terrorists you’re looking for. This was funny. Transcript is now up.

MR. RUSSERT: You’re having negotiations with the insurgents?

GEN. CASEY: No, I said we are, we are seeing people coming forward and being more willing to talk. I’m, I’m not negotiating with any insurgents.

MR. RUSSERT: You’re having conversations with the insurgents?

GEN. CASEY: I’m, I’m not having any conversations with insurgents, Tim.

MR. RUSSERT: Then who are they talking to?

GEN. CASEY: They’re talking to political folks, people who, who talk to us, and passing messages.

The American People don’t realize that this isn’t the bloody, pointless, never-ending disaster they’re looking for

This is not the eroding support for the War among the American Public, the Iraqi Public and the US Military you’re looking for

Pumpkinhead cited a Wall Street Journal Poll conducted March 10-13, 2006. Support for the war is in the tank. Support for bringing troops home is growing.

GEN. CASEY: …I’ll tell you, just those, those numbers, I believe, come from perceptions of what they see on the ground here. And that’s—it’s a difficult nut to crack. Last week, I went out and drove around Baghdad for three hours, just to get my own sense of what’s, what the people of Baghdad were feeling. There’s a lot of bustle here, Tim, in Baghdad. There’s a lot of economic activity, storefronts crowded, goods stacked up on the street. And, and the traffic cops are wearing white shirts and neckties, not armored vests.

Well, that’s changed my perception. Iraqi traffic cops have snappy new uniforms. Mission accomplished.

The General completely ignored the polls.

MR. RUSSERT: Can you continue to conduct a war without the support of the American people?

GEN. CASEY: Well, that’s—obviously, Tim, that’s a, that’s a political judgment there.

Final analysis: Casey got pummeled. How has it become the job of a General engaged in a war abroad to be a PR flack defending Bush’s propaganda points?

###

Segment 2: Rep. John Murtha is in the house. Hoo-rah!

This might look like I just copy and pasted the whole transcript. Well, almost, but I think it’s useful because Murtha swats down every single GOP talking point from the last three years (and there’s lots of them) like a champion.

How is it that this previously unknown Representative from “Deer Hunter” country can outperform every single high-profile Democrat (with their fancy consultants and media trainers) I’ve ever seen on a talk show?

I’ve got a theory: telling the truth is easy. Murtha bases his points on facts and their unavoidable logical implications. Lying and avoiding the question, on the other hand, is hard work. Pansycrat Dems’ talking points are carefully crafted to triangulate between their personal interests, those of their corporate campaign contributors, and a mortal fear of Brit “The Cryptkeeper” Hume.

Iraqi forces will control 75% of Iraqi territory by the end of 2006

Murtha anticipates [pre-pa-ration, hello?] this Right-Wing talking point before Pumpkinhead even brings it up and proceeds to beat it down:

REP. MURTHA: … And what, what they’re trying to do is paint it as if there’s progress in order to be able to get out.

… Now, for instance, they said not long we’re going to have 75 percent of the country controlled by Iraqis. Well, I, I flew for an hour and 15 minutes over desert, wasn’t a soul—and that’s, that’s the territory I guess they’re talking about…

In other words, huge areas of Iraq are uninhabited desert. Turning more uninhabited desert over to Iraqi Forces isn’t “progress”.

There is no insurgency, it’s the work of the terrorists

REP. MURTHA: … Twenty-five thousand insurgents are fighting with each other inside the country for supremacy. That’s the definition of a civil war. There’s less than a thousand al-Qaida.

Iraq = Nazi Germany

Pumpkinhead refers to Donald “Kung-Fu Hands” Rumsfeld’s article in today’s WaPo.

MR. RUSSERT: Secretary Rumsfeld in his article says this: “Turning our backs on postwar Iraq today would be the modern equivalent of handing postwar Germany back to the Nazis.”

REP. MURTHA: …And when he says turning it over to al-Qaida—and that’s what he means, he, he’s inferring it’ll be turned over to al-Qaida—I don’t believe that for a minute. The Iraqis will get rid of al-Qaida the minute that we get out of there. And 60 percent of the people in Iraq belive the sooner we get out, the more stable Iraq will be, and that’s what all of us want.

Elections solve everything

For instance, I’ll give you an example: In, in 1967, I came back from Vietnam. There was an election in Vietnam right after that, and the president of the United States said, “This is it, we legitimized the government. From now on, the, the Vietnamese can take it with their own government.” We lost 38,000 people after that.

Democrats won’t admit they made a mistake in voting for the Invasion of Iraq

MR. RUSSERT: So your vote for the war was a mistake?

REP. MURTHA: It was a mistake. It was a bad mistake. And, and most of us believed that—and the first war with—the ‘91 war, I led the fight to go to war.

…

Now, this, this president, we thought, “OK, we continue an inspection process, we give him a club.” And, and I, I believed we had a threat to our national security. When I found out we didn’t have a threat to our national security, we violated one of the principles I’ve always adhered to: You’ve got to have a national threat to our security before you go to war; then you’ve got to have overwhelming force, which we didn’t have; and then second, you’ve got to—third, you’ve got to have an exit strategy. We violated all those principles.

The World is a better place with Saddam out of power

MR. RUSSERT: Would the world be safer with Saddam still there?

REP. MURTHA: The world would be safer if we kept him under control as we were keeping him under control all during the Clinton administration. And, and to use that as an excuse to go to war, we got, we got dictators in North Korea, we got dictators in, in a lot of different countries in, in parts of Africa. We can’t police the world, and we can’t nation build anymore. We cannot afford to do that. We discredit ourself and we destroy our credibility and our resources trying to do that.

Iraq is the central front in the War on Terror

REP. MURTHA: … You know who wants us in Iraq, Tim? Iran wants us in Iraq, China wants us in Iraq, al-Qaida wants us in Iraq. Why? Because of our human resources that are being, being hurt so badly, and our financial resources. We will have spent $450 billion dollars in the war in Iraq and, and Afghanistan by the end of this year. And, and Afghanistan’s starting to slip because of the poppy-growing and because of the drug-growing. So we have diverted ourself away from terrorism by, by getting involved in a civil war.

Why didn’t Democrats speak up earlier if they knew Iraq was a bad idea/situation?

MR. RUSSERT: When did you first write the president about your misgivings?

REP. MURTHA: Well, it was two and a half years ago I wrote to him, and I said, “Mr. President, you only have a few months to get things straightened out. We need more troops over there and, and you need to train the Iraqis sooner. You, you need to energize,” meaning you need to start the process of getting people working, “and, and you need to internationalize. You need to go to, to the other countries and get them to support us.” Seven months later, I got a reply back from the assistant secretary of defense. Now that’s frustrating that, that I would get an answer back that long.

Democrats don’t have a plan for Iraq

REP. MURTHA: Here, here’s what you should do, Mr. President. First of all, you should fire all the people who are responsible for that, which gives you international credibility.

MR. RUSSERT: Including his secretary of defense?

REP. MURTHA: Well, he, he should—well, let’s say he should offer his resignation, because he certainly…

MR. RUSSERT: And it’s sure to be accepted?

REP. MURTHA: I would accept it, that’s exactly right.

MR. RUSSERT: What about the vice president?

…

REP. MURTHA: Yeah. Well, certainly the vice president has been the primary force in running, running this war, and many of the mischaracterizations have come about. You and I talked before the show about some of the things he said on your show, right before the war started. None of them turned out to be true. This is why the American public is so upset.

OK, I say fire some people, that’s the first thing.
…
But then, then, then we go to, to how do we get our troops out of there? You redeploy to the periphery so that we, if we have to, we can go back in.
…
Mr. President, let’s go back to fighting the war on terrorism.

[from later on in the program: ]

Now, I don’t know how many they’ll withdraw, but here’s the problem with the plan they have vs. my plan. My plan is redeploy as quickly as possible to protect our troops. Their plan is you draw out the withdrawal, which means you’ve got less troops on the ground that are more vulnerable to attack, because the IEDs and the convoys are the ones where—are being attacked. So I’m, I’m convinced that, that my, my plan is the only plan that, that will work and protect the American troops.

The Military enthusiastically supports the mission

Let, let’s reduce our presence in Iraq, let’s start to rebuild the Army, because the Army’s broken as far as I’m concerned. And the military commanders know this.

I talk to the military commanders all the time. I know what’s going on in the military. And, and most of the military in Iraq, 70 percent of our troops say we want out of there, and 42 percent say they don’t know what their mission is for heaven’s sake.

MR. RUSSERT: Does the Pentagon support what you’re saying?

REP. MURTHA: Well, the Pentagon doesn’t support it publicly, obviously, because of what happened to General Shinseki.

MR. RUSSERT: Have they told you privately?

REP. MURTHA: Oh, absolutely. I mean, so many of them have said, “Keep saying the truth, keep telling the truth.” All kinds of military commanders have said that too—they know. They don’t even have to tell me.

There was a sliver of a connection between Saddam and Al-Qaeda I can’t believe pumpkinhead trotted out this dead horse.

MR. RUSSERT: The administration will say yes, maybe there’s no direct link between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein, but there were contacts between the Iraqis and al-Qaida.

REP. MURTHA: Oh, well, come on. I mean, that, that’s just an excuse to try to justify the war. They’ve changed their position six times on, on this war, why we went to war, and the public’s not buying it any longer. The public doesn’t want rhetoric

We can’t bring the troops home because Iraq would turn into a bloodbath

MR. RUSSERT: If we got out quickly and left behind a blood bath, what would we do? Just watch the slaughter?

REP. MURTHA: Look, what, what happens if we stay there? Let, let me tell you, a year from now, just like I said when I got—when I came back from Vietnam. A month later—now imagine this—a month later they have an election and, and we lose 38,000 people seven years later.
…
When they say on, on the television or send us a letter telling us how well things are going, I said to the staff, go look at the economics statistics, tell me what the unemployment level, tell me the water production, tell me the oil production, tell me the electricity production, tell me the unemployment figures, and then we’ll know whether we’re making progress. Tell me the incidents.

Iraqi forces are getting close to completely taking over security

I mean, they—their measurement of the brigades is back and forth. They’ll say the brigades one month is 90 people, now there’s less than one brigade that can operate independently.

Let’s take Operation Swarmer. Now, they said a lot of Iraqis, more than half of them were Iraqis. American helicopters, American planning, American logistics, American artillery, American medical evacuation—everything was American. I mean, they don’t—the American people see it. They see these American helicopters. Do you think they fool the Americans when they say that? And one of the commanders said 75 percent of the country is going to be under control of the Iraqis and 75 percent of it is desert? I mean, give me a break. That’s part of the problem.

Opposition to the war is purely partisan

This should not be political. When I go by the graveyard over there at Arlington, it doesn’t say Democrat or Republican, it says American. When I look at the graveyards, the veterans graveyards all over the world, it doesn’t say Democrat or Republican, it says American.

People who oppose the war are pessimists and this hurts the war effort

MR. RUSSERT: David Ignatius of The Washington Post has written a few columns from Iraq and here’s his latest.
“ …For a change, pessimism isn’t necessarily the right bet for Iraq.” What if we got out quickly, prematurely, and in fact, you were wrong.

REP. MURTHA: Tim, I haven’t been wrong yet. I, I put—take that back, when I voted for this war I was wrong. After that, I recognized I had to make a change in direction. I had, I had to make some, some strategic and tactical decisions which were entirely contrary to the way I normally operate. Normally, behind the scenes, you can get these kind of things straightened out. But when you have an, an administration that’s so isolated, insulated from the public, insulated from reality—this is not a rhetorical war, you have to make progress, and none of the things that I measure are progress.

The Media doesn’t report all the good things that are happening in Iraq

MR. RUSSERT: Some in the administration say the media is distorting the good news that’s coming out of Iraq.

REP. MURTHA: Well, they said the same thing about Vietnam. They said the same thing over and over and over about Vietnam. They said, “We’re winning the war in Vietnam.” That—you could go back and get quotes from Vietnam, and you’d see the same kind of, of, of reports, “The media’s the one that’s distorting; everything’s going fine in Vietnam.” Well, everything’s not going fine in Iraq. They have to realize that. When the whole world is against you, when our, our international reputation has been diminished so substantially, when all the countries in the, in the region say, “We’d be better off without us being in Iraq,” when the people themselves in Iraq say it, and American people say it, I mean who is right?

Americans percieve Democrats as weak compared to Republicans on Security issues

MR. RUSSERT: Why are the Democrats at a lower trust level than Republicans on the war?

REP. MURTHA: Well, let me tell you this, Tim. He’ll find out in November where the trust level is. He’ll find out if he doesn’t change course, if he doesn’t change direction, the Republicans in Congress will get a rude awakening and they know it. They see the unhappiness of the American people.

Iraqi insurgents are Saddam loyalist “Dead Enders”

REP. MURTHA: … You heard it already, you’ve heard them say, “OK, here’s the goal for withdrawal.” A benchmark, they call it. Just like they called the insurgency “dead end kids,” [LO freakin’ L] then they call it sectarian violence—it’s a civil war.

The US can and will attack Iran

MR. RUSSERT: If the president decided that military action in Iran was necessary, should he come to Congress first?

REP. MURTHA: He—there’s no way he’s going to take military action in Iran.

Iran is, is three times as big geographically, there’s 58 million people vs. 26 million people in, in Iraq, and, and there’s no way. A fanatical government—I mean, the, the president of the United States does not have a military option. He can say he has a military option; he does not have a military option.

MR. RUSSERT: But he should come to Congress if he is…

REP. MURTHA: Oh, absolutely. As a matter of fact, we, we have allowed our, our influence, our, our separation from, from the president to be—in the last couple of presidents when it goes to war. The, the Congress is the only one that can authorize to go to war. He has to come to Congress before he does anything, let alone go to war.

Jack Murtha was brilliant for the whole show, but he let me down in the final exchange: he thinks the Feingold Censure resolution needs more investigation in committee. Nobody’s perfect, but there is no doubt Rep. Murtha can kick some Sunday Gasbag ass.