Jack Murtha comments from NY Town Hall meeting yesterday

[quiet.american]

Have to admit I'm lucky that I work for a boss who actually insisted I take time out yesterday so that I could attend an hour-and-a-half lunchtime Town Hall meeting with Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-New York) and her guest, Rep. John (Jack) Murtha (D-Pennsylvania).

Although Rep. Murtha was primarily greeted with warm respect, a few enraged guys interrupted the proceedings from time to time to loudly hurl obscenities at him in regard to his statement that the country was right to go into Afghanistan after 9/11, (granted, I don’t buy the official version myself) and in regard to his service in Vietnam. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised to see a lot of anger directed towards Murtha, an ex-marine whom I understand, aside from the Iraq folly, has very hawkish views. (I’m former USAF myself).

Afterwards, though, a group of Iraq War Veterans for Peace handed out their literature and were literally cocooned and embraced by the audience. The faces of these young men were so strong, sweet, intelligent and engaged, it made me even more angry that they have been put into a hellish situation based on smirks, lies, and high crimes against this country for which Bush and company has yet to be held accountable.

On to Rep. Murtha. To his credit, he kept his cool throughout the entire session, never once being thrown off his objective to have a public dialogue about his call for troops to be re-deployed from Iraq.

Audience question: (paraphrasing) What do you think about the Sy Hersh report over the weekend that Bush is now planning to drop a nuclear bomb on Iran.

Rep. Murtha (paraphrasing): There will be no nuclear
bomb dropped on Iran. Not going to happen. It’s crazy.
If we were to drop a bomb on Iran, it would destroy
not only Iran, but the entire Middle Eastern region
and completely shatter what’s left of our international standing in the
world. Not going to happen. The so-called intelligence
on Iraq was completely wrong and made up and then they
gave the head intelligence guy a Medal of Freedom, why the hell
should we believe anything they say about Iran?

Audience question – from the Kool-Aid drinkers among us: (paraphrasing): Why are you being defeatist and insisting that we cut-and-run from Iraq.

Rep. Murtha (paraphrasing): We went in there first
because we were told there were weapons of mass
destruction, then we were nation building and bringing
democracy, then we were told we couldn’t leave because
chaos would erupt, and now we can’t leave because
there’s a civil war. Our troops are in there in the
middle of an Iraqi civil war – there’s 130,000 of us
and 26 million Iraqis in a country a little bigger
than Texas. We cannot prevail in a country where 80%
of the citizens want us out and 47% say it’s okay to
kill Americans. It’s time to change direction on this,
acknowledge mistakes were made, change direction and
bring our troops home in one piece.

More… we can either be driven out of Iraq like we were
in Vietnam, or we can declare victory and leave on our
own steam.

More… we need to give the Iraqi government an
incentive to get their act together. While our troops
are getting blown up and shot at, they <the various
Iraqi political factions> meet for a half-hour now and then
and are still not doing what it takes to set up the
government that was elected. We need to get out of
there and leave them to govern their own country.

Audience question: The anti-war movement was called unpatriotic when we were marching against exactly what is happening now. Will you admit today that we were right and you were wrong?

Rep. Murtha (paraphrasing): I was wrong. I made a
huge mistake. And now is the time to change direction.
Admit the mistakes and change direction.

At this point, Rep. Maloney also took the mike and
stated she, too, was wrong to vote for giving Bush the
power to invade Iraq. She also elaborated that it was
hard at the time not to be convinced Iraq had WMD,
since Rumsfeld, Powell and Tommy Franks were all
personally insisting they knew exactly where the WMD
was.

Audience question (paraphrasing): How likely is it that troops will actually be withdrawn anytime soon.

Rep. Murtha (paraphrasing): My prediction is that by
the end of this year our troops will have been
re-deployed and most of them will have returned to the
United States.

Audience question: What about these permanent bases in Iraq. How are we supposed to be leaving the Iraqis alone and yet are building a permanent presence there at the same time?

Rep. Murtha (paraphrasing): There will be no
permanent bases in Iraq. None.

Audience question (paraphrasing):
What can we do NOW to affect the policies the Republican congress is putting into place that are destroying the country.

Rep. Murtha (paraphrasing): The House of
Representatives represents the people. When the people
of this country make their voices heard, change will
happen. One thing is to elect a Democratic majority
this year; that will give us subpoena power. That will
give us the means to start holding some people
accountable. That’s why the Republicans are starting
to get scared.

Audience question (paraphrasing): Why can’t we impeach the mother*&^%$ already?

Rep. Murtha (paraphrasing): It’s a very serious thing to
impeach the president, very serious business. We have to form a
committee, we have to look at whether he’s violated the Constitution,
it has to go through a process. And right now we’re the minority party,
there’s nothing we can do. A Republican-majority congress certainly
isn’t going to do anything.

Rep. Murtha went on to answer many more questions, but those are the ones that stayed with me.

One thing that struck me about Rep. Maloney, though, is that she seems to have no clue about how many New Yorkers there are who despise and do not buy the White House/mainstream media version of what happened on 9/11. At one point, after a question pertaining to 9/11 (can’t exactly recall what the question was), she asked how many had read the 9/11 Commission Report. A few raised their hands. Then she very eagerly said, “All of you really need to read that book and should buy it – you know, it’s actually sold more copies than Harry Potter--"

Huh?

Well, you can guess the rest. She barely got the words out before the audience drowned her out en masse with shouts of “that’s complete bullshit,” “I wouldn’t spend my money on that piece of crap,” “it’s all lies,” etc. She appeared to be genuinely stunned by this reaction, which told me she has not yet been completely weaned off the Kool-Aid.

Anyway it was a privilege to attend that meeting. I came out with even more respect for Rep. Murtha,
and even though she’s not exactly my cup of tea, also Rep. Maloney, who has my appreciation for
organizing and hosting the event.