Every week, Rep. John Murtha makes the rounds at Walter Reed Army Medical Center to stand at the bedside of soldiers wounded in Iraq. "I see a kid blown apart, and it breaks my heart," the congressman says. Posted 11/17/2005 10:58 PM
On Thursday, the Pennsylvania Democrat could stand by no more. Belying his reputation as one of Congress' most hawkish members, Murtha called for an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.
"I feel very passionate about this," Murtha said in an emotional interview hours after his remarks. "I see a kid blown apart, and it breaks my heart." Democrats have long assailed President Bush's Iraq policy. But this is the top Democrat on the House panel that pays for Pentagon programs, a former Marine who was the first Vietnam veteran to serve in Congress and one of the most influential members of his party on military matters.
"It's a turning point in the growing opposition to the war," said Rep. John Conyers, a liberal Democrat from Michigan. He said Murtha's time in military hospital wards "had a profound impact on him, and he's finally come to the point where he cannot rationalize us staying over there any longer." Murtha voted to authorize the 1991 Persian Gulf War. He voted with 80 other House Democrats to give Bush the authority to use military force against Saddam Hussein in 2002. But his doubts about the administration's handling of the war have steadily mounted. In September 2003, he stood with liberal House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to criticize the Pentagon as stinting on equipment and body armor for the troops. In May 2004, Murtha warned his party that the war was unwinnable unless more U.S. and coalition forces were sent to Iraq. But his call to pull out rises above a growing chorus of lawmakers questioning the war.
It comes days after a Senate vote calling on Iraqis to take the lead on security and the Bush administration to make its exit strategy clear.
Republicans lashed out. Rep. Deborah Pryce of Ohio called Murtha "highly irresponsible." Rep. Steve Buyer, R-Ind., suggested that Murtha spoke out in hopes he'll become chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee if Democrats regain control of the House. "He is conflicted between his ideals as a Marine and as an American and the anti-war crowd that dominates his party," said Buyer, an Army reservist. "He has to play against his principles, and it must eat him inside." Murtha says all that's eating him is seeing troops killed and injured because they lack armored Humvees and body armor.
"This is not political to me," he said. The media-shy congressman rarely speaks from the House chamber or gives interviews. But he still holds court regularly. "People line up to seek his counsel," said Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Pa., who says no one dares sit in the last seat in the last row in the House chamber area known as "the Pennsylvania corner." That seat belongs to Murtha. Murtha's military credentials, including two Purple Hearts for wounds in Vietnam, mean that "when he says something in regards to defense, people listen," Doyle said. "Unlike some of the people on the Republican side, he's seen bullets." Murtha is "not a lightning rod. He's not divisive," says Terry Madonna, a political scientist who runs the Keystone Poll of Pennsylvania politics. "It provides a lot of cover for Democrats who wanted to call for a pullout earlier but ... were unwilling to do so."
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-11-17-pullout_x.htm
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