Rep John Murtha(D-PA) Admits Americans Dont Want To Cut And Run

Today on Meet The Press John Murtha admitted that the public doesn’t want to defund the war.

When asked why the Democrats haven’t filed a resolution to defund the war he said, “You don’t have the votes to do that in the first place, and when you don’t have the votes you can’t go forward. And the public doesn’t want it.”

Now, I am a bit confused. Haven’t we been hearing from the Democrats that they were elected to end the war? Hasn’t the media and the left been saying there was a madate to end the war? They keep reporting that the American people have rejected Bush’s war. It’s time to support the troops by bringing them home, they say. If this is the case how can Murtha say the public doesn’t want to cut off funding?

The truth is that there is a small percentage of anti-war Democrats who these people are trying to appease. They know that most Americans want to win the war, so it would be political suicide to cut off funding.

Of course the American people want to get out of Iraq. The problem for the Democrats is that we want to win first. As I have said many time before on this blog, a US victory in Iraq will make the president look good, so they are trying to tie America’s hands behind her back so we will lose and make the president look bad. At the same time they won’t cut off funds so that they can be perceived as not have cut and ran.

Below is from politico.com, John Murtha admitting the American people don’t want to cut and run:

By: Patrick O’Connor 

News – Democratic Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, the leader of the anti-war forces in the House, conceded Sunday that he and Democratic leaders do not have the votes to de-fund President Bush’s troop increase in Baghdad or put restrictions on money spent on the overall war effort in Iraq.

Asked on NBC’s “Meet the Press” why Democrats would not move a resolution to de-fund the war, Murtha said, “You don’t have the votes to do that in the first place, and when you don’t have the votes you can’t go forward. And the public doesn’t want it.”

Over the past week, many Democrats in the House signaled their displeasure with Murtha and suggested they would be reluctant to support the spending blueprint he laid out to a group that opposes the war.

“You’ve got to have the votes to pass the legislation,” Murtha conceded Sunday when host Tim Russert asked whether he got ahead of himself in laying out his plan to restrict money allocated for the war before he built support among his Democratic colleagues.

The Pennsylvania Democrat, who chairs the spending subcommittee on defense, expects party leaders in the House to introduce a new plan Monday, but he would not discuss the details of that legislation.

Meanwhile, Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said Democrats in the upper chamber would narrow their resolution limiting Bush’s ability to conduct the war, avoiding a direct revision of the initial 2002 resolution authorizing the war because it could create legal complications.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, one of the few vocal supporters of the president’s escalation of soldiers to Iraq, positioned Murtha’s readiness arguments as a red herring to further his overarching goal to force a troop withdrawal.

Murtha “is using the readiness issue to stop the surge,” Graham said Sunday on “Meet The Press.”