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Rep. John Murtha: U.S. Pullout Coming
Undaunted by the House of Representatives’ overwhelming rejection on Friday of a proposal to immediately withdraw troops from Iraq, Rep. John Murtha, D-Penn., told Tim Russert, host of "Meet the Press,” Sunday, that the U.S. will be out of Iraq "very quickly.” "Let me predict this,” Murtha said. "We're going to be out of there, we're going to be out of there very quickly, and it's going to be close to the plan that I'm presenting right now.” "You think we'll be out of Iraq by the end of 2006?” asked Russert. "I think we'll be out of there; if not completely out of there, we'll be very close to being out of there,” said Murtha. "I think we could be out -- yeah, I predict we'll be out of there -- it'll be 2006."
Story Continues Below "By Election Day 2006?” qualified Russert. "You -- you have hit it on the head,” Murtha replied. When confronted by Russert of charges that not a sufficient number of Iraqi forces have been ramped up to U.S. fighting standards, Murtha opined:
"They're going to let us do the fighting, as long as we're there, and, until we turn it over to them, they're not going to be up to standard. So I'm convinced that they can take over this battle and we could move our people to the periphery, out of danger.”
As to whether Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld should be replaced, Murtha said that such a decision was up to President Bush. Murtha qualified, however, saying:
"Well, I'll put it this way: There have been an awful lot of mistakes made, and I don't know whether it's his fault, but when he forced the military -- now this is what I hear from the military. He forced them to go in with inadequate forces.”
As to whether the intelligence provided by the administration was deliberately misleading, Murtha said: "I wouldn't say that. I don't think any president would mislead the public on the intelligence. They certainly exaggerated, but I don't think they deliberately misled us.”
During the Russert interview, Murtha returned more than once to the theme that the idea of a speedy withdrawal was not going away: "I have never seen such an outpouring in the 32 years I've been in Congress, of support and people with tears in their eyes, people walking along clapping when I'm walking through the halls of Congress, saying something needed to be said. So they're thirsting for a solution to this and the president can't hide behind rhetoric and neither can the vice president.” Editor's note:
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