[Mb-civic] Bob Herbert

[Mike Blaxill]

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/112805J.shtml

Cut Our Losses
    By Bob Herbert
    The New York Times

    Monday 28 November 2005

    Washington - Jack Murtha is as tough as they
come, but he's seen enough of the misguided,
mismanaged, mission impossible war in Iraq to
know that it's not sustainable, not worth the
continued killing and butchering and
psychological maiming of thousands of American
G.I.'s.

    "I mean, this was a war done on the cheap and
we're paying a heavy price for it," he said in an
interview just before Thanksgiving.

    Mr. Murtha is the Pennsylvania congressman,
former marine and traditional war hawk whose call
for a quick withdrawal of American troops from
Iraq has intensified the national debate over the
war. He makes weekly visits to wounded troops in
military hospitals, and when he talks about their
suffering it sometimes seems as if his own heart
is breaking.

    "These kids are magnificent," he said.
"They've done their duty."

    He talked about the former Notre Dame
basketball player Danielle Green, a left-handed
guard ("heck of a player") who lost her left hand
in a rocket attack in Baghdad. And he recalled a
young marine who was trying to defuse a bomb when
it exploded. "It blinded him and took his hands
off," said Mr. Murtha. "It killed the guy behind
him."

    In Congressman Murtha's view, the troops who
have displayed so much valor and made so many
sacrifices in Iraq deserved better from their
leadership here at home. "We went in with
insufficient forces," he said. "We had people in
the wrong [specialties], people driving trucks
who couldn't back trucks up. We had security
forces without radios. I found 40,000 troops
without body armor."

    He has no faith in President Bush's repeated
calls to stay the course. "The number of
incidents have gone from 150 a week to 772 a
couple of weeks ago," he said. As additional U.S.
forces have been deployed, casualty rates have
increased, not decreased. And his many
conversations with G.I.'s have convinced him that
American fighting men and women don't have much
confidence in their Iraqi allies.

    "They don't trust them - that's all there is
to it," said Mr. Murtha. The disparagement of
Iraqi security forces by American troops was so
widespread that Mr. Murtha was surprised when one
soldier "started talking about how good they are,
how much they've improved, and so forth."

    It was a miscommunication. The congressman
soon realized that the soldier was talking about
how much the insurgents had improved; how they
had become more sophisticated, and thus "more
deadly."

    Mr. Murtha, 73, is a Democrat who has
maintained good ties over the years with
Republicans and has extraordinary contacts within
the Defense Department and the military. He's a
decorated Vietnam War veteran (Bronze Star, two
Purple Hearts) who retired as a colonel in the
Marine Corps Reserves after 37 years of service.

    He said he's convinced that there is nothing
more the military can accomplish in Iraq. It's
the presence of the American troops themselves,
inevitably seen by the Iraqis as occupiers, that
continues to fuel the insurgency.

    "Our military captured Saddam Hussein and
captured or killed his closest associates," he
said. "But the war continues to intensify."

    When he went public with his proposal to pull
American troops out of Iraq (he would establish a
"quick reaction" force elsewhere in the region,
perhaps in Kuwait), he said:

    "Our military and their families are
stretched thin. Many say that the Army is broken.
Some of our troops are on their third deployment.
Recruitment is down, even as our military has
lowered its standards. Defense budgets are being
cut. Personnel costs are skyrocketing,
particularly in health care."

    Equipment shortages at premier military bases
in the U.S., including Fort Hood in Texas and
Fort Bragg in North Carolina, are so severe, Mr.
Murtha told me, "that the troops don't have the
equipment they need to train on."

    We need to cut our losses in Iraq. The folly
of the Bush crowd and its apologists is now plain
for all to see. Congressman Murtha is right, the
war is not sustainable. Even Republicans in
Congress are starting to bail out on this
impossible mission. They're worried - not about
the welfare of the troops, but about their
chances in the 2006 elections.

    To continue sending people to their deaths
under these circumstances is worse than
pointless, worse than irresponsible. It's a crime
of the most grievous kind.