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Al Jazeera (English)
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Iraqi Civilian Deaths ... caused by Bush's unprovoked war

 

Murtha's Thoughts about Bush's War on Iraq
(Congressman John Murtha, September 18, 2006)
MR. RUSSERT: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in today's Washington Post has written an article, "What We've Gained in Three Years in Iraq." What do you, John Murtha, believe we have gained after three years in Iraq?] . . . Well, let me say first, Tim, this is President Bush's war. When he went into the war, he, he went against the advice of his father and the whole administration. He went against the advice of many of his military commanders. He went in without-with inadequate force for the transition to peace and then he had no exit strategy, so it's their war. And what, what they're trying to do is paint it as if there's progress in order to be able to get out. What I see is not enough electricity, only 10 hours a day. I see not enough water, only 30 percent of the people have clean water. I, I see inadequate oil production. All those things were supposed to be part of, of getting this war under control. They have mishandled it, mischaracterized it. . . . Let me, let me tell you how they mischaracterize these kinds of things. For instance, we're caught in a civil war. What, however you want to look at it, first of all, they said there was no insurgency. Then they said it’s not a civil war. It is a civil war. Twenty-five thousand insurgents are fighting with each other inside the country for supremacy. That's the definition of a civil war. There's less than a thousand al-Qaida. And when he says turning it over to al-Qaida—and that's what he means, he, he's inferring it'll be turned over to al-Qaida—I don't believe that for a minute. The Iraqis will get rid of al-Qaida the minute that we get out of there. And 60 percent of the people in Iraq belive the sooner we get out, the more stable Iraq will be, and that's what all of us want. . . . [MR. RUSSERT: So your vote for the war was a mistake?] . . . It was a mistake. It was a bad mistake. . . . I'm disappointed the way this war has been run, I, I—the biggest thing is the rhetoric. They keep saying we're going, we're going to have victory, we're going to stay for the end. It's, it's open-ended. They can't be open-ended. We have to give the Iraqis the incentive. . . . Well, certainly the vice president has been the primary force in running, running this war, and many of the mischaracterizations have come about. You and I talked before the show about some of the things he said on your show, right before the war started. None of them turned out to be true. This is why the American public is so upset. . . . OK, I say fire some people, that's the first thing. . . . [MR. RUSSERT: Does the Pentagon support what you're saying?] . . . Well, the Pentagon doesn't support it publicly, obviously, because of what happened to General Shinseki. . . . [MR. RUSSERT: Have they told you privately?] . . . Oh, absolutely. I mean, so many of them have said, "Keep saying the truth, keep telling the truth." All kinds of military commanders have said that to—they know. They don’t even have to tell me. . . . Look, what, what happens if we stay there? Let, let me tell you, a year from now, just like I said when I got-when I came back from Vietnam. A month later—now imagine this—a month later they have an election and, and we lose 38,000 people seven years later. I mean, the six-year interim, interim period between 1967 and 1972 we lose 38,000 people. So a year from now, you can be sit—you've heard what they've said, over and over again, how well it's going. Incidents have increased, unemployment is 60 percent, oil production—all the things that I measure. When they say on, on the television or send us a letter telling us how well things are going, I said to the staff, go look at the economics statistics, tell me what the unemployment level, tell me the water production, tell me the oil production, tell me the electricity production, tell me the unemployment figures, and then we'll know whether we're making progress. Tell me the incidents. . . . Tim, I haven't been wrong yet. I, I put—take that back, when I voted for this war I was wrong. After that, I recognized I had to make a change in direction. I had, I had to make some, some strategic and tactical decisions which were entirely contrary to the way I normally operate. Normally, behind the scenes, you can get these kind of things straightened out. But when you have an, an administration that's so isolated, insulated from the public, insulated from reality—this is not a rhetorical war, you have to make progress, and none of the things that I measure are progress. So our troops are caught in a civil war. Forty-two percent of them don’t even know what their mission is, and 70 percent want out of there. . . . Now, is it going to be a civil war? It’s already a civil war. Twenty-five thousand Iraqis are fighting with each other inside the country, the best estimates I see, less than 1,000 al-Qaida. The minute it's over, they'll, they'll fight with each other, somebody will win, just like we did in our civil war, and they'll lose a lot less people than we did in our civil war, and they'll settle it themselves. [MR. RUSSERT: Some in the administration say the media is distorting the good news that’s coming out of Iraq.] . . . Well, they said the same thing about Vietnam. They said the same thing over and over and over about Vietnam. They said, "We're winning the war in Vietnam." That—you could go back and get quotes from Vietnam, and you’d see the same kind of, of, of reports, "The media's the one that's distorting; everything's going fine in Vietnam." Well, everything's not going fine in Iraq. They have to realize that. When the whole world is against you, when our, our international reputation has been diminished so substantially, when all the countries in the, in the region say, "We'd be better off without us being in Iraq," when the people themselves in Iraq say it, and American people say it, I mean who is right? . . . [MR. RUSSERT: Do you expect an October surprise from the administration dealing with the war?] . . . I'll tell you what they're going to try to do. They're trying to do this right now. They're trying to blame the military, they're trying, they're trying to put the whole onus on the military for what happened in Iraq, and then they’re going to say, "Well, we're, we're going to have a plan for withdrawal." You heard it already, you’ve heard them say, "OK, here's the goal for withdrawal." A benchmark, they call it. Just like they called the insurgency "dead end kids," then they call it sectarian violence—it's a civil war. . . . I expect them to announce significant withdrawals. And I think—I, I say there'll be withdrawals. But there'll be—for instance, you'll see in the spring they'll start to announce withdrawal and you will see what they call benchmarks, what everybody else calls a timetable. But I tell you, we have to convince the Iraqis—we have to say to the Iraqis, "This is your war, this is no longer our war. This—you've got an elected government, this is up to you now to settle this thing." And then we've got to say, say to them, "You start to work this out yourself. We're going to, we're going to redeploy our troops as quickly as possible."

posted by LoZo 9:55 AM