Boy, do I hate it when youse guys shrink the truth.

I'm sure that Rep. Jean Schmidt wasn't referring to Rep Murtha when she said:

"He also asked me to send Congressman (and Marine) Murtha a message, that cowards cut and run, Marines never do."

parenthetical addition: mine.

Nope, she surely wasn't referring to any member of the House, and certainly not Congressman Murtha, when she said "Congressman Murtha". How could anyone suggest such a thing?

Bush and Cheney will never back down. They have both reiterated that we will not withdraw from Iraq as long as they are in power. Why do we think they will be flexible with a withdrawal timetable when they've been inflexible across the board? I thought that we were going to have to send special forces into the White House to extricate Cheney and his crew if they lost the 2004 election. The Congress could pass a dozen resolutions to bring the troops home, but it will not happen during this adminstration's tenure. It will not happen. Knowing it will not happen, and knowing that most of Congress knows it won't happen, makes all anti-war comments seem like posturing. The troops are stuck in Iraq for the next three years. Period. Democratic control of the Senate and House in 2006 will not change that. Unfortunately for our troops in Iraq, the only winnable war is for the White House in 2008.

So! I guess that's your story... and you're stickin' to it?

So! I guess that's your story... and you're stickin' to it?

As if being from Ohio wasn't bad enough after last year's election.... Jean Schmidt is my Representative. And now I learn that her "coward" remark was actually a message relayed from my state representative Danny Bubp, who practices law in my hometown.

Bubp is known for his platform of God, Guns, and Good Government, and was the lawyer for Adams County for the Ten Commandments, an organization that was trying to get the Ten Commandments placed on school property in Adams County, Ohio. How unbelievably humiliating!

I think the defenders of the reasons to go to war have argued themselves into a corner, if only the rest of us can get the message right.

In the face of such obviously flimsy evidence, there are only two possibilities for the way in which we went to war: Either the evidence was manipulated or the Bush administration was monumentally stupid.

So let Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld deny that they manipulated intelligence all they want, I'll be happy to believe the only alternative.

While Bush lays on the sweet talk, Cheney skewers the prey with sophistry---the press reports, dutifully, word for word everything he mouths with absolutely no comment on the falsity or mindbending logic that went into making the claims--- and the public gets so hypnotized with the repetition their brains shut down.

It's bad enough that Jean Schmidt did directly refer to John Murtha in her little tirade on the House floor, but, adding insult to injury, according to a front page article in today's Cincinnati Enquirer the Ohioan she quoted is disputing her comments.

Danny Bubp, a freshman state representative who is a colonel in the Marine Corps Reserve, told The Enquirer that he never mentioned Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., by name when talking with Schmidt, and he would never call a fellow Marine a coward.

"The unfortunate thing about all of that is that her choice of words on the floor of the House - I don't know, she's a freshman, she had one minute."

"There was no discussion of him personally being a coward or about any person being a coward," Bubp said. "My message to the folks in Washington, D.C., and to all the Congress people up there, is to stay the course. We cannot leave Iraq or cut and run - any terminology that you want to use."

It's also worth noting, I think, that contrary to Schmidt's inference, Marine reservist Danny Bubp has never served in Iraq.

On a brighter note, Paul Hackett, whom Schmidt barely beat in a heavily Republican district near Cincinnati earlier this year, is now hoping to unseat Ohio's senior Republican Senator, Mike DeWine. God knows Hackett will have MY vote and, barring any more voting "irregularities" here in Ohio, I'm predicting he's going to win handily!

For the administration to commit innocent lives to THEIR failures to completely fact check the "intelligence" is NOT blame that can easily be spread around to others that may have had "the same intelligence", IMHO.

It's obvious from any analysis of these incompetents, that they're too capricious and shoot-from-the-hip to be leading the country - let alone the backbone to lead young American men and women into a bad war.

It was their decision to go to war with Iraq - we know from Richard Clarke that the lies the INC was feeding to the CIA, NYTimes were merely feeding their own pre-disposition. Any other president would have dug for proof, and challenged his yes men. GWB lacks any of that character trait - he prefers to be ass-kissed.

Innocent mistakes indeed - they were lapping this stuff up. Powell will take that guilt to his grave and the blame lies outside his control with Wolfie, Cheney, Rummy and GWB.

I wonder if Mr. Grieve has any theories concerning how Bush got Bill Clinton to lie about Saddam's WMD for eight years.

www.retroactiveimpeachment.com