http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&ie=ISO-8859-1&scoring=d&q=Scheer%2CMurtha&btnG=Search+NewsPosted on Nov 14, 2006
By Robert Scheer
Nancy Pelosi is to be congratulated for her backing of John Murtha for the position of House majority leader. To be sure, this was partly payback to a political ally of the speaker-designate. Far more important, however, it was the first installment on a huge debt owed to the voters who swept the Democratic Party into control of both houses of Congress, based primarily on their frustration over the dismal war in Iraq.
Because of his credentials as a highly decorated Marine veteran and stalwart Pentagon supporter, U.S. Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., was more effective than any other member of Congress in crystallizing the changing American position on Iraq when he dramatically wrote last year, “IT IS TIME TO BRING THEM HOME.” Not intimidated by the president’s “cut-and-run” smears, he said what most Americans have come to believe: The war is not “winnable” and it is time—now, not in 10 years—to let Iraqis make their own history and to get American troops out of the line of fire.
By contrast, his opponent for the House leadership position, U.S. Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., disagrees with 60 percent of the voters in continuing to support President Bush in this ever deepening disaster. As recently as Monday, Hoyer continued to hold an allegedly moderate position that is as divorced from reality as the disgraced former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld: “You can transfer authority to the Iraqis ... but we need to do so in a way, hopefully, that will not create greater carnage,” he told MSNBC-TV.
What gibberish. In fact, as realists from all sides of the political spectrum, including the president’s father, argued before the war started, taking Baghdad was inevitably going to stoke the always smoldering nationalist and religious fires of the Middle East that now engulf Iraq with apocalyptic fury. The toll on Tuesday alone: Scores of scholars were kidnapped from the Education Ministry in a plot reportedly aided by policemen, while 82 others were killed or found dead from clashes, murders and bombings around the country...
Monday, November 14th, 2005
LA Times Fires Longtime Progressive Columnist Robert Scheer
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/14/1447244Last week, the Los Angeles Times Newspaper announced that it was firing longtime columnist Robert Scheer. Scheer has been at the Times for 30 years and was one of the most progressive voices at the paper. In recent years, his columns took on the Bush Administration and its justifications for the invasion of Iraq. Scheer believes that his firing was because of ideological reasons.
In a posting at the Huffington Post blog, he wrote "The publisher Jeff Johnson, who has offered not a word of explanation to me, has privately told people that he hated every word that I wrote. I assume that mostly refers to my exposing the lies used by President Bush to justify the invasion of Iraq. Fortunately sixty percent of Americans now get the point but only after tens of thousand of Americans and Iraqis have been killed and maimed as the carnage spirals out of control. My only regret is that my pen was not sharper and my words tougher."
The Times also fired Michael Ramirez, a Pulitzer-Prize winning conservative staff cartoonist.
Robert Scheer, former columnist with the Los Angeles Times. He is author of "The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us About Iraq" and he is co-host of a weekly syndicated radio show along with with Arianna Huffington, Matt Miller and Tony Blankley.
- Website: www.robertscheer.com...
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
