John Murtha on Bush's Press Conference

Rep. John Murtha is a stand up fighting Democrat. He was slow to come around on the war in Iraq but when he did—after long talks with the generals—he came out fighting for a new policy. I hope he gets a leadership role in the new Congress. Who can forget how he took on a houseful of Republicans all by himself a year ago. Republicans couldn't fight him on the issue so they tried to smear him. That didn't matter. John Murtha stood his ground and kept knocking down whatever the Republicans said by staying focused on the issue.

Here's what Murtha has to say on The Huffington Post about Bush's press conference the day after the midterm elections:

Yesterday I heard the same old rhetorical garbage in the President's press conference. America remains a nation at war, but the enemy that attacked us on September 11th is not the enemy we are fighting in Iraq. As of Tuesday, the President can no longer mask an Iraqi civil war as part of the real war on terrorism.

This election was a referendum on the President's disastrous course in Iraq, and the American people clearly had ENOUGH.

I don't agree with Murtha on every issue but I like a fighting Democrat. Until Bush admits he's made some serious mistakes, we need to keep leaning on him to do the right thing. Murtha can do that. And he has a great pipeline to the generals so that the Democrats in the House will know what the real story is and won't have to rely on Bush's political spin.