http://thinkprogress.org/2007/07/13/murtha-bush-delusional/Murtha: Bush ‘Delusional’ About Iraq Progress
Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) — whose call for immediate redeployment in Nov. 2005 helped propel a national dialogue about withdrawal — said on CNN yesterday that Bush’s claims of progress are “delusional, to say the least”:
Nothing has gotten better. Incidents have increased. We’ve had more Americans killed in the last four months than any other period during the war. More Iraqis have been killed. Incidents are up. Unemployment is still 40 percent to 60 percent. Oil production is below prewar level. And this — this rhetoric about the constitution and the changes — they say, well, they’re making changes. There’s no changes that have been made.
Watch it/read transcript at link~
Murtha said he sees “more and more people coming around. I’m more optimistic than I’ve ever been that we’re going to start redeployment before long.”
CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked Murtha how he would respond to the administration’s claims that a withdrawal would embolden al Qaeda to take over Iraq and establish a home base from which to attack America. “They see us as occupiers and they fire up the Sunnis and Shias,” Murtha responded. “As soon as we leave, the Shias and the Sunnis will get rid of Al Qaeda, because they’re such a small group.”
He added the administration has continued “to say for four -and-a-half years there’s progress. So why would I believe that there’s going to be chaos just because they say it?”