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Wednesday, Nov. 23, 2005 AT THE BREAKFAST in America diner this morning, I was sitting next to the owner, Craig, who was doing a number puzzle from a French paper. A copy of the International Herald Tribune was on the counter. "Between the Internet and BBC, it's really odd how today's newspaper looks like yesterday's newspaper," I whined. I went on for about another minute on this subject and he said he would go get today's paper from the newsstand. It was in fact yesterday's paper, not an illusion. However, I did glance over the article about our true modern day Nixon, Dick Cheney, saying that war critics were reprehensible. The new paper arrived, I got to apply the official "Breakfast in America" stamps to the top left and right, and behold, there was an article on how John P. Murtha, a conservative Democrat from Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and the first Vietnam vet to be elected to Congress. Rep. Murtha, a longtime hawk and high ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, has turned against the Iraq war. He's also the top Democrat on the Appropriations defense subcommittee. These committees are how Congress functions, and they mean he has political pull in Washington as well as access to information. So it's a big deal that he's called for a troop pullout over the next six months. He is the government's equivalent of Cindy Sheehan. You cannot call him a hippy freak. And he's lost 13 of his local constituents in the war. "Since shortly after the American invasion of Iraq, he has frequently visited wounded troops at Walter Reed, an experience that he said had gradually convinced him that the American troop presence was exacerbating the violence by giving insurgents more targets to attack," the article says. Here's a bit more: At a speech Monday morning to local executives and elected officials, Mr. Murtha received three standing ovations. The talk focused almost entirely on all the federal aid Mr. Murtha has been able to deliver to his district from his seat on the House Appropriations Committee. This was my favorite word in the article -- perplexed. I would think you'd be perplexed when a nice boy who loves taking care of cats and dogs decides he's going to go kill people, not when someone says a war is not working and we had better get out. Perplexed, as in: are people who support the war really thinking? This perplexity may be the initially confusing experience of the brain synapses going off. The full article (which also appears in today's New York Times) is here, and I'll post it to Political Waves as well -- available from the Planet Waves homepage. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/22/politics/22murtha.html ---------- I'll have stuff on the Sun's ever-interesting trek through Sagittarius in Thursday's Astrology Secrets Revealed, as well as Friday's edition of Planet Waves. | ||||||
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