Hersh on Murtha

When Murtha made his comments about our presence in Iraq, I did not know who he was. Congressman from Pennsylvania? OK. The guy who cleans my gutters? Oh yeah, that's that guy.

In the two weeks since then, he has been described as a "hawk" and a "military guy" and a "former marine." No one was good enough to correct me about the gutters thing, but one can't expect everything.

So, two weeks later, I finally get some useful perspective on Murtha. Here it is, from Democracy Now!

SEYMOUR HERSH:
So Murtha's message is a message, really, from a -- you can consider it a message from a lot of generals on active duty today. This is what they think, at least a significant percentage of them, I assure you. This is, I’m not over-dramatizing this. It's a shot across the bow. They don't think it's doable. You can't tell that to this President. He doesn't want to hear it. But you can say it to Murtha, you can say it to Inouye, you can say it to Stevens.

Murtha gets reports from the military, reports that either don't get reported to Bubble Boy or get ignored by him. That's why this was such a huge uproar. Thanks for nothing to the corporate media for not getting this context in there.

(Via Kate Cambor at TPM Cafe)