WILL THIS END BUSH'S ILLEGAL AND CATASTROPHIC WAR AND OCCUPATION? MAYBE NOW IT'S SAFE FOR HILLARY OR EVEN BIDEN TO OPPOSE THE WAR.

Other than SOUTH PARK, I don't watch much tv. I'd say I catch bits and pieces of CNN that add up to maybe 20-30 minutes a day. My neighbor slept late today so the normal 8AM walk in the hills was postponed by half an hour. In the interim I decided to tidy up my bedroom and I flipped on CNN. There was a fat old politician on the screen and I didn't pay much attention, thinking it was probably just another BushCo attack dog out to try to see if brainwashing could get Americans back in line behind the Regime. But gradually it started dawning on me that the beefy hawkish looking guy on the tv screen was not giving the George Bush/Wes Clark line about staying the course or the John McCain/Hillary Clinton line about sending in more troops. This guy, 37 year Marine Corps veteran, moderate Congressman John Murtha of Pennsylvania was demanding that Bush pull American troops out of Iraq-- no if's, and's or but's.

By the time I heard Murtha say he wanted "the immediate redeployment of American forces because they have become the target," I had stopped tidying my room and turned up the volume. "It is time for a change in direction. Our military is suffering, the future of our country is at risk. We cannot continue on the present course. It is evident that continued military action in Iraq is not in the best interests of the United States of America, the Iraqi people or the Persian Gulf region."

Murtha, a decorated war hero, will be a hard one for the Swift Boat Bushites to tackle. But I have no doubt that Rove is already on the case. Afterall, until Fitzgerald fixes the problem, that's what he does for a living. Murtha was among a minority of House Democrats who voted with the DeLay gang to give Bush the authority to attack Iraq in 2002. He has watched with dismay as Bush botched the entire handling of the war effort-- and as torture, secret prisons, chemical weapons, etc have besmirched our national honor. "The war in Iraq is not going as advertised. It is a flawed policy wrapped in illusion," Murtha said.

By the time Murtha, stopped talking from his notes and said, "let me personalize this for you," I was completely focused. His stories about visiting-- "every week"-- veterans' hospitals shook me up. The bell rang and I had to go for a walk just when CNN cut in for some advertising. I was already crying for the blinded vet with a missing foot who BushCo had a collection agency after-- and for my country.


THE 10 PM UPDATE-- WHY KERRY LOST AND SHOULD LEAVE THE PUBLIC STAGE AND STOP EMBARRASSING HIMSELF AND THE REST OF US

And apparently it not just Clark, Biden and Hillary who need to pay attention to what Murtha had to say. Do you remember the overly-cautious loser the Democrats put up against Bush last time? Just a couple of hours after John Murtha-- a man with no political ambitions beyond serving his constituents and his country-- captured the imagination of the whole country, a man with laughably idiotic pretensions and ambitions, John Kerry, found someone with a microphone and started babbling how Murtha was wrong about setting a timetable for withdrawal. The more I hear from John Kerry the happier I am that I didn't donate one cent to his pathetic Bush-enabling campaign in 2004.