Murtha's Army

This guy's an idiot, and a dangerous one. Jed Babbin just returned from Iraq and his take's a lot different than Jack "The Hack" Murtha's:

Last week, I went to Iraq to search for John Murtha's army. You know: the one he described as "broken, worn out," and "living hand to mouth." Thanks to the help of some friends in low places, I met with a lot of the troops and almost all of the commanders around Baghdad and at Camp Fallujah. Murtha was not just wrong, but damnably wrong. And so, unsurprisingly, is Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean, who declared the war unwinnable.

I promised to bring back as many of the facts as I could. Here are the two most important ones: First, we are winning this war. Second, as the operations in Iraq enter their fourth year, our forces are beginning to suffer the problems that a prolonged conflict creates.

None of the soldiers I spoke to -- Army or Marine -- was happy about being in Iraq. Some were there for the third year-long tour, a big strain on their families. One senior officer from the 4th I.D. told me about one of his favorite young warriors, a captain, who he said was "enormously adaptable and capable." But the captain had been on one tour in Afghanistan and two in Iraq in his five years of service. The result? "He's no longer married." That's the kind of wound even the best docs can't mend. The 3rd I.D. is close to finishing its second tour in Iraq next month, and the men are more than ready to head home. One senior sergeant from the 3rd I.D. told me the coming rotation home would mark the end of his second tour in Iraq this time around. (He'd been there before, in the 1991 Gulf War.) There are already rumors that the division will come back again after only ten months at home. He said, "We need a bigger army to do this much longer." And he's probably right. But he, like all the others, agreed on one important point.

All the men I spoke to (and, yes, the women as well) didn't believe this job was over. They have committed themselves to the war, and expect their commitment to be matched at home. Frustrated? Yes. Tired? Sure. Broken? Don't believe it for one microsecond. Living hand to mouth? Oh, please. Everyone I spoke to -- officer and enlisted -- said they had everything they need, and get more for the asking. Take Noah Sheridan of Indianapolis, a mechanic. His job is vehicle maintenance. His orders are to not fix broken down Humvee engines. Noah and his buds rip an old one out, grab a new one from a seemingly endless supply, put it in, and the vehicle is out of their shop in 8 or 9 hours on a good day. (Noah said -- and I think he was bragging a little -- that they could do a transmission in about as short a time.)

Is our army broken? Not hardly, but it could be. One 4th I.D. colonel said it best: "You want to break this army? Then break your word to it." Which is precisely what the Dems want to do. President Bush was right when he said yesterday that the only way we will lose this war is if we lose our nerve. The Dems long ago lost theirs.

Because the politicians haven't gotten to the point of cutting off war funds or setting withdrawal schedules, our troops are not paying a lot of attention to the winds blowing around the Beltway. In their ignorance, poor souls, they don't understand the judgment of their betters -- the Deans, Pelosis, and Murthas -- that the war is "unwinnable." So they're just going ahead and winning it. And you have to understand that "winning" means not only defeating the insurgents, which we are doing, but training, equipping, and teaching the Iraqis to both protect themselves and keep their country together.

Of course, just because everyone who actually goes and sees the situation on the ground in Iraq returns impressed with the progress there doesn't mean that Generalissimo Pelosi and Field Marshal Murtha aren't military geniuses---just that they're liars, damned liars, and unafraid to toe the line of treason as well in their efforts to gain personal political advantage.