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Tuesday, November 22, 2005
House Decorum: Chimps ahoy
Rep. John Murtha must now know how the young man in the careerbuilder.com commercials feels. You know, those are the ones in which the benighted fellow tries to get some work done in an office peopled by hooting, screeching, goldbricking chimpanzees. The tagline is: "Want a new job?"
The U.S. House of Representatives was turned into a raucous, mud-slinging monkey house Friday as Republicans went ape over Democrat Murtha's suggestion that it was time to start getting our troops out of Iraq.
One freshman, Rep. Jean Schmidt, R-Ohio, said she was asked to "send Congressman Murtha a message, that cowards cut and run, Marines never do." It was the cheapest of cheap shots against a decorated Marine Corps major with combat experience in two wars.
Less silly and more cynical was Republican Speaker Dennis Hastert's maneuver to ram a bill to the floor calling for an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops -- not what Murtha had proposed at all. Apropos of nothing but the body's declining decorum, the bill failed 403 to 3. (Editor's Note: The result was misstated in the original version of this editorial.)
In reality, Murtha has called for an end to deployment of troops to Iraq, that those now there be withdrawn in six months and that a Marine quick-strike force be stationed in the region (perhaps Kuwait) to respond to crisis in Iraq.
Murtha may still be virtually an army of one in putting a timetable on withdrawal, but the chest beating in the House Friday suggests some insecurity in the Republican ranks.
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