Murtha's Okinawa journey

Jack Kelly:

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Mr. Russert, mindful of the fact that Okinawa, Japan, is 4,899 miles from Baghdad, offered Mr. Murtha an escape, in case he had misspoken. "But it would be tough to have a timely response from Okinawa," he said. But Rep. Murtha dug himself in deeper. "When I say a timely response, you know, our fighters can fly from Okinawa very quickly," he said.

Mr. Murtha has been recommending redeployment to Okinawa ever since his rebirth as a dove last year, so what he said on "Meet the Press" was no slip of the tongue.

Let us be clear about the Murtha "strategy." It is insane. It would be easier to defend Germany from Chicago; Alaska from Miami, or Hawaii from Pittsburgh than to defend Iraq from Okinawa.

It would take 10-12 hours -- and six refuelings -- for F-16s to fly from Kadena AFB on Okinawa to Baghdad (assuming China and India would grant overflight rights, a dubious assumption). Mr. Murtha may regard this as "very quickly," but the Air Force does not.

As Bugs Bunny would say: "What a maroon!"

Another howler is Mr. Murtha's assertion that U.S. troops currently serving in Iraq would be "welcomed" in Okinawa. For decades Okinawans have been seeking a reduction in the U.S. military presence, both because they covet the land on which U.S. military bases sit, and because of a long history of pacifism. The U.S. recently agreed to withdraw 7,000 Marines from Okinawa.

"There is no way we can win (the war in Iraq) militarily," Mr. Murtha said. Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the al Qaida chieftain in Iraq until the Air Force liquefied his internal organs, had a different view:

"Here in Iraq, time is beginning to be of service to the American forces and harmful to the resistance," Mr. Zarqawi wrote in a document captured after his death.

The Bush Administration has "no plan" for dealing with Iraq, Rep. Murtha asserted.

Mowaffak al Rubaie, Iraq's national security adviser, begs to differ. Writing in the Washington Post Tuesday, he said:

"There is an unofficial 'road map' to foreign troop reductions that eventually will lead to total withdrawal of U.S. troops. This road map is based not just on a series of dates but, more important, on achievement of set objectives for restoring security in Iraq."

If you want to know the truth about Iraq, you should listen carefully to what Jack Murtha has to say -- and believe exactly the opposite.

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Less kind things are said later in the article. The man is an embrassment and even the media is starting to notice.