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Rep. John Murtha Assails Sen. Hillary Clinton on Iraq Vote

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The congressman who is demanding an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq has criticized fellow high-profile Democrat, Senator Hillary Clinton, for failing to back his stand.

Interviewed by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., said he was unhappy with Clinton's failure to support his resolution calling for withdrawal.

Asked by Goodman if he was disappointed with Clinton's position, Murtha replied: "Yeah, I’m disappointed. I’m not sure why that’s happened. She talked to me after I made my statement, and I see she's finally calling for Secretary Rumsfeld's resignation. And I think - I don't know what the reason she’s decided not to endorse my position, but we're spending $8 billion a month, $11 million an hour, and there’s so many things we could do. We cannot solve these other domestic problems without redeploying. And with 130,000 troops there for three-and-a-half years, the incidents are getting worse.

When Goodman asked what message he would have for Clinton, Murtha said: "Well, I think she has to look at this very carefully and decide. I think she ought to be out more in front. She's a leader in this country. She's a leading Democratic nominee, and I think she has to look at what I’ve been saying."

Murtha added: "I believe we should redeploy responsibly as quickly as possible. I feel very strongly we can't desert Iraq, but we have to find a way to reduce our presence. We’ve actually become the enemy in some cases. When you look at what's happened with our troops occupying the country when they said we’d be liberators, some of the military things that we have to do as military and some of the enemies we’ve made, we really lost ground."

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Murtha said the Bush administration's plans to "stay the course" in Iraq do little to decrease violence in that region.

"The incidents are increasing, rather than decreasing," Murtha said. "We’ve got 130,000 troops, and we're spending $8 billion a month, and we need to reduce our presence and let the Iraqis take over."

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