Ticomaya wrote: Oh, you mean Murtha meant to say that there wasn't any terrorism being used against Americans in Iraq before they actually invaded Iraq and became physically present in the country? Such sublime analysis ...
Nevermind then ... Murtha's clearly a genius.
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Added in case anyone couldn't gather from the context that I was being sarcastic.
Before the American invasion, there was no terrorism by Iraqis against Americans in Iraq, or outside Iraq for that matter. Iraqis were not setting off car bombs in Iraq, or outside Iraq. There were no Iraqis blowing themselves and others up in Iraq, or outside Iraq. In short, whatever terrorism there is presently in Iraq started with the American invasion. However much Iraq might be a center of terrorism, it became so because we went in there. This is what Murtha pointed out, and it is certainly appropriate to a question involving Iraq as a center of terrorism.
kelticwizard wrote:]Your Revised Quote #2, as well as LoneStarMadam's, makes it seem that Murtha was trying to claim that terrorism was unknown before the Americans took over Abu Ghraib. That is a big difference.
Ticomaya wrote:Perhaps, but that's what he communicated.
No, that is NOT what he communicated with his quote. That is why the websites LoneStarMadam went to garbled the quote, condensing three sentences into one and calling it a "quote". If Murtha's actual words communicated that terrorism was unknown before the US took over Abu Ghraib, the rightwingers would not be purposely garbling Murtha's quote the way they are.
Ticomaya wrote:Excuse me? "Plain as day"? You have struggled to argue the nuance of his intent based on subtle contextual clues, and you claim his communication was "plain as day"?
"Subtle contextual clues"? It was a three sentence quote, "terrorism" was in the third sentence, and the first two sentences made it clear he was referring to violence against Americans.
It is clear that Murtha is talking about Iraqi violence against Americans in sentence number one and sentence number two, and you are trying to pretend that it is a wild flight of fancy to assume he was still talking about it in sentence number three. Sorry, Tico, you have to try better than that.
Ticomaya wrote:The question posed to Murtha that he was responding to was: "[Bush says], Iraq has become the center of terrorism - that if the U.S. appears to retreat in the face of that, that it will be a blow to the American fight against radical Islamic terrorism? What do you say to that?"
His response was to say there wasn't any terrorism before the US invaded Iraq. He might just be a poor communicator, but his response seems to ignore 9/11.
First, neither the Iraq government nor any of the Iraqi factions had anything to do with 911.
Second, that was not all there was to Murtha's response, but let's put that aside. Since when is it out of place, when talking about a problem, to point out that the problem is of our own making?
Were there terrorists running around Iraq, blowing things up when we invaded? No. The terrorism was a tactic the Iraqis adopted to try to get us to leave, as well as to carry on a fight with rival Iraqi factions. Before we invaded there were no car bombs, no strap-on suicide bombs, no terrorism in Iraq. After we invaded, we got car bombs, strap-on suicide bombs, terrorism in Iraq. In a discussion of terrorism in Iraq, is Murtha supposed to leave that fact out?
