She didn’t know! My goodness gracious. Sweet little Rep. Jean Schmidt, R-Ohio, said she didn’t know that when she called her fellow U.S. House member Democrat John Murtha a coward that Murtha had served 37 years as a Marine. And that he was a decorated Marine to boot.
But that is what Schmidt told the Cincinnati Enquirer. She didn’t know. In a statement Schmidt, not surprisingly, makes herself out to be the victim of her own vicious attack.
“Since that moment I have been attacked from across the country by the left,” said Schmidt, whose war experience has largely been limited to attacking those who prefer choice in the abortion debate … “I am thankful for the thousands of supportive messages I have received from the people I represent and others across the nation since Friday. But this story has been way too focused on me, my conviction and word selection. Instead this story should be focused on the extremely poor policy the minority now propose. A policy, I might point out, that through this media storm has now been repudiated by dozens of leading members of the minority.”
I suppose you could say it was “repudiated” by Democrats when you they were faced with a “Have you stopped beating your wife” vote. Even the most rank, and I use that term in several different ways, amateur congress person will have a professional staff. Someone on the Schmidt staff if not Schmidt herself would have known just by reading the newspaper or watching TV that Murtha was a decorated Marine.
But then, the means justifies the ends these days for so many involved in politics, especially on the far right. Their propagandists can call decorated war heroes like Murtha and Max Clelland and John Kerry, cowards and traitors all while having never been closer to a military uniform than passing an ROTC student in college.
It goes back to what I’ve been railing against for some time and that is this crap about attacking those who served their country but don’t agree that getting into the Iraq war was a good move. It kind of cheapens my service to the nation. It’s like they are saying they are the biggest supporters of the troops, but they will only support those veterans who support George Bush and his policies in Iraq. That is just so wrong.