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July 2, 2006
Confused Americans for Truth - Murtha May Not Be as Crazy as We Thought
In the comment section of my article on the history of John Murtha's brain, Cliff Hancuff cites this page, which explains how Murtha was misquoted in the original article I cited.
Here is the text of John Murtha's own statement on the subject.
I was recently misquoted following a speech I gave at a Veterans forum at the Florida International University Biscayne Campus on June 24, 2006. During the speech, I made a point that our international credibility was suffering, particularly due to our continued military presence in Iraq and that we were perceived as an occupying force. For illustrative purposes, I provided the example of a recent Pew Poll which indicates a greater percentage of people in 14 foreign countries consider the U.S. in Iraq a danger to world peace than consider Iran or North Korea a danger to world peace.
When a newspaper makes a statement of fact, it makes sense to question the veracity of the underlying information; however, when a journalist who is on the scene quotes somebody, I see no reason to doubt it. I didn't doubt it in this case, so call me a cock-eyed optimist.
My opinion of John Murtha as portrayed in the prior article is that he is a basically decent person who is allowing his judgement to be clouded by media attention. This new information introduces the possibility that he is cynically manipulating the media by covering his opinions with polling data so he can back out if the firestorm is too big.
What the new information does not do is provide any reason to give credence to Murtha's proposals. If you know an opinion is stupid and wrong, then the solution is to work to change people's minds, not give in to them. If people in 14 countries believe Portugal has the best soccer team, should we cancel the rest of the World Cup?
I am a superior life form, so I am willing to accept that I may be wrong. I will continue to track Rep. Murtha's statements, and if he is indeed an evil, power-hungry maniac rather than a sincere person with poor judgement, I will be the first to admit it.
I hope knowing this makes him feel better.
Respectfully submitted,
Ferdinand T. Cat
# At Sun 8:43 PM | Permalink | Trackback URI | Comments (0) | More Confused Americans for Truth | Tags: cats Cliff Hancuff conservative humor John Murtha journalism skepticism
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