Redstate

She won in 1992 because she took over for a pervert (Brock Adams) and ran as a perky mom and housewife. In 1998 her scared little girl attitude about impeachment went ignored because Linda Smith was too abrasive for Washington State. This year the Republicans only have so much money to go around and they are focusing on the governor sweepstakes (Christine Gregoire is even dumber than Patty, shockingly). This will certainly weaken "Osama Mama" and will hurt Gregoire, legislative Democrats, and the lost causes running in WA 5 and 8.

1994 was a Republican sweep for Washington and this ad could help make 2004 the same.

I wonder about that Maria Cantwell. She never seems to be around. What is she like? Is she popular? Who could challenge her in 2006? At least she doesn't love terrorists, so that puts her up one on Patty.

I had no idea there was video of her saying this!

The response from the Murray campaign was lame:

"My remarks are being taken out of context," she told reporters in a conference call. She said that in the course of a one-hour discussion with students in December 2002, "I only raised questions about why he (bin Laden) is supported in Arab countries and what we might do to combat that." Her remarks were widely reported at the time she made them.

Murray added, "I have always said Osama bin Laden is an evil terrorist who is responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans."

Murray was joined on the conference call by former Democratic Sen. Max Cleland of Georgia, a triple amputee as a result of wounds suffered in the Vietnam War. Cleland lost his own re-election race in 2002 after his opponent questioned his commitment to the war on terrorism with an ad that showed bin Laden and then-Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

He said Republicans were trying to make Murray the latest victim of "slime ball politics."

Geez, I'm sick of Max Cleland's misrepresentation of the 2002 campaign, although AP didn't use the "attacked my patriotism" canard he's so fond of.

But who could reasonably consider any comment such as Murray's to be "in context." Certainly not a rocket scientist.

I am.

If those statements she made are false, please provide the evidence they are so.  I have seen no one falsify the truth of those assertions.    

If you can't do so, that implies you have a problem with politicians that tell the truth to their constituents.  She was explaining why Osama bin Laden has such a large base of popular support in the middle east and pakistan.  Which he does.  And though I haven't seen proof that he used his financial stockpile to curry favors (and yes, make the lives of those who he gave money to, if he did), I also have yet to see anyone show that those facts are false.

Instead, you try to paint her as a supporter of Osama bin Laden because she attempts to understand the world around her and why people are motivated to do things that we don't agree with.  Which I actually want in my political leaders, rather than Bush & Co, who like to paint pretty fantasy worlds where we invade countries with a long history of colonization and imperial rule, but they forget that, love and kiss us, and then democracy flourishes.  Unfortunately, reality turns out to be very different, where there is a growing guerilla war that we are losing because we refuse to accept that THEY VIEW OUR ACTIONS DIFFERENTLY THAN WE DO.

Am I proud of Patty Murray?  Yeah.  Cause when it was time to vote on the Iraq resolution, she made the best prediction of the sad road that lay ahead:

Mr. President, if we do take action in Iraq, there is no doubt that our armed forces will prevail. We will win a war with Iraq decisively, and, God willing, we will win it quickly. But what happens after the war? That will have as big an impact on our future peace and security. Will we be obligated to rebuild Iraq? If so, how? Our economy is reeling, our budget is in deficit, and we have no estimate of the cost of rebuilding. And with whom? As New York Times columnist Tom Friedman points out, there's a retail store mentality that suggests to some -- if "you break it, you buy it."    

How will the Iraqis get back on their feet? Iraq's leadership has led its people through two decades of misery. The people of Iraq have paid a terrible price for Saddam Hussein's military campaigns. What promises is the international community prepared to make to help restore the health of the Iraqi people. What promise is implicit in a unilateral attack? If we must disarm Iraq by force, we will, but we cannot achieve the peace through occupation alone. It costs money, energy and time. And like building anything else, it's better as a shared responsibility than a solo effort. Again, the answers to these questions should not be the only factors in play as we make decisions on how to protect our security interests, but they are not insignificant, and they have not been answered.    

We don't have a clear policy. We don't have a clear path to implementing that policy. We don't yet know what level of assistance we're going to get from our allies and the broader international community. We haven't factored in all of the implications this may have on our other foreign policy objectives. We haven't factored in all of the implications this may have on our economy. Not having a well-defined policy or proper preparations for contingencies that may result from whatever action we take is a dangerous situation on the eve of the war the Administration says we must have.    

So try to twist her words out of context all you like -- the fact of the matter is she had the ability to understand what a yes vote on giving Bush the authority to go ahead in Iraq meant.  And she stood up and said what she thought, and voted the way she thought would best serve America's interests.

And she was right, because she actually takes the time to understand what is going on in the world around us, instead of just assuming everything will work as we hope it will, like Bush and the rest of the lockstep republicans do.

So thanks for reminding me why I should be proud to vote for her this november.

I'm so tired of nattering naysayers repeating over and over and over again that President Bush implied that our involvement in Iraq would be a cakewalk.  Agreed that some of his advisors seemed to think it would be "relatively" easy--but many others (e.g., SecState Powell) warned him otherwise. Plus, I'm sure he couldn't have helped but hear SEN Murray's bleating on the subject.

You accuse the author of this diary entry of implying that SEN Murray was soft-hearted toward Osama, without citing any real evidence.  But, then you conveniently lump all of the war's supporters into one pile, and imply that everyone who supported President Bush had rosy ideas of how the war's aftermath would turn out.  Not true, kevdawg.  On the deck of the Abraham Lincoln, the President told us much hard work lay ahead.  Were you listening?

Your post dutifully reports on SEN Murray's cover-my-backside speech in the Senate.  Which she (and her supporters like you) can use as a platform from which to launch a thousand "I told you so"'s on Iraq.  Yet, I'm still not clear what SEN Murray's alterate course of action was.  Count on the UN inspectors to guarantee that Saddam would never menace the US or its vital interests overseas?  (And, kevdawg, unfortunately, oil is a vital interest.  Unless you've come up with a way to run our cars, our economy and those of our trading partners on air, water or some other alternative fuel). Leave our 250,000 troops in the Kuwaiti desert while Blix wandered and the UN dithered?  Turn to the mighty expeditionary forces of France, Germany and Belgium to intimidate Hussein into submission?  Gin up one more of those earth-shattering UN resolutions?  Hold a summit meeting?  Why should we Americans have had any faith in YOUR plan--whatever it was?

SEN Murray is the poster child for today's Democratic leader.  Full of anger and self-righteousness, but empty of practical solutions for the challenges we face, and unwilling to face those challenges honestly and forcefully.  She comes from the Jimmy Carter school of leadership, not the Scoop Jackson school.  Terrorists see SEN Murray's cluelessness and pray for a Democratic Senate.

Go George Nethercutt!    

can go over to Iraq and tell these people about how great Osama is and how they should weep for Saddam's imminent return.

No one ever said this war would be easy. Defeatists like Patty who insult our troops or who praise terrorists have no right to say "I told you so". She belongs with Howard Dean, not in our Senate.

Washington Democrat Congressional delegation voted for the war. Maria Cantwell supported the war and still does. Where was Osama Mama? Patty and America-hating kooks like "Baghdad Jim" isolated themselves that day, proudly, and unforgiveably, slapping our troops in the face and telling them that no matter what they did, no matter how much blood they spilled, it was all pointless. Saving raped and mutilated women and children from a bloodthirsty dictator was pointless. Saving countless nations from weapons of mass destruction was pointless. Saving the world from generations of brutal murderers and tyrants was pointless.

We made mistakes, heartwrenching mistakes. But this was was not wrong, and shame on people like Patty Murray who choose to demonize our troops and say "I told you so" in the face of sacrifice and honor. We don't send people to the Senate so they can gloat.

Point 1: Bush hasn't said it would be a cakewalk, but at every step he implies that 'we're turning the corner' or 'things are getting better'.  Case in point, from his transfer of sovereignty speech:  'The United States military and our coalition partners have made a clear, specific and continuing mission in Iraq.  As we train Iraqi security forces, we'll help those forces to find and destroy the killers.  We'll protect infrastructure from the attacks.  We'll provide security for the upcoming elections.'

Really? When in reality the US military casualty rate and the Iraqi citizen casualty rates keep rising?  Note I mean rate, as in the numbers per unit time, not just the totals. When just today there were attacks that struck a US convoy and killed 40 civilians, increasing resentment among the citizenry as to the costs our presence in the country generate in terms of Iraqi lives? When they still don't have reliable electricity, are we protecting their infrastructure? There are large areas in the country where our troops can't go, and those areas are increasing over time, not shrinking. What we are doing isn't working, it isn't getting better, and telling the public that it is going to work doesn't make it so.  

Point 2: If the following statement doesn't imply that the author thinks Patty Murray approves of Osama's actions, I don't know what does: 'I never thought I'd see anyone outside the Middle East PRAISE Bin Laden...'  Praise implies a value judgement: that she thinks what he was doing is praiseworthy and good.  But what she was really saying was 'this is why these people allay themselves with him against us'.  

Otherwise, and I ask again, is the reason that clip is so horrible because it is factually wrong?  If not, the only reason it can be damaging (and thus Nethercutt would want to show it) is because it seeks to portray Murray as being soft on/sympathetic to Osama.  Which she patently isn't.  

If you think I'm interpreting the quote wrong, please explain how.  Every time I hear this quote, I ask to be shown how the quote speaks falsehoods or how the act of speaking it is honestly reprehensible in context.  No one yet has done so.  Please be the first.

Point 3: Actually, I think the alternate course of action was precisely to allow the UN inspections to continue.  After all, their reports turned out to have the inconvenient quality of being accurate in their assessment of Saddam's WMD stockpiles.  Given that fact, I think we would have been much better off as a nation spending the last 3 years letting the UN verify that Saddam didn't have WMD and directing our attention toward North Korea's weapon program in a serious way.  Which is what I was advocating for back in the day.

Why should the american people have faith in UN inspections?  Because they were accurate.  More importantly, why should americans have faith in Bush's ability to accurately protect us from threats abroad when he can't even identify them correctly?

She wasn't saying that it is a bad idea to bring about a world free of WMD (though the Iraq war didn't do anything to bring us closer to that).  She didn't say that it is a bad idea to save people from a humanitarian crisis.  What she said was she wasn't convinced that the war had been planned out well enough to actually succeed.  And she said it before the fact, so that isn't gloating.

The idea that 'mistakes were made' but that those mistakes were unforeseeable and thus can't be held against the planners of the war absolves them of their responsibility to try and be right in the first place.  The truth is that people did say in the run up to the war that there were going to be problems.  Patty Murray was one of those people.  And they weren't listened to at the time, and things have gone worse than they would have if they were listened to.  

And saying that those who say there are problems in the planning are 'demonizing our troops' is silly.  She praised the troops, and said she'd give them anything they needed to do their job even if she disagreed with the job they were given.  Attempting to portray criticism of those who planned the war and gave our troops a near impossible task to complete as 'demonizing our troops' is ridiculous.  They make sacrifices every single day.  It is just sad that their leaders put them in a situation where they'd have to make more sacrifices than if they'd done the planning better.