John Murtha predicts that majority of American troops will be out of Iraq by the end of the year.

This is from Murtha's interview on "60 Minutes" with Mike Wallace.

“I think the vast majority will be out by the end of the year and I’m hopeful it will be sooner than that,” Murtha tells Wallace, this Sunday, Jan. 15, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

“You’re going to see a plan for withdrawal,” says Murtha. He believes Congress will pass it because of mounting pressure from constituents tired of the war that could affect the upcoming midterm elections.

The political situation will force President Bush to accede to Congress, he says. “I think the political people who give [the president] advice will say to him, ‘You don’t want a democratic Congress. You want to keep a Republican majority, and the only way you’re going to keep it is by reducing substantially the troops in Iraq,’” Murtha says.

I really like how Murtha just tells it like it is, without providing any cover for the politicians who try to frame things "as in America's best interests", when we all know that it is their own best interests which concern thm the most.

The president has said publicly that any decision regarding Iraq would be based on the situation there and not on Washington politics.

Murtha rejects the president’s argument that the war on terror is being fought in Iraq. “The insurgents are Iraqis – 93 percent of the insurgents are Iraqis. A very small percentage are foreign fighters….Once we’re out of there, [Iraqis] will eliminate [foreign fighters],” says Murtha.

“[President Bush] is trying to fight this war with rhetoric. Iraq is not where the center of terrorism is,” he says. “We’re inciting terrorism there....We’re destabilizing the area by being over there because we’re the targets,” Murtha says.

This is obvious to anybody paying attention.

When Wallace challenges him by saying, “General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, says your comments are damaging recruiting and hurting the troops,” Murtha responds by saying it’s the military’s own fault. “[Troops] are rotated [into Iraq] four and five times. They have no clear mission,” says Murtha. “One of the problems they have with recruitment is [that] they continually say how well things are going and the troops on the ground know better.”

The idea that Murtha is impacting military recruitment more then the constant re-deployment and the lack of a clear vision is impacting it is rediculous. If this administration could talk to the American people in the same no nonsense manner that Murtha employs I think we would all be better off.