Rep. Murtha: "We Have Become The Enemy"...

CNN February 28, 2006 at 09:13 AM
READ MORE: Iraq, Rep. John Murtha

Thanks, Congressman, for joining us.

I want to get to Iraq in a moment. But your quick reaction to these new alarm bells that apparently the U.S. Coast Guard itself raised about possible terror links involving the United Arab Emirates and this port security deal. What's your reaction?

REP. JOHN MURTHA (D), PENNSYLVANIA: Well, they certainly -- they try to scare people, and they've been scaring them with this terrorist tactics, and then all at once they're surprised at the public reaction to something that was secretly handled. I have to take a look at it myself. My initial reaction would be against it since what I heard about the Coast Guard, but, you know, we've got to take a good look at it.

BLITZER: Let's talk about Iraq. Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador, told me, and we heard it here in the past hour, that they were close to looking into the abyss of a civil war a few days ago but now they've come back and things are back moving in the right direction.

You reaction?

MURTHA: Well, Wolf, I think the ambassador is -- he's got a good reputation, everybody thinks highly of him, but he tends to give too much advice to the Iraqis. They have to settle this themselves. They have to settle the underlying problems which have caused the insecurity there.

For instance, water supply, the electricity supply, the oil supply. All those things are prewar level. And there's no way they're going to settle.

Unemployment is 60 percent. There's no way they're going to settle this by talking about it. It's not rhetoric.

And the military has done everything they can do. They have done a marvelous job. Now it's up to the political leaders to take hold of this thing and settle it themselves.

And, you know, I keep getting different reports about the Iraqis being ready to take over, and then the next day they say there's no battalions ready. But the Iraqis themselves have more confidence in their police and in their army than they do in the United States Army.
We have become the enemy, and our troops, unfortunately, have become the targets. So it's time to redeploy our troops.

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