This was music to my hears. David Obey responds to another dreadful Washington Post editorial on the Iraq war--brought to you by the people who have
March 22, 2007

davidobey.jpg This was music to my hears. David Obey responds to another dreadful Washington Post editorial on the Iraq war--brought to you by the people who have been wrong from the start...

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Let me submit to you the problem we have today is not that we didn’t listen enough to people like the Washington Post. It’s that we listened too much. They endorsed going to war in the first place. They helped drive the drumbeat that drove almost 2/3 of the people in this chamber to vote for that misguided, ill-advised war. So I make no apology. If the moral sensibilities of some people on this floor, or the editorial writers of The Washington Post are offended because they don’t like the specific language contained in our benchmarks or in our timelines. What matters in the end is not what the specific language is. What matters is whether or not we produce a product today that puts pressure on this Administration and sends a message to Iraq, to the Iraqi politicians that we’re going to end the permanent long-term dead end babysitting service. That’s what we’re trying to do....

Greg Sargent,: Today on the floor of the House of Representatives during debate over the bill, Dem Rep. David Obey (Obey!) tore into the Post devastatingly hard. He made the rather compelling case that we shouldn't be listening to the Post's edit page about the bill now given how disastrously wrong their war cheerleading has turned out to be.

Think Progress has more and the transcript...

Let me submit to you the problem we have today is not that we didn’t listen enough to people like the Washington Post. It’s that we listened too much. They endorsed going to war in the first place. They helped drive the drumbeat that drove almost 2/3 of the people in this chamber to vote for that misguided, ill-advised war. So I make no apology. If the moral sensibilities of some people on this floor, or the editorial writers of The Washington Post are offended because they don’t like the specific language contained in our benchmarks or in our timelines. What matters in the end is not what the specific language is. What matters is whether or not we produce a product today that puts pressure on this Administration and sends a message to Iraq, to he Iraqi politicians that we’re going to end the permanent long-term dead end babysitting service. That’s what we’re trying to do

And if The Washington Post is offended about the way we do it, that’s just too bad. But we’re in the arena. They’re not. And this is the best we can do given the tools that we have. And I make absolutely no apology for it. And I would say one thing, those of us who voted against the war in the first place wouldn’t have nearly as hard a time getting us out of the war if people like The Washington Post and those who criticized us on the floor yesterday hadn’t supported going into that stupid war in the first place.

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