Move On Dot Murtha - Don't They Know We Are At War?

John Murtha defends his reported characterization of a proposed ethics reform bill as "total crap":

"...it is total crap that we have to deal with an issue like this when we’ve got a war going on and we got all these other issues."

Right, then - so when Henry Waxman, muckraking chair of the Government Reform Committee, announces that he hopes to probe, per the Sun-Times, "the response to Hurricane Katrina, government contracting in Iraq and on homeland security, decision-making at the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration, and allegations of corporate profiteering", we can expect Murtha to denounce the effort as "total crap".  We need to look forward, not backward, yes?

Well, this is what Nancy wants... and it is a sobering moment.  Zealous righties spent the fall caricaturing Nancy Pelosi as a crazed San Fran Dem, but I always had the secret hope that we were exaggerating.  Oh, well.  Coherence of vision was not her forte during the campaign, so why should it be so now?

Mickey notes that  Murtha engaged in a sliding usage of "crap" - earlier in the transcript, the ethics reform was "crap" in the sense that, as Matthews helpfully explained, it was a "Mickey Mouse" reform.  Oh, well - I am confident that the Times will sort this out.  Hello... I see some Reuters coverage, and will get back with a "What is in the Dead Tree Edition" report later. [No 'Crap' In The Times! - they cover the Murtha debacle in an editorial and a half-hearted article - see UPDATE and alert Mickey (my email is out)]

To compound the comedy Murtha opened the interview with a cogent "We don't need no stinkin' generals" explanation of his "plan" for Iraq:

MATTHEWS:  A lot of Democrats are sitting around on their hands saying, let’s wait for Jim Baker and his bipartisan commission and Lee Hamilton to tell us what to do.  What do you think of that approach?

MURTHA: Well, I think we have to go forward.  I think the public is demanding some action on this issue.  I don’t think they’ll accept anything less, and I’m hopeful that the—I talked to Baker-Hamilton Commission, but whatever they say, they have to find a way to give a timetable to redeploy our troops.  And we have to do it fairly soon, because the public wants something to happen. 

...MATTHEWS:  Well, what about General Abizaid today, the top guy at CENTCOM, coming on the Senate committee today, the Armed Services Committee, and saying I don’t want any timetables?

MURTHA: Chris, they keep saying this over and over again.  They keep saying that we’ve made progress.  We haven’t made progress.  As a matter of fact, oil production, electricity production, all those things are below pre-war level.  Every measure -- 60 percent unemployment. Violence has gone up, not down.  We have 130,000 troops on the ground and it’s gotten worse during the last six months.

Here is the Times coverage of the hearing at which Abizaid spoke:

The top American military commander for the Middle East said Wednesday that to begin a significant troop withdrawal from Iraq over the next six months would lead to an increase in sectarian killings and hamper efforts to persuade the Iraqi government to make the difficult decisions needed to secure the country.

The commander, Gen. John P. Abizaid, made it clear that he did not endorse the phased troop withdrawals being proposed by Democratic lawmakers. Instead, he said the number of troops in Iraq might be increased by a small amount as part of new plans by American commanders to improve the training of the Iraqi Army.

General Abizaid did not rule out a larger troop increase, but he said the American military was stretched too thin to make such a step possible over the long term. And he said such an expansion might dissuade the Iraqis from making more of an effort to provide for their own security.

...Skepticism among lawmakers from both parties was palpable, and the concerns of the lawmakers were reinforced by intelligence officials who testified later in the day and who painted a more pessimistic portrait of the violence in Iraq than General Abizaid did.

...

In their testimony on Wednesday, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said they agreed with General Abizaid that American forces were one of the few elements keeping a lid on violence in Iraq and that withdrawing troops would only increase sectarian violence.

But General Maples said that the violence continued to increase in “scope, complexity and lethality” and that it was “creating an atmosphere of fear and hardening sectarianism, which is empowering militias and vigilante groups.”

In all of Iraq, attacks against allied troops last month averaged 180 per day, up from 170 per day in September and 70 per day in January, General Maples said in written testimony. Daily attacks on Iraqi civilians averaged roughly 40 per day last month, four times higher than the average in January. General Maples also noted that recent operations in Baghdad had achieved only a moderate success, because after American officials had turned neighborhoods over to the Iraqis, “attacks returned to and even surpassed preoperational levels.”

Reinforcing this view, General Hayden said the C.I.A. station in Baghdad assessed that Iraq was deteriorating to a chaotic state, with the political center disintegrating and rival factions increasingly warring with each other. “Their view of the battlefield is that it is descending into smaller and smaller groups fighting over smaller and smaller issues over smaller and smaller pieces of territory,” he said.

The two intelligence officials said Wednesday that there were only an estimated 1,300 foreign fighters in the country and that the number of Sunni Arab insurgents actively planning and carrying out attacks on American forces was probably more than 10,000.

Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island, asked General Abizaid how much time the United States had to bring down the violence in Baghdad before events there were beyond the control of the Iraqi government. General Abizaid said the answer was four to six months.

On an issue which is now, one might argue, "total crap", Abizaid denounced Rumsfeld's troop level decision of 2003:

General Abizaid also publicly said for the first time that the American position in Iraq had been undermined by the Bush administration’s decision not to deploy a larger force to stabilize the country in 2003. That decision was made after Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, the Army chief of staff at the time, told Congress that several hundred thousand troops would be needed. His testimony was derided by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, and the general was ostracized at the Pentagon before his retirement a few months later.

“General Shinseki was right that a greater international force contribution, U.S. force contribution and Iraqi force contribution should have been available immediately after major combat operations,” General Abizaid said. “I think you can look back and say that more American troops would have been advisable in the early stages of May, June, July.”

On the Shinseki story, this has been kicked around repeatedly, but here we go again - Shinseki had clashed with Rumsfeld over such issues as the Crusader weapons systems and Rumsfeld's vision of a leaner, meaner military.  His retirement had been pre-announced roughly fourteen months before it became effective (essentially neutering him), which was well before his controversial Congressional testimony.

UPDATE:  No 'Crap' At The Times:  The Times speaks out against Murtha in a bowdlerized editorial:

...So far, the Democrats seem not to have paid much attention to the tattered baggage lugged into the limelight by Representative John Murtha of Pennsylvania, the Iraq war critic who is Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi’s choice for second in command. And yesterday, Republicans resurrected Trent Lott, the Mississippi senator who fell from the majority leader’s post three years ago.

For all his commendable instincts in articulating the Bush administration’s Iraq failures, Mr. Murtha has long been known in the Capitol as a crude master of swapping pork-barrel budget goodies for lobbyists’ campaign lucre. Only recently, he stood out for opposing strong ethics reform.

And while Ms. Pelosi is vowing to hammer home ethics reform as her first order of business, the Capitol newspaper Roll Call reported that Mr. Murtha was vulgarly belittling her program in private meetings with lawmakers. Mr. Murtha’s ambition is directed against the current No. 2, Representative Steny Hoyer of Maryland, who also is no slouch in maintaining overly close ties to the K Street business and lobbying powers.

Carl Hulse also takes a half-hearted stab at this:

Many Say Leadership Race Damages Democrats’ Image

By CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON, Nov. 15 — House members acknowledged on Wednesday that the increasingly bitter contest for majority leader was sullying the image of unity and new direction that Democrats hoped to convey.     

“It’s four days that we haven’t talked about our message and built on the euphoria,” said Representative Ellen O. Tauscher, a California Democrat who is supporting Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland in the leadership vote on Thursday. “We had such perfect pitch last week.”

Downtrodden Republicans were enjoying the spectacle of the split between Representative Nancy Pelosi, the incoming speaker, who is publicly pushing Representative John P. Murtha, her longtime ally, and Democrats rallying behind Mr. Hoyer, who has served in the leadership slot beneath Ms. Pelosi for four years.

...

Mr. Murtha himself has thrown more fuel on that fire. Members of the conservative Democratic Blue Dog group said that during an appearance before them Tuesday, Mr. Murtha disparaged an ethics overhaul that Ms. Pelosi and the leadership have been promising as one of their first orders of business.

Two lawmakers at the session confirmed that the comment, first reported by the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call, left many stunned, given the new scrutiny Mr. Murtha’s deal-making on the Appropriations Committee has drawn, along with his involvement in the 1980 Abscam bribery sting run by the F.B.I. He was never charged in that case, but a widely circulated film showed him being offered a bribe and responding that he was not interested in the money “at this time.”

In an interview on the MSNBC show “Hardball” Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Murtha said that at the time of Abscam he was interested in attracting foreign investment to relieve high unemployment in his Pennsylvania district and, though suspicious of the offer, wanted to keep open the possibility of legitimate investment. As for the ethics package promoted by Ms. Pelosi, Mr. Murtha said he was complaining that Congressional wrongdoing was superceding other matters “when we’ve got a war going on and we got all these other issues — $8 billion a month we’re spending.”

Mr. Hulse really lets Murtha off easy on the Abscam situation - TPM Muckrakers presents a much more damning backstory while they pass the time waiting for the Waxman press releases.  The Times tells us that Murtha was never charged but they omit the intercession of House Speaker Tip O'Neill on Murtha's behalf.

As to the Times fear that a family paper can't run the word "crap" - it appeared in the Style section in a Paris Hilton story on July 2, 2006 and columist Dave Barry was quoted in the business section using just that vulgarity on June 27, 2006.  Maybe the Times just doesn't want young readers to discover that even Democrats can swear, be corrupt, and cut deals to save their own skin.

HOPE SHE ENJOYED THE HONEYMOON:  The final tally is in:

House Democrats chose Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland as their majority leader today after a bruising fight that cast a cloud over the party’s post-election celebration.

The election of Mr. Hoyer over Representative John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania, by a vote of 149 to 86, was an embarrassing setback for Representative Nancy J. Pelosi of California, who will be speaker of the House in the new Congress and had backed Mr. Murtha.

All the gushing Pelosi profiles describing her firm sure-footed leadership have been spiked.

And let's re-highlight this from the Chris Matthews interview with his "friend" John Murtha:

MATTHEWS: ...So let’s get to questions that everybody wants answered.  First of all, it’s a secret ballot tomorrow, right?

REP. JOHN MURTHA (D), PENNSYLVANIA:  Right.

MATTHEWS:  Are you going to win?

MURTHA:  We’re going to win, we’ve got the votes.

MATTHEWS:  You’ve got them?

MURTHA:  We’ve got the votes.

MATTHEWS:  Eyeball to eyeball, you’ve got them?

MURTHA:  Eyeball to eyeball.

Comments

[Stormy70]

Chris Matthews is pathetic. He can't help it, he has to walk back the screw ups of the Democratic party. Murtha will be 24 hour entertainment for the next 2 years, since he is Ca-caca.

[lurker]

Are the House Democrats Revolting?

As Riehl and Crittendon says, "Just Sit Back and Enjoy!"

Flying has just gotten expensive.

[hit and run]

Are the House Democrats Revolting?

The answer is obviously yes.

I find them extremely revolting.

[PeterUK]

All withdrawals are "Phase withdrawals",gone are the days when the Athenians could be gone from the walls of Troy overnight.It takes as long to redeploy troops as it does deploy them,130,000 personel with full kit takes some moving.
It would be good if there could be some discussion of the buzz phrases being bandied about which are used as a substitute for reality/

[Ranger]

Hmmm... Does this line strike anyone as familiar?

"The Democrats intend to lead the most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history," Pelosi pledged on election night.

WoPo, Wednesday, November 15, 2006; Page A21 via Ann Althouse, via Instapundit

Sounds to me kind of like Bill Clinton promising the most ethical administration in history, and we all know how that worked out.

Is this kind of hyperbolic talk an indication of deliberate deception? Just asking.

[lurker]

Larry Elder says Yes on deliberate deception.

Oh, how revolting they are.

[Ric Locke]

Is this kind of hyperbolic talk an indication of deliberate deception? Just asking.

I don't know. But I have noticed that one of the things missing from the last few days is major appearances by George Bush.

When he's on his form, one of Bush's main political assets is a near-infinite supply of rope. If I were advising him, I'd tell him to become as invisible as possible for the next little while. Pelosi and the rest are following modern political practice by proclaiming, and apparently assuming, that winning by a thin and ambiguous margin constitutes a landslide mandate, and it'll be interesting to see what happens when the public comes to believe they have total, in-fee-simple ownership of the problems.

Regards,
Ric

[Jack on Track]

Nothing like creating your own "rock and hard place". Has it been less than 10 days from the night of euphoria? As Abizaid said yesterday to Hillary, "when I come to Washington, I feel despair". Geez, from euphorial triumphalism to despair and its a lame duck congress. Hope springs eternal but ye who live in that die in s**t. I believe Karl Rove is Murtha's campaign manager. Nothing will make W look like a freeking genius than to have Pelosi, Murtha, Hastings and Waxman running things.

[maryrose]

When your enemy is destroying themselves -get out of the way. Democratic infighting is a part of who they are as a party. Rahm was able to capitalize on dissatisfaction with the Iraq war and by recruiting conservative candidates. My disappointment comes in when someone like Simmons of Connecticut loses by 97 votes. Was he out campaigning vigorously during this election season or was he complacent like some other Republicans? The repubs that didn't take their House or Senate seat for granted won-those that did Allen and Leach lost.I hope Allen runs for Governor of Virginia and I hope that Leach and Steele get some good adnministrative jobs. Keep Bolton without the title and get a few judges confirmed before the switch.I feel sorry for the Afican-Americans in Maryland-they just blew their best chance of securing a foothold in Maryland politics. Easily the biggest disappointment this election season. As to Burns in Montana- I think they just wanted a younger Senator to represent them.

[iu]

Term limits

[Sue]

I think Murtha is blowing smoke before his 15 minutes are up. I doubt he has the votes.

[Joe]

Murtha is either lying or misinformed on his Iraq details too: oil production is above pre-war levels, as is electricity, potable water, telephones, radio stations, internet access. Infant mortality rate is better too.

This will be fun to watch.

[iu]

DIA is going to do domestic spy work. CIA analysts are moving to DIA/NSA under Air force, so it makes sense that they want the same powers the CIA has domestically. But Plame did all that work with domestice political groups and used NSA assets to check on them, so maybe DIA is all forgiven CIA and Plame like Fitz's crminal conspiracy investigation.

DIA was pretty much for when CIA screwed up, especially domestically, (under the five year law) and Plame was one of those screw ups; so where is DIA on all this when it gets political?

[Ranger]

Actually, I am hoping that Murtha wins, because then someone can run a TV add comparing Murtha's pride in his role in convincing Clinton to cut and run from Somlia with UBL's statements that Somalia is where he learned that Americans are cowards that are easy to beat, then asks why Murtha wants to lead America into defeat again. Murtha's seat may be safe, but I have a feeling using him as the offical face of the democratic party for the next two years will help republicans a lot more then democrats in those close districts the dems won with conservative candididates.

[DaveP.]

So we're gonna have a guy famous for taking money from Middle Easterners for doing their bidding in Congress... in a major leadership position in Congress.

Only the Democrats, folks.

[TallDave]

the C.I.A. station in Baghdad assessed that Iraq was deteriorating to a chaotic state

Yeah, and I hear their assessment is "a slam dunk case."

[Greg D]

As a matter of fact, oil production, electricity production, all those things are below pre-war level... We have 130,000 troops on the ground and it’s gotten worse during the last six months.

So, is Murtha that stupid, or does he just think we are? How in the world does "below pre-war level[s]" prove "gotten worse during the last six months"?

[maryrose]

Ranger:
yes that would be an interesting scenario but I agree with Sue: Murtha's 15 minutes are almost up. His appearance on Hardball to walk back his criminal activity with Abscam and his"crap" comment were priceless. Matthews liked it so much he played it twice on the same program. Murtha is a modern day grifter.

[Specter]

maryrose,

Yes - Simmons lost. And then what did he do? He graciously stepped aside rather than demand a run-off as was his right (and as any Dem would do - right TT?). BTW - he did campaign very hard, but that has always been a district where it comes down to a few votes. At least in the 15 years I've been up here. But Courtney? He has a rep for raising taxes. Here we go....

[clarice]

It is entertaining. I am beginning to believe that Murtha is suffering from dementia. Nancy is just stupid.She won the whip slot over Hoyer in large part because she had the support of the Cal Fem delegation.

OT: Here's my piece on the Plame civil suit.
http://americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=6046

[roanoke]

Notice from the transcript-Murtha is so proud of being on 143 talk shows as the anti-war hero he says it twice. Of course Liberals traditionally come here and tell us how dare we question the "authorities" aka the NYT et al.

On those talk shows Murtha leaned on his pal Abizaid quite a bit-using this quote often to describe his position as being aligned with Abiziad's-

Afterward, he went over to see Congressman John Murtha, the 73-year old former Marine who had introduced a resolution the previous November calling for the redeployment of troops from Iraq as soon as practicable. Sitting at the round, dark wood table in the congressman’s office, Abizaid, the one uniformed military commander who had been intimately involved in Iraq from the beginning and who was still at it, indicated he wanted to speak frankly. According to Murtha, Abizaid raised his hand for emphasis and held his thumb and forefinger a quarter of an inch from each other and said, “We’re that far apart.”

Quote from Woodward excerpt in Newsweek.Source

Now that the election is over-they are no longer "close" maybe because Murtha's got so much crap on his hands.

[Tom Maguire]

Sounds to me kind of like Bill Clinton promising the most ethical administration in history

I thought Clinton promised to make history with his ethics... Mission Accomplished!

Re Somalia - I don't think it generated a lot of buzz but the Times had a story a day or two back that Somalia sent 700 fighters to lebanon to aid Hezbollah. Coordinated by Iran and Syria, natch.

Turning Iraq into the next Somalia - not good.

I think Murtha is blowing smoke before his 15 minutes are up. I doubt he has the votes.

I can see why he might attempt a self-fulfilling lie - what idiot wants to oppose both the incoming Speaker and the next Majority Leader?

But of the lie is exposed, he makes Pelosi look even worse than she is already making herself look.

Of course, if he wins, then the Dems have a corrupt dinosaur who annoys the libs on every issue but Iraq. Possible message - "Just Like having Republicans in Charge, Except For Iraq".

I will never be smart enough to be a Dem strategist.

[roanoke]

what idiot wants to oppose both the incoming Speaker and the next Majority Leader?

One in need of a long soak in a vat of Aricept....

Come on HE has been on 143 talk shows how dare you question his.....er, manhood or something.

[roanoke]

I've got his "Fight Club" nom de guerre-

Mad Murtha the Merde-ist

{Ugh. I tag myself out...}

[clarice]

Showing once again that Novak is out of the loop, Nancy was just unanimously elected speaker.

[Ranger]

Well, here is something that I just remembered. The Speaker's job goes to the person that gets the most votes, regardless of the total number, so if Murtha gets the leader slot, then the RNC can start running adds in a lot of blue dog democrat districts over the next two months reminding everyone who Murtha is (ABSCAM, Pork, Proud of convincing Clinton to cut and run from Somalia which leads to UBL beleaving the US is easy to defeat). Then point out that Murtha is Nancy's hand picked choice. Then the tag line "Congress person X ran as a conservative who would clean up congress, but now they are going to vote to install a corrupt leadership under Nancy Pelosi and Jack Murtha."

The point, Pelosi will probably still win, but if she wins with only 210 votes out of a 229 member caucus, she is damaged goods from the outset. And maybe she doesn't even win. And it sets up the 2008 congressional campaign, where every blue dog democrat has to run against a generic add that simply says, they claim to be a conservative, but they voted for Nancy as speaker.

[clarice]

As to Abazaid, according to Murtha his claim that the Haditha Marines were cold blooded murderers was supported by General Hagee's briefing of him. As it turned out, Hagee never briefed him until AFTER he made that claim.

[lurker]

Unanimously?

Gee, shows how dumb those democrats are.

Did I read correctly that Murtha won?

[clarice]

By the way, the WaPo and NYT and Pittsburgh papers can take credit for Murtha..They buried his flaws all of which were pointed out this election by Diane Irey who was a wonderful candidate.

[tomU]

By the time of OIF, Shinseki had no credibility. He was disloyal to Rumsfeld, back dooring the SecDef by running to Daniel Inoue (then Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, thanks to Jim Jeffords) in order to rescue an undeployable monstrosity of a weapons system, called the Crusader, which Rumsfeld had correctly decided to cancel. That strategy was good for Shinseki, only until the Republicans won back the Senate and Shinseki lost his political cover. Rumsfeld was quite correct to in effect sack Shinseki, who had engaged in behavior that he himself would never have tolerated in a subordinate. Finally, sending 3,000,000,000,000 men was the only solution Shinseki ever proposed for ANY problem, knowing it would be a non starter. Richard Schulze noted that this was the way Shinseki and Henry Shelton were able to tell the Clinton Administration "we don't do windows." Any plan to try and get bin Laden in Afghanistan during the 1990s using Special Forces was met by a "no, this is too risky" response, followed by, let's send 100,000 men, knowing that it would be a political non-starter. Sending 100,000 men to Afghanistan was also Shinseki's response to 9/11, thus replicating the Russian experience. It was also the kind of thinking that interested neither Rumsfeld nor Tommy Franks. I should also point out many of the retired flags such as Shinseki, Zinni and Clark, were running the Pentagon when al Qaeda was metastasizing in to the menace that manifested itself on 9/11. None of Clinton's Sec Defs had the ability to ride herd on these guys. They, however, have never been called to account for their mistakes.

[Miracle Max]

Murtha is to Abscam as McCain is to S&L.

[Sue]

I can see why he might attempt a self-fulfilling lie - what idiot wants to oppose both the incoming Speaker and the next Majority Leader?

You don't expect an answer, do you? ::grin::

In the event you do, the same idiot who throws out Okinawa as a redeployment option. The same idiot who tries to explain the word "crap". The same idiot who is on camera saying not yet, not until you prove I can trust you.

[Sue]

BREAKING NEWS:

Conservatives with Attitude! insiders are informing us that Congressman John Murtha will DROP OUT of the running for the number 2 spot in the House as Majority Leader.

Polipundit

[clarice]

That's been withdrawn per hot air. It was a false report, Sue.

[Sue]

Dems Voting Now

[Sue]

Well, it would seem as if he had withdrawn a vote wouldn't be needed, but it could be a procedural vote. I don't know. I know the one at hotair was in reference to the national journal. This one is from polipundit.

[Sue]

ABCNews radio is saying Hoyer won by a large margin.

[Sue]

Druge is also reporting Murtha is out.

[Sue]

Steny Hoyer elected Majority Leader 149-86

[hit and run]

Druge is also reporting Murtha is out.

Of the closet? He's gay? Did he have any inappropriate contact with pages?

Oh wait, that's not what you meant :)

[PeterUK]

"The Democrats intend to lead the most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history," Pelosi pledged on election night".

"The louder he spoke of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons."

Ralph Waldo Emerson.

[Sue]

H&R,

You are just looking for this...

::grin::

...and you got it.

[hit and run]

Well, that certainly was a short-lived era.

“She will ensure that they [the Murtha camp] win. This is hard-ball politics,” said Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.), a longtime Murtha supporter. “We are entering an era where when the Speaker instructs you what to do, you do it.”

[Specter]

Pelosi is Toast before she starts.

[moptop]

Dang. I wanted Murtha in. We should have just kept our mouths shut for a couple of years, a la Foley.

On the bright side, the Nutsroots were for Murtha big time.

[moptop]

Dang. I wanted Murtha in. We should have just kept our mouths shut for a couple of years, a la Foley.

On the bright side, the Nutsroots were for Murtha big time.

[Specter]

Murtha Lied, Majority Post Died

[roanoke]

Murtha: Okay crrrrrrrap I surrender-and I bluffed about the war, er, vote but I still think it's a winning strategy-surrender that is.

Keep up you corkers!

[hit and run]

moptop - we should demand that Murtha demand that there be a recount! Make the votes public! Is there a paper trail? How do we know that Diebold wasn't involved? If the congresspersons had to show id to get into the capital in order to cast their votes, they may have been disenfranchised. There may be rumors that Hoyer had his people conduct robo-calls to other members. And don't forget, Hoyer just recently used the word "slavenly", clearly he is racist.

He must step down!

[rarango]

I never gave Pelosi any credit for smarts--ambition yes, intelligence no; she has the same problem with syntax as does the President and clearly did not have her finger on the pulse of the house. It isnt good to start out as damaged goods, no matter how the democrat apologists paint this; I think we will be looking at a much more split congress than the democrats would have liked: the Pelosi/Murtha branch, and the Hoyer branch. Will be interesting to see how the votes went within the democratic caucus.