http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051124/ap_on_...DMzBHNlYwM3MDM-

Sen. Nelson Opposes Iraq Troop Withdrawal By RON WORD, Associated Press Writer

U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson (news, bio, voting record) said Wednesday he was opposed to the immediate withdrawal of American troops from Iraq because he fears it would allow al-Qaida to take over the oil-rich nation.

"We want this thing to end, but it's got to be done in a way that stabilizes so that we don't have an al-Qaida controlling the world's oil supply," Nelson said in a news conference that also covered oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and the Navy's future in northeast Florida.

Nelson's comments came after a fellow Democrat, Pennsylvania Rep. John Murtha (news, bio, voting record), set off a firestorm last week when he proposed all the about 160,000 U.S. troops in Iraq be pulled out over the next six months. Nelson said the Bush administration had not done a good job selling the war to the American people.

"The way to keep the American people behind the war effort is to be open and truthful and up front and to give clear goals of what you are trying to achieve," Nelson said. "When we went in to Iraq, we were not only given misinformation, we withheld information and what we were given was not true."

President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have defended their administration in recent days from those types of accusations, repeating that there is no timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. Cheney has said suggestions that the White House twisted information to lead the nation to Iraq were "dishonest and reprehensible."

Nelson, who opposes oil drilling off the coast of Florida, said military training in the skies and waters in the Gulf of Mexico could prevent oil companies from drilling near shore.

"The one trump card we have up our sleeve that they will not be able to come close to the coast of Florida is the United States military's largest training and testing area in the entire continental United States is the Gulf of Mexico off of Florida. Almost all the gulf off of Florida is restricted air space," he said.

Nelson also talked about the decision by the city of Jacksonville to end its quest to have the Navy reopen Cecil Field Naval Air Station.

Jacksonville Mayor John Peyton, bowing to pressure from people who live near the former Navy base about concerns of the noisy Navy jets, announced earlier the city would no longer attempt to have the base reopened.

Nelson said the Base Closure and Realignment Commission gave Oceana, Va., until March to do something about encroachment from homes and businesses around its base or face the possibility of losing it.

If Oceana has not come up with a plan to handle the problem, Jacksonville will be asked if it is still opposed to reopening Cecil Field, which closed in 1999.

Nelson said he and Gov. Jeb Bush had both testified twice in support of reopening Cecil Field. Nelson said, however, that he would no go against the wishes of local leaders.

The senator said he was confident that funding will be provided by the Navy to upgrade Mayport Naval Station so that it could be the port for a nuclear aircraft carrier. The USS John F. Kennedy, a conventional aircraft carrier, may be mothballed within the next year.




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http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051212/vonhoffman

In Praise of John Murtha
by NICHOLAS VON HOFFMAN

[posted online on November 23, 2005]

When John Murtha, Democratic Repesentative from Pennsylvania, appeared on our television screens, what he had to say was shocking--an old guard type declaring America must get itself out of Iraq and the war. In 457 words, he stood the country up and made it blink as he told the other of the House of Representatives, "Our military is suffering. The future of our country is at risk. We can not continue on the present course. It is evident that continued military action in Iraq is not in the best interest of the United States of America, the Iraqi people or the Persian Gulf Region."

That was a shock and Murtha himself was a shock, a man from another era, from an America most of us may have heard about but have not visited.

At 73 he has an Irish working-class accent of a kind which has all but died out. It speaks of grit and iron and hard times--and there have been plenty of those in his Pennsylvania Congressional district, where the bituminous coal industry went down when Murtha was a young man and where the steel industry went down when Murtha was a middle-aged man, and in between there were two wars, both of which he signed up for and served in.

Murtha joined the Marines for the Korean War, came back to go to college on the GI Bill of Rights and joined the Marines again for Vietnam. He is a retired colonel in the Reserves, a citizen soldier who stayed close to the armed services in life and in Congress, where for 30 years he has been on committees having to do with defense. When he spoke out last week, it was for love of country and for love of its soldiers.

"I have been visiting our wounded troops at Bethesda and Walter Reed hospitals almost every week since the beginning of the war," he said. "And what demoralizes them is going to war with not enough troops and equipment to make the transition to peace; the devastation caused by IEDs; being deployed to Iraq when their homes have been ravaged by hurricanes; being on their second or third deployment and leaving their families behind without a network of support." Visiting our wounded men and women once a week for two and a half years--that is not what most members of Congress do on their weekends.

He had a car wash business in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, a little city which lost about two-thirds of its population in the course of the last century. It must be a place that inspires more resolution than hope, where people's dreams are tough and realistic, but not too tough, not impervious. When Murtha spoke in his curiously blunt yet polite manner his eyes watered.

Here is a man comfortable in his own skin. He knows who he is and what he has done and he can live with it. He does not explain himself or justify himself or apologize. He does not squirm, he does not wiggle. John Murtha does not display the guilt other Democratic politicians show when they talk about the war and their voting for it.

Over more than fifty years on the battlefield and in the Congress John Murtha has fought and worked. He has combat decorations, a building has been named after him, but his best service may have been this speech. "Our military has done everything that has been asked of them, the US cannot accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily. IT IS TIME TO BRING THEM HOME!" he shouted.

In an instant, it had become respectable to talk about getting out, to offer plans for ending the war. Other politicians, previously cowed by the threat of being called quitters, began to speak up. On TV it was OK to have guests who said, "End it now." The spell was broken and Murtha broke it. Of all that he has done, this was his finest moment. Now, for the first time, there is hope the war may soon be over.

The first post is a bit misleading, as the AP writer took a quote from Nelson
from a press conference on a different subject entirely. However, Bill Nelson will not be leading a charge to pull out of Iraq immediately because he represents a state full of military retirees and several important bases. He is fighting to hold his Senate seat, has been targeted by the RNC,
and thus is going to play it safe until re-elected.