Republicans Trivialize American Troops

Can we question THEIR patriotism now?

U.S. House, in tactic, to vote on Iraq troops:

"In a maneuver to strike at Iraq war critics, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives engineered a vote on Friday on a resolution to pull U.S. troops immediately from Iraq, which was expected to be defeated overwhelmingly.

Republicans who introduced the surprise resolution hours before lawmakers were to head out for a Thanksgiving holiday recess said the vote slated for 10 p.m. (0300 GMT) was intended to show backing for U.S. forces.

But Democrats bitterly denounced it as a political stunt and an attack on Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, a leading Democratic hawk on military affairs who stunned his colleagues on Thursday by calling for troops to be withdrawn as quickly as possible.

The action by Republicans in the House was the latest volley in an offensive President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney launched last week to attack war critics as unpatriotic and hypocritical.

Unlike Murtha's proposal calling for troops to be withdrawn 'as soon as practicable,' which he expected would be about six months, the Republican resolution said deployment of the U.S. forces should be 'terminated immediately.'

Democrats said no one was advocating the immediate end of the deployment without ensuring the safety of forces, and that it was a meaningless resolution that ducked real debate on the situation in Iraq.

'To take this proposal and trash it, trivialize it, is outrageous,' said Rep. John Spratt, a South Carolina Democrat.

Many Democrats have called on Bush to present a plan for ending the war and an estimate of when U.S. forces can start to be withdrawn based on conditions on the ground. Relatively few have called for a withdrawal."