Got backbone?

Excerpt -- NY Times story (today):

An influential House Democrat called the Iraq campaign "a flawed policy wrapped in illusion" today as he called for the immediate withdrawal of United States troops.

"It is time for a change in direction," Representative John Murtha of Pennsylvania, the leading Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee's defense subcommittee, said as the debate over the war intensified by the hour. "Our military is suffering, the future of our country is at risk."

Mr. Murtha, a conservative who voted in 2002 for the resolution authorizing use of force in Iraq and who supported the Persian Gulf war in 1991, called for "the immediate redeployment of American forces."

[..] Mr. Murtha, a 73-year-old Marine Corps veteran of Vietnam combat, lashed back at Vice President Dick Cheney, who in a speech to a conservative group on Wednesday night condemned critics of the Iraq war. "The president and I cannot prevent certain politicians from losing their memory, or their backbone, but we're not going to sit by and let them rewrite history," Mr. Cheney said in an address to the group, Frontiers of Freedom, in Washington.

Mr. Murtha was disdainful of the vice president's remarks, saying that "people with five deferments" had no right to make such remarks. Mr. Cheney, like millions of other young men of the era, avoided military service during the Vietnam war.

Mr. Murtha's demeanor and personal history as well as his status on the Appropriations Committee may lend extra weight to his words.

[..] After serving in the Marines in the early 1950's, he re-enlisted in 1966, at the age of 34, and served in Vietnam, earning a Bronze Star, two Purple Hearts and the Vietnamese Cross for Gallantry...

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