WHY IS MURTHA’S STATEMENT ON THE WAR NEWS when he said basically the same thing a year and a half ago? This is from May 6, 2004:

Signaling a new, more aggressive line against the Bush administration’s policy on Iraq, Rep. John Murtha (Pa.), the House Democrats’ most visible defense hawk, will join Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) today to make public his previously private statements that the conflict is “unwinnable.”

And he’s the Democrats’ hawk? (Via The Corner).

UPDATE: More on Murtha here and here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Damian Lewis emails:

I live in SW Pennsylvania in a district that adjoins Rep. Murtha’s 12th congressional district. It seems odd no one has mentioned how the year 2000, Pennsylvania re-districting plan, pushed Murtha into a much more left leaning district. I believe he had to do this, just to avoid a primary fight.

I think a lot of the antiwar and “Bush Lied” stuff is about keeping the base happy.