Remember ol’ Jack “ABSCAM” Murtha? How he wanted to cut and run from Iraq, all the way to Okinawa? Okinawa, because we can rapidly deploy from there, you know, despite the fact that it’s several thousand miles away.

Well, either Cheney or Bush must have slipped him a Mickey (that’ll be what the nutroots say, just getting ahead of the curve, here), because now he’s changed his tune on the surge:

U.S. Rep. John Murtha today said he saw signs of military progress during a brief trip to Iraq last week, but he warned that Iraqis need to play a larger role in providing their own security and the Bush administration still must develop an exit strategy.

“I think the ’surge’ is working,” the Democrat said in a videoconference from his Johnstown office, describing the president’s decision to commit more than 20,000 additional combat troops this year. But the Iraqis “have got to take care of themselves.”

Violence has dropped significantly in recent months, but Mr. Murtha said he was most encouraged by changes in the once-volatile Anbar province, where locals have started working closely with U.S. forces to isolate insurgents linked to Al Qaeda.

He said Iraqis need to duplicate that success at the national level, but the central government in Baghdad is “dysfunctional.”

Congressman, after the last year of Democrat rule in Congress, you and your ilk are the last people to talk about “dysfunctional government.” You guys define that term perfectly.

As for Murtha’s trip, it’s the ultimate case of hypocrisy, folks. Watch the video of Murtha’s past remarks on others who have visted Iraq and came to the same conclusions he just did:

I tell you, the nutroots have to be pulling their hair out right about now. To paraphrase LBJ, they’ve just lost Murtha, they’ll soon lose middle America.

Why the sudden change of heart? Just a hunch, but my guess is that Murtha can see the writing on the wall and he wants to be able to spin his previous positions later on. When we do leave Iraq in victory (instead of the defeat that Murtha and other Democrats worked so hard for), Murtha wants to be able to say he played a part in that victory.

Update: Pelosi must have had a talk with Mr. Murtha.

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