According to Paul Bedard of USNews via TVNewser, text from Keith Olbermann's Special Comment on January 2, 2007 was used by Congressman Nick Rahall (D-WV) on the floor and entered into the Congressional Record on January 4, 2007.
Congressman Rahall said:
But then, Madame Speaker, the President has not shown that this is truly about the sacrifice of our men and women. If it were, all of the options presented to the President would be open for consideration, not just the ones that already fit into his ideological philosophy. The report from the Iraq Study Group would not have been as casually tossed aside as were the advisements of the Presidents own military leaders...career servicemen and women who have given their entire professional lives to protecting America.
Over 3,000 have already lost their lives, and that's only the Americans. One journalist in particular, is asking what if on his own. Keith Olbermann, host of Countdown with Keith Olbermann has asked:
"What if he had already sacrificed 3,003 of them - and was then to announce his intention to sacrifice hundreds, maybe thousands, more?
"This is where we stand tonight with the BBC report of President Bush's "new Iraq strategy," and his impending speech to the nation, which, according to a quoted senior American official, will be about troop increases and "sacrifice."
"The president has delayed, dawdled and deferred for the month since the release of the Iraq Study Group.
"He has seemingly heard out everybody, and listened to none of them.
"If the BBC is right - and we can only pray it is not - he has settled on the only solution all the true experts agree cannot possibly work: more American personnel in Iraq, not as trainers for Iraqi troops, but as part of some flabby plan for "sacrifice." (Countdown, MSNBC, 1/2/07)
Madame Speaker, the Presidents proposal reminds me of the ostrich who would rather stick his head in the sand, than face the reality that Americans want our soldiers home now. Not after another 20,000 have had to die for a strategy that is entirely wrong.
In Olbermann's words,
""The additional men and women you have sentenced to go there, sir, will serve only as targets." Which, is exactly what they will be - bodies to absorb the surge in the number of insurgents which this senseless war has created.
This senseless, endless war, as Mr. Olbermann states has succeeded in two ways:
It has succeeded, Mr. Bush, in enabling you to deaden the collective mind of this country to the pointlessness of endless war, against the wrong people, in the wrong place, at the wrong time.
It has gotten many of us used to the idea - the virtual "white noise" - of conflict far away, of the deaths of young Americans, of vague "sacrifice" for some fluid cause, too complicated to be interpreted except in terms of the very important-sounding but ultimately meaningless phrase "the war on terror."
And the war's second accomplishment - your second accomplishment, sir - is to have taken money out of the pockets of every American, even out of the pockets of the dead soldiers on the battlefield, and their families, and to have given that money to the war profiteers." (Countdown, MSNBC, 1/2/07)
Which, Madame Speaker, brings me back to the question of what if? In light of all of the evidence to the contrary, what if we, as Congress, allow the President to send tens of thousands of more men and women to keep a peace that does not exist?
Madame Speaker, it is my hope that four years from now, I will not have to look back on this question of what if with the same heavy heart that I do for the past four years.
(This is the second time that Olbermann has been quoted in the Congressional Record. Bedard opines that Olbermann could be making top dollar as a speechwriter for lawmakers who oppose the war in Iraq. Wonder how those negotiations for a new contract with MSNBC are going for Keith?)
The first time that words from Olbermann's Special Comment were entered into the CR was after his Rumsfeld resign speech. Sen. Reid said this on the floor of the Senate September 6, 2006:
Rumsfeld’s speech was filled with reckless, irresponsible assertions. But the most insulting and misguided words compared critics of the Bush administration’s Iraq policy to those who appeased the Nazis leading to World War II.
The assertions were offensive, and indicative of a Secretary of Defense who has lost his way, who is not capable of overseeing America’s defense or a new direction in Iraq, who is more concerned with the Bush administration’s political fortunes than the safety and security of the American people, and who must be replaced.
One commentator observed that Rumsfeld’s comments:
"did not merely serve to impugn the morality or intelligence—indeed, the loyalty—of the majority of Americans who oppose the transient occupants of the highest offices in the land. Worse, still, it credits those same transient occupants—our employees—with a total omniscience; a total omniscience which neither common sense, nor this administration’s track record at home or abroad, suggests they deserve."
We need to change course, and it starts at the top—with President Bush.
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