Um, About Supporting the Troops ... Can We Talk?

Back in February, Steve Silberman wrote an article for Wired about a new kind of pain treatment doctors at Walter Reed have developed to treat men and women wounded in combat -- of whom there are many more now than in the past, as fewer soldiers are dying thanks in large part to body armor and improved evacuation procedures that are getting injured soldiers to military hospitals faster.

Now, Silberman e-mails Andrew Sullivan with some thoughts about John Murtha -- including the fact that Murtha funded the R&D on this new pain-killing medication.

"One thing about Rep. Murtha that I haven't seen in the recent news yet is that he has been visiting our wounded troops weekly at Walter Reed Army Medical Center since the war began. I reported this last year in Wired, in a story about a new kind of battlefield anesthesia pioneered in Iraq that was funded by Murtha. This man walks the talk, and Cheney and McClellan should hang their heads in shame." I couldn't agree more. I have to say the right-wing's attempt to belittle, marginalize and even question the patriotism of Mutha is one of the most disgusting things I've yet seen from people who get more shameless by the day. Real conservatives deal with something called "reality." They listen to critics; they worry about worse-case scenarios; they care about long-term consequences of, say, piling up debt or going to war with no real plans for peace; they respect good men like John Murtha. The people running the country right now are not conservatives. They have highjacked that tradition for their own ends. And one day, we will recover it from their hands.