Is the Media “Slowly Bleeding” Congressional Plans To Withdraw From Iraq?

On February 15th, the Republican National Committee sent out the following press release, which was signed by RNC Chairman Mike Duncan:

The Democrat strategy on Iraq is finally clear.

We’ve known all along that they want to cut and run before the job is done. But they’ve been afraid to confront President Bush directly. Today, Democrat Rep. John Murtha let slip what he and Nancy Pelosi really intend to do, and it is genuinely frightening.

They call it their ’slow-bleed’ plan. Instead of supporting the troops in Iraq, or simply bringing them home, the Democrats intend to gradually make it harder and harder for them to do their jobs. They will introduce riders onto bills to prevent certain units from deploying. They will try to limit the President’s constitutional power to determine the length and number of deployments. They will attempt to keep the Pentagon from replacing troops who rotate out of Iraq. They may even try to limit how our troops operate by, for example, prohibiting our armed forces from creating and operating bases in Iraq.

‘Slow-bleed’ is exactly the right name for this incredibly irresponsible and dangerous strategy. Cutting and running is bad enough. But the Murtha-Pelosi ’slow-bleed’ plan is far worse. It is a cynical and dangerous erosion of our ability to fight the terrorists while we still have men and women on the ground in Iraq. It will put their lives in far greater danger, as resources slowly dry up. How can our troops operate without bases? How can they fight without backup?

‘Slow-bleed’ cannot become law. Luckily, we have an opportunity to stop it. The Murtha plan depended on stealth. Now, however, the press has broken the story. And now we can act.

Now, if you read the words “They call it their ’slow-bleed’ plan” without blinking, you probably missed the fact that “slow-bleed” was actually coined by John Bresnahan of the blog The Politico, not, as Duncan states, by the Democratic leadership.

Nonetheless, both the phrase “slow-bleed” and the attribution of the term to “the Democrat” party have become a mainstream media staple in discussing options for Iraq.

Media Matters caught several news outlets in the act, and has been following the story since the beginning. Yesterday, they caught national security reporter Jack Kelly red-handed:

In the column, which bore the sub-headline, “A ’slow bleed’ strategy to stop the surge probably would backfire on the Democrats,” Kelly wrote:

So the Democrats may adopt what’s been called the “slow bleed” strategy. Rep. Jack Murtha, D-Johnstown, outlined it last week in an interview with the left wing Web site MoveCongress.org. The strategy would be to impose, through amendments to the defense appropriations bill, so many restrictions on U.S. troops that the president’s plan for a surge would be hamstrung.

There are, from the Democrats’ perspective, two clever things about the “slow bleed” strategy.

Let us set aside for the moment what the “slow bleed” strategy would say about the honesty and character of the Democratic leadership in Congress if it chooses to pursue it and focus on the wisdom, or lack of it, of making the sabotaging of the war effort foremost on the Democratic agenda.

As Media Matters noted, New Republic senior editor Ryan Lizza was apparently the first to use a version of the “slow bleed” construction to characterize the House Democratic leadership’s reported strategy.

From Lizza’s appearance on the February 13 edition of MSNBC’s Scarborough Country:

LIZZA: And look, they’re reading the same polls that we’re all reading, and they realize that the American public doesn’t quite — there’s not a big majority for defunding the troops, so it doesn’t look like the Democratic leadership is going to go there. Instead, what you’re going to have is a strategy led by Murtha, which is going to be to limit the number of troops available to President Bush by putting some restrictions on what troops will be allowed to be brought over to Iraq.

So that’s the strategy that the — that’s the sort of two-part strategy: first, this nonbinding resolution, and then restricting what troops Bush can use. So, it’s a sort of — a slow bleeding of our ability to do much more in Iraq.

Popularity: 2% [?]

I’d like to use a quote from Dave Brown on his calendar:”All bleeding eventually stops.” As do armies.