Radioactive

The attack on John Murtha's character in the wake of his call for US redeployment in Iraq has blown up in the GOP's face so quickly that even the President had to walk the rhetoric back. Now we learn that the Marine Col. that Mean Jean Schmidt quoted when she called Murtha a coward is disputing the remarks:

Three days after Rep. Jean Schmidt was booed off the House floor for saying that "cowards cut and run, Marines never do," the Ohioan she quoted disputed the comments.

Danny Bubp, a freshman state representative who is a colonel in the Marine Corps Reserve, told The Enquirer that he never mentioned Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., by name when talking with Schmidt, and he would never call a fellow Marine a coward.

"The unfortunate thing about all of that is that her choice of words on the floor of the House - I don't know, she's a freshman, she had one minute.

"Unfortunately, they came out wrong," said Bubp, R-West Union.

"I could just imagine how nervous she must have been on the floor with everyone watching," Bubp said. "I don't want to be interjected into this. I wish she never used my name."

For his part, Murtha downplayed the statement on Meet the Press, saying that "This is a new member, and sometimes they give her something to say that ... they get out of hand. I try not to take this stuff personal."

Good for him. I just think it's amusing how fast everyone started running away from the attempted Swift-Boating, almost as soon as it began. As I said earlier, the guy's unassailable.

We also learned today that Murtha waited five months for a reply to a letter he sent to the Bush Administration about bipartisan solutions on Iraq. In the end, he received a curt reply from a Pentagon underling. So this should have come as no surprise to the White House. That is, if they bothered to listen to anyone who didn't agree in lockstep with them.