quagmire

Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., offered the resolution demanding a pullout. The GOP-run House was expected to reject it — and make a prominent statement about where Congress stands on Iraq — as the chamber scurried toward a Thanksgiving break.

Murtha, a well-respected Vietnam veteran who voted for the Iraq war, called for the immediate withdrawal of troops Thursday, intensifying the already red-hot debate on Capitol Hill over President Bush's war policies.

Murtha's resolution would force the president to withdrawal the nearly 160,000 troops in Iraq "at the earliest predictable date."

Most Republicans oppose Murtha's plan. Some members of the House and Senate, looking ahead to off-year elections next November, are publicly worrying about a quagmire there. They have been staking out new positions on the war that has grown increasingly unpopular with the American public, resulted in more than 2,000 U.S. military deaths and cost more than $200 billion..

"Our troops have become the primary target of the insurgency," Murtha, a longtime hawk on foreign and military affairs issues, said Thursday. "They are united against U.S. forces and we have become a catalyst for violence. The war in Iraq is not going as advertised. It is a flawed policy wrapped in illusion."

With a Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts, Murtha retired from the Marine Corps reserves as a colonel in 1990 after 37 years as a Marine, only a few years longer than he's been in Congress. Elected in 1974, Murtha has become known as an authority on national security whose advice was sought out by Republican and Democratic administrations alike.