SpyTalk

 "I think that's what McChrystal is trying to do," Murtha told Rogin, referring to Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan.

Murtha said that it was premature to authorize more troops for Afghanistan when the current plan to increase U.S. forces there to 68,000 is still underway.

"Look how long it took us to get 22,000 more troops, it took 18 months! Jesus Christ!" Murtha said. "When they talk about more troops they act as if you can send them in immediately."

Last week House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters, "I don't think there's a great deal of support for sending more troops to Afghanistan in the country or in the Congress."

Such comments have to deepen the misery of  Murtha's House colleague, Ike Skelton, the 17-term Missourian who heads the Armed Services Committee.

Just yesterday Skelton was quoted calling a Taliban win in Afghanistan one of "two things that could wreck America."

"The economy - we go into a deep recession or depression," is the first, Skelton told another of my former CQ colleagues, Molly Hooper, now with The Hill.

"Number two is Afghanistan and the terrorist threat. They could cause attacks like that again. That's why we are there - to protect [against] attacks [from] it," Skelton said.

According to Hooper, "Skelton said the president should listen to General Stanley McChrystal, the top commander of U.S. and international troops in Afghanistan, who has delivered a report to the president that is expected to request additional troops to fight resurgent Taliban extremists."

Meanwhile Murtha, a Marine Corps veteran of the Vietnam War, complained with characteristic bluntness that "the American people are supporting this and the Europeans aren't supporting this.

"The Europeans aren't doing a damn thing," he told Rogin,

The American escalation in Vietnam went from about 16,000 U.S. "advisors" early in the Kennedy administration to over 580,000 troops by the end of the second Johnson term, in January 1969.

Neither Kennedy, Johnson or their successor, Richard M. Nixon, was able to enlist much beyond the token military support of European or Asian allies in the venture.