Clinton Team's Testy Response To Edwards' Speech Against Sending More Troops... | The Huffington Post

Go, Johnny, Go!

Report From Huffpo's Melinda Henneberger: Clinton Team's Testy Response To Edwards' Speech Against Sending More Troops... The Huffington Post:

John Edwards had a hard time getting through yesterday's anti-surge speech at Harlem's Riverside Church, repeatedly interrupted by cheering from the pews. Standing where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. preached against American involvement in Vietnam 40 years ago, the former Democratic senator from North Carolina declared that, 'As he put it then, there comes a time - not just for Dr. King, but for all of us - when silence is betrayal.''

It is a betrayal to quietly countenance widespread poverty in the richest country in the world, he told a crowd of 1,200, and a betrayal to stand silent in the face of an AIDS epidemic ravaging a new generation of African children. With a Clintonian comfort level at the pulpit, he drew the most sustained ovation of the day when he said, 'It is a betrayal not to speak out against an escalation of the war in Iraq.''

Edwards, who is running for president in '08, has not only opposed the president's plan to send 21,500 more troops into Iraq but has argued that it is time to bring 50,000 home. The only senator mentioned in the speech was Arizona Republican John McCain, when Edwards called the plan the 'McCain Escalation.' But the speech was also an overt challenge to two of his likely competitors for the Democratic nomination in particular: New York Senator Hillary Clinton and Illinois Senator Barack Obama have criticized the president's proposal too but have not said they would go so far as to try and prevent it by cutting funding.