What does Saddam's capture mean for Dean and Dems?

[diamond]

the Dean Team Whistle Stop tour..oops.

 

[Dreadsox]

[Q]?Howard Dean has climbed into his own spider hole of denial if he believes that the capture of Saddam Hussein has not made America safer,? Lieberman said. ?Saddam Hussein is a homicidal maniac, brutal dictator, supporter of terrorism, and enemy of the United States, and there should be no doubt that America and the world are safer with him captured.?[/Q]

Joe Lieberman is the MAN!!!!!!!

 

[anitram]

Joe Lieberman will never get elected. He is as interesting as a piece of burnt toast.

You know how I knew that Bush would beat Gore? When I watched, in horror, one day on CNN, about a week prior to the election, one of the journalists go out on the street, asking people why they were voting for Bush/Gore. And there were SEVERAL men who, when they said they were voting for Bush, expressed that "he is the sort of guy you could have a beer with." I laughed then, but they had the last laugh.

Lieberman is as dull as Gore, maybe even moreso.

 

[Dreadsox]

I am surprised that personality is that big a factor with you?

however, I have never seen an election decided on a VP......

and.....Gore lost in his home state...

Lieberman won Connecticut his home state....



Fernando may not sing for you.....for a little while

 

[diamond]

Do we all agree now that there is a sort of diamond type sizzle needed in politics to succeed?

 

[MrsSpringsteen]

Do we all agree now that there is a sort of diamond type sizzle needed in politics to succeed?

Yes, that must be the key

I'm off to e-mail the candidates about that right now....

I do think that too many people think Saddam's capture ties the whole Iraq situation up in some neat little bow, which surely it does not ..it certainly won't bring the troops home any sooner or make them any safer over there. I don't think Saddam was directing any of these daily attacks from his farmhouse/spider hole.

 

[Elvis Presley]

I don't think Saddam was directing any of these daily attacks from his farmhouse/spider hole.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,105877,00.html

Hmm, this may prove otherwise.....

WASHINGTON ? Secret papers found in Saddam Hussein's (search) hiding place reveal that he had regular contact with the leader of the terrorists who oppose the U.S. presence in Iraq, military officials told The Post.



The papers prove Saddam communicated with Izzat Ibrahim al Douri (search), his former deputy in the Ba'ath Party - the political organization behind his reign of terror.

Details were sketchy, but the documents show Saddam was more deeply involved in the resistance than previously believed, the officials said.

And the farm complex in Adwar where Saddam was found hiding in a "spider hole" Saturday may have been a terrorist meeting spot.

People coming to see Saddam could get there by boat on the nearby Tigris River (search), the official said.

Saddam's communication with al-Douri is just part of a treasure trove of secrets found at the hiding place - which led yesterday to the arrests of two key Iraqi terror leaders.

U.S. officials said that crucial documents, found in the Butcher of Baghdad's briefcase, included a list of six names, including two financiers, two bomb makers, and the two arrested resistance leaders, described as distant relatives of Saddam.

The documents also detailed the structure and financing of eight to 12 vicious terror cells around Baghdad - of which the U.S. had known little.

The information should bring more arrests in the coming days, said officials.

"Some were things we already knew about and we just needed the intel to go after them. I think we'll get some significant intelligence over the next couple of days," said Gen. Mark Hertling of the Army's 1st Armored Division.

Uncovering Saddam's involvement with and knowledge of recent Ba'athist death-squad activities remains the first priority of CIA agents interrogating Saddam.

"I'm sure he was giving some guidance to some key figures in this insurgency. When you take down a mob boss, you don't know how much is going to come out of it," Hertling told reporters.

But so far, Saddam remains grumpy and uncooperative, sources said, spending much of Day 2 of his sessions with the CIA refusing to say much beyond "rote" political rhetoric.

"He's been fairly defiant," an official told Fox News. "While he's talkative, he's provided nothing substantial. His comments are self-serving, lengthy rationalizations of his behavior, and he punctuates a lot of it with wise-ass and deflective remarks."

When he was first found, Saddam immediately offered to negotiate, according to some reports.

Saddam, who was initially interviewed at a secure holding facility at the Baghdad International Airport, has been taken to a secret location inside Iraq.

According to U.S. officials briefed on the interrogation sessions, the ex-tyrant has gone through a series of wild mood swings since being captured on Saturday.

He was first reported to be "bewildered" and "disoriented" when he arrived in Baghdad.

But after a shower and nap on an army cot, he was defiant as he met with members of Iraq's governing body, claiming he was a "fair and just" ruler and that people found in mass graves were "thieves and army deserters."

"I found a very broken man," said governing council member Muffaq al-Rubaiye.

He said Saddam would not look at Iraq's political leadership during their meeting and seemed to be trying to make eye contact with Paul Bremer, the chief U.S. administrator in Iraq and Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq.

"He was, I think, psychologically ruined and very demoralized. His body language showed that he was very miserable. He felt safer with the Americans," Rubaiye added.

Looking ahead, U.S. officials said they plan to treat him the same way they treated top Al Qaeda prisoners like 9/11 plotter Khalid Sheik Muhammad, meaning his interrogation could last for months and that he could be subjected to physical and psychological pressures.

 

[verte76]

Geez, this is interesting. Unfortunately I don't think it's the end of mosque-bombings and such......those damn Wahhabists. I'd love to be wrong. Stop the madness!

 

[Elvis Presley]

Another interesting article on the subject at hand....

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110004437

Taking On Mr. Dean
The Democrats have one last chance to avoid a Dukakis-like debacle.

Tuesday, December 16, 2003 12:01 a.m. EST

Saddam Hussein's capture is playing as bad news for Democrats who want to retake the White House next year, but we'd say it's an opportunity. Democrats are getting one, last, pre-primary chance to stop themselves from leaping off the foreign-policy cliff along with Howard Dean.

One of the mysteries of this Democratic Presidential contest has been why there has been so little debate over national security. Mr. Dean has led the pack into full-throated opposition to President Bush's anti-terror policy, and most of the candidates have followed him into the anger swamps. Saddam's arrest at least offers a chance to ask Democratic voters to consider if they really want to nominate a post-September 11 version of Mike Dukakis in a tank.




Joe Lieberman was first into this much-needed breach, as you'd expect from a candidate who has been strong on Saddam all along. "This news makes clear the choice the Democrats face next year," he said on NBC's Meet the Press. "If Howard Dean had his way, Saddam Hussein would still be in power today, not in prison, and the world would be a much more dangerous place."
The other candidate well-positioned to take advantage of Saddam's capture is Dick Gephardt. The former House Majority leader bucked the vast majority of his caucus to vote for war against Saddam, and unlike John Kerry he hasn't tried to run away from that record. Yesterday, he accused Mr. Dean of issuing "contradictory statements on Iraq over the last year" and using "this issue to constantly attack his Democratic opponents and to seek political advantage."

Those contradictions include his assertion last February that "Saddam must disarm," even as he refused to support a credible threat of force that would compel Saddam to do so. More recently Mr. Dean has been insisting that the U.S. can't "afford to fail" in Iraq, yet he opposed President Bush's request for $87 billion to finish the job.

Some had predicted that, as he got closer to the nomination, Mr. Dean would veer back to the center. But there was no sign of that yesterday, as the former Vermont Governor delivered a much-anticipated foreign policy address. "My position on the war has not changed," he told the Pacific Council on International Policy. "The capture of Saddam is a good thing which I hope very much will help keep our soldiers safer. But the capture of Saddam has not made America safer."

This line of thinking--that Saddam was a bad man but no threat to America or its interests--will certainly come as a surprise to the Clinton officials who called him such a threat many times. And we doubt most voters will believe in the unthreatening nature of a man who pillaged the Kuwaiti oil fields and would have probably taken Saudi Arabia had he not been pushed back at the cost of American lives and treasure. His other non-threats include attempting to assassinate George H.W. Bush.

It's also not encouraging that Mr. Dean's first instinct in response to Saddam's capture was to call for taking "the American label off the war." He suggested seeking help from the likes of the U.N., which fled Iraq after the first truck bomb, and NATO, where France recently mocked an alliance request for more helicopters in Afghanistan. Now is precisely the time for the U.S. to press the intelligence advantage that resulted in--and should flow from--the capture of Saddam, not to give the Baathist remnants a breathing space.

Mr. Dean has also just named a stable of foreign policy advisers from the dovish end of the Democratic spectrum. One of them--former Clinton National Security Adviser Anthony Lake--was responsible for squelching indigenous Iraqi efforts to topple Saddam in the mid-1990s. Ashton Carter was an architect of the failed arms-control strategy for resisting the former Soviet Union.




Given all of this, it's a shame that most of the other Democratic candidates have allowed Mr. Dean a national-security pass. Retired General Wesley Clark had the resume to resist but as a candidate has been just as anti-war as Mr. Dean. This weekend he reiterated that "all of the concerns that I have voiced about Iraq remain." As for Senator Kerry, another great-looking resume, he has faded in the polls as even Democrats find his many flip-flops on Iraq an omen of weak leadership. He too declared that Saddam's capture is a chance to turn Iraq over to Kofi Annan's protection.
Messrs. Lieberman and Gephardt are at least offering a choice, and not a post-Vietnam echo of Mr. Dean, and we hope they keep it up. By taking the debate to the front-runner, they may help save their party from repeating its post-Vietnam Cold War mistake of showing weakness on national security. After September 11, this is a losing platform.

It's also bad for the country to have one of the two major political parties nominate a candidate whom voters won't be able to trust on the most important duty any President has. There's still time before Iowa and New Hampshire for Democrats to ask themselves if political suicide is really painless.

 

[anitram]

I am surprised that personality is that big a factor with you?

It isn't. That's why I said I was horrified to see people on CNN saying they were voting for Bush for no other reason than wanting to have a beer for him.

But I have a feeling personality plays a big role in US elections.

 

[verte76]

But I have a feeling personality plays a big role in US elections.

Unfortunately this is true, IMO. It sucks.

 

[Dreadsox]

It isn't. That's why I said I was horrified to see people on CNN saying they were voting for Bush for no other reason than wanting to have a beer for him.

But I have a feeling personality plays a big role in US elections.

I will sing for tyou then

 

[Scarletwine]

Dean at least has morality on his side.

"What kind of victory is it when someone is left defeated? What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy. What is a war criminal? Was not war itself a crime against God and humanity, and, therefore, were not all those who sanctioned, engineered and conducted wars, war criminals? The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong. Non-cooperation with evil is a sacred duty." Gandhi

 

[STING2]

"Dean at least has morality on his side."

The most imoral thing in the world, would be to allow a person like Saddam to gain the means with which to kill more lives than the 1.7 million he had already taken. I can't see how it would be moral to allow a dictator like Saddam to destroy or hold hostage the planets economy and energy supply with all the damage it would do to the average person on the planet. This is why Saddam was required to verifiably disarm or face the "use of all means necessary" by member states, to do just that.

What kind of victory was it when Europe appeased Hitler? How many people died because the nations of the world were unwilling to use military force to remove Hitler when they had the chance?

What are the soldiers and citizens who bravely defended their countries from being overrun in World War II by Hitler? What are the Soldiers and Citizens who helped to remove Hitler from power? What are the Soldiers and Citizens who helped to remove Saddam from power?

Is it not a crime against God and humanity when humans fail to do what is needed to protect humanity and society from those that would do it great harm and perhaps destroy it?

How many people are killed or enslaved because those with the means to stop or reverse such actions pause or stand on the sidelines?

"Non-cooperation with evil is a sacred duty"

There are few better examples of that than the removal of Saddam.

 

[verte76]

I will agree that Saddam was a brutal dictator, right up there with Milosevic and Ceceauscu. However, so is Mugabe, the brutal dictator of Zimbabwe, and there are other odious rulers around the globe.

 

[Dreadsox]

If DR. Dean has morality on his side then how can you explain his unwaivering support in 1998 of Bombing and if necessary invading Iraq UNILATERALLY?

I posted the quotes in FYM...from Canadian TV in which he basically said that the US did not need international support to take action against EVIL like Saddam be it bombing or invading. This was in support of the Clinton Administration Unilateral action in 1998. He even went so far as to make comments about the French in his statements.

Dr. Dean is a HYPOCRITE, who is using the lives of American troops to further his political cause. If his statements about Saddam were true in 1998, they most certainly applied even more so after 9/11.

Morality on his side....I am about to get sick.....Paritsan politics at its best....DEMOCRAT IN OFFICE SUPPORT TOE THE LINE.....REPUBLICAN PUT THE BLINDERS ON.