Just what is Howard Dean thinking? And just how long are the rest of the Democrats going to let him keep saying it out loud, for all their potential voters to hear? As he called for the immediate withdrawal of 80,000 National Guard and Reserve troops from Iraq, Dean told a San Antonio radio station this week that the “idea that we’re going to win the war in Iraq is an idea which is just plain wrong.” As unhappy as Americans are with the cost in lives and dollars there, declaring defeat is the furthest thing for most minds.
It’s getting harder all the time to believe Dean was the early front-runner to win the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
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31 Comments
Declaring defeat? Ah, yes. Victory in Not-Vietnam is just around the corner. Let’s forgot what that’s even supposed to mean (assuming anyone knows).
In fact, let’s stop thinking, shut up, and blindly follow our wise leaders.
Dean is an idiot. If he is the best the Democrats have to offer, their party is in more serious trouble than I imagined.
Nobody in their right mind is saying pull out now. We screwed up going in, lets not screw up by bailing and leaving a country in pieces.
News flash, Walker: The people running this show don’t know what they’re doing. And they don’t care about our soldiers OR the Iraqi people.
Though I opposed the war from the beginning, as late as this year, I was equivocal about an immediate pullout. No more. The evidence of corruption, incompetence, and impotence is just too overwhelming.
RageAn anatomy of FailureThe treasonous cabal in Washington know exactly what they’re doing and are taking directions from Israel. The hijacking of American foreign policy has been a slow grinding process, but as the American public has become aware of the truth behind Washington’s motives, demands increasingly surface to stop this so-called “war on terrorism” nonsense in its tracks.The Neoconservative/Zionist cabal will not easily give-up its evil-driven goals of world conquest, it is up to the American people to rout them loose from their death-grip on the United States of America.The so-called “Secretary of State” parading around the world making a fool of herself with contradiction after contradiction stands as a glaring failure of reason, or what should be common sense.Without reflection she is an embarrassment, a shameful example of our inattention to a runaway government.
The proof continues to mount.
Perhaps Dean has simply recognized the facts: a hostile occupation is not realistic and the only way to achieve “victory” would be to crush the Iraqi people. In the movie “Red Dawn” we cheered the kids who resisted the occupation of the US. The occupiers would call them terrorists.
A comment about suicide bombers. Ask yourself this question: How far would you go to seek revenge if your family were wiped out by occupiers bombs or machine guns? If your children/grandchildren were blown to pieces? Remember, we have exterminated over 100,000 Iraqi civilians. We have created at least that many resisters among their families.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!!!!!!!!!
HARDTRUTH
The Iraqi dead may number many times that 100,000 count.
Fallujah had about 300,000 of which 200,000 made it to safty.
That 100,000 figure, plus 2 years of massive daily bombings might sadly total very close to one million.
Our Army occupied the hospital first, so as to keep Iraqi wounded from helping to report the total the number of the those who were killed.
Iraq was a country of about 27 million.
Ed,Yes, yes, yes, I am quite aware of how our constant kowtowing to Israel affects U.S policies, including Afghanistan & Iraq. But it’s not even half the picture, dude. I think you know this, but you’re stuck on the same page.
It’s real easy to call the shots from a blogsite.Whatever you think of Dean, I still don’t know or read anyone here that is anywhere near his equal.He should do the rebel yell again as an expression of what the majority of Americans think of this administration!!!!
As I see it there will be NO winners of this war. What exactly is the U.S. suppose to “win” anyway? The right to export Iraq’s oil? Dean is right and has been right all along where the war with Iraq is concerned. What the hell are we fighting for?
And it’s one two three what are we fighting for?don’t ask me I don’t give a sh**next stop is near Tikrit …
“The Iraqi dead may number many times that 100,000 count.
Fallujah had about 300,000 of which 200,000 made it to safty.
That 100,000 figure, plus 2 years of massive daily bombings might sadly total very close to one million.”
Where do you morons get these figures? More aliens beaming you info from Uranus? I don’t mind dealing in facts, but you guys are ridiculous. You’re so far left of reality, that you don’t know fact from fiction. Eat fish: you need brain food. And put on your tin beanies.
Well, hell, Rhonda, don’t pull your punches . . . tell us how you really feel.
What ever happened to editorial objectivity? Pat Robertson can declare that we should assassinate Hugo Chavez to anybody within spittle range, and Rhonda is like, “it’s his right to free speech . . . nuthin’ to see here.”
But let Howard Dean say the dead obvious and suddenly he’s a “crazy liberal.”
You might want to look at an opinion poll, Rhonda. The vast majority of Americans agree with Dean, not you.
The alternative to “cut and run” is “stay and sink.” in the quagmire.
The conservatives just can’t admit that you can’t get lasting peace from the barrel of a gun. They’re sure that if we just dropped a few more tons of high explosives, those rag-heads would give up and come around to our side.
We’ve had a test of your theory. It failed. Deal with reality.
Poll: Most voters want U.S. out of IraqDecember 6, 2005, 9:15 AM EST
NEW HAVEN, Conn. — Most Americans think going to war was the wrong thing to do and want to see troops pulled out of Iraq, according to a new poll.
A Quinnipiac University poll released Tuesday shows that 60 percent of voters favor withdrawing from Iraq and 54 percent believe going to war was wrong.
Americans are split over whether President Bush deliberately misled Americans in making the case for war.
Bush posted his lowest Quinnipiac poll rating since taking office, with 40 percent of voters saying they approve of the job he is doing.
Members of Bush’s administration, including Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, also got disapproving marks.
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/connecticut/ny-b...
So I guess this means that C.F. and Galahad won’t be joining Lieberman for a “cup of Joe” in “Joklahoma” in 2008 :).
I don’t think Dean is electable, and I believe he knows that, as well. Therefore, he has nothing to lose by telling the unvarished truth.
As Dean himself has pointed out, Harry S. Truman (one of the all time lowest on contemporary approval ratings) once said:”If you give the voters a choice between a Republican and a Repbulican, they will vote for a Republican every time.”
Steven, hehehe!
Galahad, as you very well know, the theory’s been tested twice. But, as Orwell pointed out, history only exists on paper and in memories, and memories fail.
P.S. Ed, don’t think I was dogging your intellect. I know better.
I just hope the conservatives continue to nail their feet to the BushCo Titanic.
In the interview with Matt Lauer of the NBC News program “Today,” conducted on Saturday but shown on the opening day of the Republican National Convention, Mr. Bush was asked if the United States could win the war against terrorism . . . “I don’t think you can win it,” Mr. Bush replied. “But I think you can create conditions so that those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/31/politics/campaign/31bush.html?ei=5090&en=b257721394890931&ex=1251691200&adxnnl=1&partner=rssuserland&adxnnlx=1133896668-y+cvuHYc9w0+vgVJg3qZ9g
IOKYAR–”It’s OK, you’re a Republican.”
I guess the difference is that nobody actually takes what President Cuckoo Bananas says seriously.
You can’t hold him responsible for anything, he’s flipping DubYa.
GWB may, or may not, be the worst presidnet ever.
Clearly though, he will go down in history as the most ignored president ever.
In the Christmas (I mean, Holiday) season of bi-partisanship, I hereby pray (to an un-named vaugely spiritual God of my own understanding) that Howard Dean remain Democrat party Chairperson for LIFE!
If the democrats truly wondered what the problem with their party is, just read anything by Dean.
Dump that moron, get people with real ideas, instead of the usual rant, rave and beyatch, and they might just regain their old status.
Yes, Rhonda, support the troops, as you have said elsewhere. But are we fighting so that an Iraqi policeman can kill his female cousin who had been kidnapped by terrorists to force her brother to resign from Iraqi polic academy? So when the brother resigned and the terrorists released her, the Iraqi policeman (her cousin) killed her because her capture and possible rape brought shame on the family. Is this a mentality that can understand democracy, not to mention, law, order and justice, Rhonda?
HEY! What happened to CF’s excellent post. I learned something from that post.
JM and GoBlow, you’re saying if a “moderate” like Joe Lieberman were to run, you’d support him because he’s not like Dean?
The Republicans go out of their way to make scapegoat and demonize their fellow Americans (gays, liberals, Kerry’s military heroism) and they win elections.
Dean’s the best thing that has happened to the Democratic party since Bobbie Kennedy. We’re finally getting our side to see that the American public wants progressive Democratic values and Republican political TACTICS.
Dean is the conservatives’ worst nightmare.
Bring on 2006.
JM – surveys of Iraqi hospitals and morgues estimated about 125,000 civilian dead after the invasion. While I think that Ed overstates the case even the US military acknowledges significant civilian dead. It is only you kool-aid drinker righties who deny that.
I remember a scene from the movie “The Patriot” where he came home to find his homestead had been torched by the British. That is when he baceme an insurgent against the Redcoats. The more wanton destruction we unleash on the Iraqi people the more they will hate us.
A question for you: If this country were invaded and occupied would you swear allegiance to the government the invaders installed? Or would you patriotically resist the invasion/occupation of this country?
Joe Lieberman?
Did you read his thing in the WSJ?
“Israel Firster” “America Laster”
Galahad
“stay and sink.” You’re too much!
Man, That’s funny!
But, you sould see all the red sand art over in the desert! Besides there is glossy black flowing crude right under all that red and dusty brown sand. All we got to do is pump it out at five dollars a gallon! Besides all the reconstructing funds will pay for all the pumps we will ever need.Get behind our leaders. Support our troops. We gotts win this war! It’s all for democracy in the middle east!
J M Walker and Joe Blow,
I love it when my political adversaries give me advice on how to run the party to which I belong. I mean, you’re so guileless it’s kind of touching.
Still, I do think it’s funny that you’re so convinced that having a polarizing figure like Dean–because he IS a polarizing figure, no doubt about it–is the best thing imaginable for the Republicans and the worst possible for the Democratic Party. Because for two election cycles, we Democrats have seen the rank failure of trying to politically appease some supposed ‘center,’ and of being run by money folks and party apparatchicks. Joe Lieberman is the poster boy for how Democrats should go about losing elections. After all, he contributed to the mother of all Democratic political defeats, the stolen election of 2000.
The GOP is run by a bunch of criminals, propagandists, and thugs. If you try to swim with the sharks, you get bitten. Dean understands that, whereas Lieberman can’t sell his fellow Democrats out quickly enough to toady up to Presidential power.
And if Dean isn’t as artful in his parsing of language and as able to lie in front of the cameras as Condi, Big Dick and W, or even a Ken Mehlman, say, that’s a virtue rather than a liability. Slick liars got us into this war. Straight talk will get us out of it, but not ’straight talk’ like McCain’s sucking up to Bubble Boy in exchange for BushCo’s support in 2008. No, it’s going to be Howard, telling it like it is.
And Rhonda, I guess I must have hurt your feelings with my critique; I can’t think of any other reason for my post to be deleted. Too bad. But it won’t make me take back what I said earlier. Furthermore, your framing this thread with the memes of ‘declaring defeat’ and ‘cutting and running’ memes is pathetic. As if the situation in Iraq ISN’T a disaster, and as if spin could make it so. You don’t strike me as delusional, Rhonda, but when you unthinkingly repeat those silly, manly memes, it can lead one to wonder.
Journalists and Republicans detest Howard Dean because he throws their games right back in their faces and doesn’t lie down and die like Democrats are ’supposed to.’
Finally, Galahad, you’re TOO kind.
“JM and GoBlow, you’re saying if a “moderate” like Joe Lieberman were to run, you’d support him because he’s not like Dean?”
What? Where did that come from? I don’t believe I said anything about a moderate, liberal, socialist. commie, or anybody in particular.
What I said was someone with IDEAS. Something the Democrat party has too few of.
“JM – surveys of Iraqi hospitals and morgues estimated about 125,000 civilian dead after the invasion. While I think that Ed overstates the case even the US military acknowledges significant civilian dead. It is only you kool-aid drinker righties who deny that.”
By who’s hand? Who’s count? What’s the criteria for being called a civilian versus a terrorist. I would rather be drinking cool-aid, than the swill you buy as facts.
You seem to equate me with some right wing nut group. Believe me, you have no idea what you are writing. My politics contains very little associated with either party as I consider both of them full of idiots and morons.
Look at the state of politics in this country and you know what I’m saying is correct. The Republicans want to control all evil, and the Democrats want to bitch about it.
Ya, a whole lot there to appreciate and imitate. Ya all got my vote!
If Dean is your answer to the country’s ills, you’re in big trouble. And if you think you can win without the middle, You’re delusional. The far left nutcases are as big a turn-off to centerist voters as the far right wing-nuts. It’s not so much disagreeing with Democrats generally as it is the few issues Democrats insist on shooting themselves in the foot over (gun control, abortion on demand, national security, etc). Bring us another northeast far-left liberal candidate (like Dean) and be prepared to sit in the corner for another 8 years.