Tuesday, December 16, 2003
Targets
Joe Lieberman is on rhetorical roll, saying yesterday that Howard Dean is in a "spider hole of denial" about Iraq. (Saddam's capture was a gift from heaven for Lieberman after Al Gore's big dis last week. It's his big chance to get out in front of the parade and pretend to lead it.) John Kerry has pronounced Dean unfit to lead; Wesley Clark has said Dean can't get elected without foreign policy experience. Dean is left with the Democrats' eternal problem--having to explain, in far more detail than most people have the attention span to sit through, why he's right and the others are wrong.
And he is right, of course. While Saddam's capture may make American soldiers in Iraq somewhat safer, Lieberman's contention that the United States itself is safer now that Saddam in in custody comes straight from the Bush Administration's playbook, and there's no evidence that it's true. Nevertheless, there's no way to spin the events of the last couple of days--they hurt Howard Dean. How much, we may not know for a while. But if they've given his fellow Democrats a large target to blaze at, they've also given it to Bush for next fall's campaign.
Recommended reading: Here's an intriguing bit of analysis from an Israeli website that says it specializes in political analysis, espionage, and terrorism security. Saddam Hussein was not hiding when he was discovered on Saturday--he was being held captive. The story speculates that his captors wanted a share of the $25 million reward the United States offered for information leading to his arrest. The "tips" that led to his capture may in fact have been part of a negotiation to give him up, until the Americans got tired of waiting. The tale would explain several things--why Saddam looked so bedraggled, why he was in a sealed hole and not some kind of underground command post, and most intriguingly, why he surrendered peacefully to American troops: "He must have regarded them as his rescuers and would have greeted them with relief."
Joe Lieberman is on rhetorical roll, saying yesterday that Howard Dean is in a "spider hole of denial" about Iraq. (Saddam's capture was a gift from heaven for Lieberman after Al Gore's big dis last week. It's his big chance to get out in front of the parade and pretend to lead it.) John Kerry has pronounced Dean unfit to lead; Wesley Clark has said Dean can't get elected without foreign policy experience. Dean is left with the Democrats' eternal problem--having to explain, in far more detail than most people have the attention span to sit through, why he's right and the others are wrong.
And he is right, of course. While Saddam's capture may make American soldiers in Iraq somewhat safer, Lieberman's contention that the United States itself is safer now that Saddam in in custody comes straight from the Bush Administration's playbook, and there's no evidence that it's true. Nevertheless, there's no way to spin the events of the last couple of days--they hurt Howard Dean. How much, we may not know for a while. But if they've given his fellow Democrats a large target to blaze at, they've also given it to Bush for next fall's campaign.
Recommended reading: Here's an intriguing bit of analysis from an Israeli website that says it specializes in political analysis, espionage, and terrorism security. Saddam Hussein was not hiding when he was discovered on Saturday--he was being held captive. The story speculates that his captors wanted a share of the $25 million reward the United States offered for information leading to his arrest. The "tips" that led to his capture may in fact have been part of a negotiation to give him up, until the Americans got tired of waiting. The tale would explain several things--why Saddam looked so bedraggled, why he was in a sealed hole and not some kind of underground command post, and most intriguingly, why he surrendered peacefully to American troops: "He must have regarded them as his rescuers and would have greeted them with relief."
