With rivals squirming, he's surging

[dajabr]

BURLINGTON, Vt. - On the third floor of what passes for a high-rise in this quiet college town on the banks of Lake Champlain, Howard Dean reflects on how fortune and high-tech political ingenuity have projected him into the front ranks of candidates for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination.

Clad in a green open-necked sports shirt and tan slacks, he is only slightly distinguishable from the young and eager recruits in his national campaign headquarters, who are implementing the first effectively Internet-based pursuit of the White House.

As he discusses the astonishing progress of his heretofore long-shot campaign, the orchestrators of his membership and fund-raising surge busily man their computer screens, communicating with the mushrooming Dean constituency via his popular Web site.

--snip--

"If I can figure out the case the president was making wasn't accurate, and wasn't a good one, and these guys, these campaigns, are all spinning that I don't have foreign policy experience," he says, "then how come my team could figure it out and the other teams couldn't?"

http://www.sunspot.net/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.witcover25jul25,0,3170193.column?coll=bal-home-columnists

Hmmmmm... Good question, Dr. Dean.

[Jivenwail]

1. What fascinates me is this

Smirk had absolutely NO FOREIGN POLICY EXPERIENCE and when asked in a interview during the 2000 campaign, didn't even know the names of some of the leaders of foreign countries. Yet 'murikans swallowed his bushit hook, line and sinker.

Dr. Dean has it right. He's figured it out. We here at DU have figured it out. I guess the rest of them have their heads in the sand (so to speak).

Good job, Dr. Dean!

[dajabr]

2. That's why he was elated about hitting "The Trifecta"

Disgusting!

[DrFunkenstein]

5. That'll Sell In Peoria

Dumb 'murikans, doncha know Dean was right all along!

It's called disconnect.

[blm]

3. What in the Biden-Lugar bill showed that Dean

had it "figured out?" He supported it BEFORE the antiwar movement grew.

Funny, Gary Hart knows plenty and he doesn't think Dean is qualified based on Dean's frantic call to him begging Hart to tell him what to do. But, let's all put out heads in the sand and pretend Dean is a genius, when he was FOR a slight variation of the Iraq resolution, and manages to fool ignorant supporters who believed he was against the war itself.

[polpilot]

4. 'fool ignorant supporters who believed he was against the war itself'???

BLM...Dean IS the anti-war candidate...Haven't you heard???

Dean...'04

[blm]

6. I'd like to hear him debate Kucinich on that point.

.

[DrFunkenstein]

7. I Couldn't Tell If He Was Joking Or Not

Dean has said himself - several times - that he is not the anti-war candidate. Of course, that was a few months after he said he WAS the anti-war candidate, so you can understand the confusion.

[dajabr]

10. It would be a short debate...

Dean is the Anti-PNAC-War Candidate.

Kucinich is Anti-War.

Both would defend the Nation were it threatened.

[Larkspur]

11. Dean is not a pacifist

He opposed the Iraq War, just like the two thirds of the House Democrats who voted against it.

He did tell the anti-war/pacifist crowd that he was not 100% anti-war. I'm not 100% anti-war either and neither were most of the anti-Iraq War marchers. There are times when our troops are needed to perform their duty, but Iraq was not one of those places nor 2003 one of those times.

[killbotfactory]

8. Biden lugar required the president to prove that Iraq was a threat

to justify an invasion and not for regime change, or else work through the UN to disarm Iraq.

This is the view that Dean supports.

Bush failed to work through the UN, and failed to prove that Iraq was a threat.

[DrFunkenstein]

12. On The Biden-Lugar That Never Was

From Kerry's floor statement:

"I would have preferred that the President agree to the approach drafted by Senators Biden and Lugar, because that resolution would authorize the use of force for the explicit purpose of disarming Iraq and countering the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs and delivery vehicles.

I believe that this approach would have provided greater clarity to the American people about the reason for going to war and the specific grant of authority that Congress was giving the President. The Administration, unwisely in my view, rejected the Biden-Lugar approach.

Let me be clear: I am voting to give this authority to the President for one reason and one reason only: to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction if we cannot accomplish that objective through tough new weapons inspections.

In giving the President this authority, I expect him to fulfill the commitments he has made to the American people in recent days - to work with the United Nations Security Council to adopt a new resolution setting out "tough, immediate" inspections requirements and to "act with our allies at our side" if we have to disarm Saddam Hussein by force.

If he fails to do so, I will be the first to speak out."

[MercutioATC]

9. Has anybody besides Gary Hart confirmed the Gary Hart story?

I mean, I can say that Kerry (or whomever) called me late one night and asked for advice about his bedwetting problem. Does that mean that's what actually happened?

Disclaimer: John Kerry has never called me in reference to a bedwetting problem. I have no personal knowledge if he has one or not.