Dupe

[Rose Siding]

Howard Dean showed a good measure of insight with regard to international affairs and security issues - and an even greater measure of political courage - when the man who is often portrayed as the front-runner in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination declared amid all the hoopla about the detention of Iraq's former dictator that "the capture of Saddam Hussein has not made America safer."
snip>

Actually, Dean's speech on Monday suggests that he is more than ready to compete with Bush. He has drawn the clear distinctions that Lieberman, Gephardt and Kerry - all backers of the invasion of Iraq - have failed to make. Dean says he wants to give the American people a real choice next November. Contrasting Bush's policies with his own views, Dean says that the choice should be "between a national security policy hobbled by fear and a policy strengthened by shared hopes, ... between today's new radical unilateralism and a renewal of respect for the best bipartisan traditions of American foreign policy, ... between brash boastfulness and a considered confidence that speaks to the convictions of people everywhere."

It is predictable that supporters of the Bush administration would attack Dean for drawing those distinctions and suggesting that they ought to be central to the debate in the fall of 2004.

It is shameful that other candidates who want to carry the Democratic brief into that debate would attack Dean for speaking the truth about what is going on in Iraq. Lieberman, in particular, has proven that he is not prepared to mount a credible or realistic challenge to the president. Indeed, his comments suggest that a Lieberman presidency would not depart in any serious manner from the foreign policy agenda of the Bush administration.

http://www.madison.com/captimes/opinion/column/nichols/63510.php

[frustrated_lefty]

1. Yes, it is shameful. (n/t)