[Barnacle]

We’ve not paid attention to al-Qaida.

There’s really no need Howard. You got our vote.

[reed_inthe_wind]

"al-Qaida will move into Iraq and become more powerful than ever."

I thought that we discovered a hand written note from an Iraqi intelligence officer to Saddam saying that the 9/11 organizer, was known to have visited Iraq. During the visit, the 9/11 organizer was known to be conspiring with another known terrorist that Iraq was harboring.

[Chris Tucker]

This thread has been bookmarked. I can't wait for Bush to announce the capture of Bin Laden and his goons so I can watch Deanie eat his words.

[Darksheare]

"We've not paid attention to Al-Qaida"???

What does he expect us to do, validate their life and parking?
Babysit them?
Take them out on dates and make them feel comfy?
He doesn't want us to fight them at all.
So what does he want us to do?
How does he want us to 'pay attention' to them?
Lay down and play dead?
Listen to their psychopsuedo-religious deathcult rantings?

Dean is not just out there, he's WAAAAAAAAY out there.

[Welsh Rabbit]

Sounds like he's as astute in foriegn affairs as his late brother was.

[reed_inthe_wind]

"Democrat Howard Dean said that the events of the last few weeks have shown he was right to conclude that Saddam Hussein’s capture didn’t make America safer. "

The UN has been around for 50 years - I ask you, is America any safer?

[cyncooper]

"My fear is that the (Karl) Rove polls will tell him (Bush), ‘You’ve gotta get out, you’ve gotta get out,’ and he’ll start doing that, " Dean said, referring to Bush’s chief political adviser.

Dean is a pathetic weasely liar.

Unlike he, President Bush makes his decisions based on the welfare of our country, not political expediency.

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

The more U.S. troops are killed, the more high-fives and drinks are passed around at Dean's campaign headquarters.

[thesummerwind]

Howard Dean: ‘We’ve not paid attention to al-Qaida’

Those military doctors at your physical exam should have paid no attention to those "x-rays" of yours.

Go skiing, Doc.

[.cnI redruM]

From 1996 - 2000, how much attention did the last Democratic administration pay to Al Quaeda or the Taliban? If you guessed zero, you're a winner.

If Dean had been in office in 2001, how much attention would his administration have payed to the Taliban after Sept 11? Plenty. he would have caved to all of their demands.

[Criminal Number 18F]

Yeah, we've forgotten about Al-Qaida, Howie. Yeah, right. Please tell me WTF I was doing in Afghanistan or why the guys I bagged are still in Gitmo...? Oh wait, you wanna let them go, right? THAT's a real good way to deal with al-Q.

Why do we have a joint special operations task force in Yemen? Hmmm.

And don't forget to tell me who the guys that the SF guys at the border outpost east of Khost smoked the other day were. The papers on their bodies were in Arabic. Howard....?

Who is this guy's national security expert? Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf?

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

[tet68]

"I can assure you it’s not Saddam who’s threatening to bomb airplanes,"

That's right MR.Dean, he's in the slammer, no thanks to you.
One less thing to have to worry about.

Just like a backlash, if you keep picking at it you'll get it out,Dean is the kind of guy that takes a knife to it and loses half his line.

[nuconvert]

more worried than we were before " ????????????

What the heck does this mean?

"we picked the wrong target."

"even though he opposed the war, his greatest fear now is that "this administration will pull out of Iraq too early"

Psycho is Right. He's really GONE!!

[Restorer]

FWIW, here are the coalition losses by month.

May: 36

June: 30

July: 52

August: 34

September: 31

October: 42

November: 83

December: 39

BTW, if you actually look at the incidents, the biggest risk in Iraq seems to be traffic accidents. :)

[Wild Irish Rogue]

" We’ve not paid attention to al-Qaida."

This idiot cannot seriously believe that we have pulled our troops and our intel operatives out of Afghanistan,Pakistan,etc. He can't be that stupid or could he ? The media and Dean think that his MD degree innoculates him from charges of chronic moronitis.

When are we going to find out more about Dean's medical training ? What was his MCAT score ? Will he permit Albert Einstein to release any and all info they have on his training,evaluations,etc ? Likewise the University of Vermont. Dean or his surrogates have variously represented Dean as an internist,family practice,pediatrician and gynecologist. Which is it ? What medical articles and abstracts with Dean as author or co author have been published ? If any. What did Dean do to continue his medical education-courses,conferences,lectures,research projects,etc ?Why isn't Dean Board Certified? Did he ever take the Boards ? If not,why not? Did he fail?

From an AP interview 2/15/2003-posted on a Dean website.

" Judy Dean met her future husband at medical school. "We were sitting in class doing crossword puzzles."

Howard Dean completed medical school in three years rather than the traditional four and was sent to Vermont for his residency in 1978; Judy Dean followed when she graduated a year later. In 1981, Howard Dean opened his medical practice in Shelburne with another doctor; Judy Dean joined them in 1985 after a fellowship at Montreal's McGill University. "

Ok.His medical training consisted of 6 years, total-no specialties,no fellowships,no Boards.During lectures,he did crossword puzzles. There is an intentional fuzziness and gauziness about his medical background.

Howard Dean is no Bill Frist.

From Senator Frist's Senate website:
Frist graduated in 1974 from Princeton University where he specialized in health care policy at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. In 1978 he graduated with honors from Harvard Medical School and spent the next seven years in surgical training at Massachusetts General Hospital; Southampton General Hospital, Southampton, England; and Stanford University Medical Center. He is board certified in both general surgery and heart surgery.


In 1985 Frist joined the faculty at Vanderbilt University Medical Center where he founded and subsequently directed the multi-disciplinary Vanderbilt Transplant Center, which under his leadership became a nationally renowned center of multi-organ transplantation. A heart and lung surgeon, he performed over 150 heart and lung transplant procedures, including the first successful combined heart-lung transplant in the Southeast. Frist has written more than 100 articles, chapters, and abstracts on medical research and five books: Transplant, which examines the social and ethical issues of transplantation and organ donation; Grand Rounds in Transplantation;.."

[armymarinemom]

If that happens, al-Qaida will move into Iraq and become more powerful than ever.

Duh! They moved into the northern region of Iraq before 9/11 as a group called Ansar Al Islam.

Kurdistan Observer

Islamic extremist group says it killed 3 Kurdish leaders BY JONATHAN S. LANDAY
Knight Ridder Newspapers

Sulaimani,(Southern Kurdistan) - (KRT) - Islamic militants bound by a suicide pact assassinated a senior Kurdish general and two top security officers, a Kurdish Islamic militant group said Monday, claiming responsibility of the killings.

Ansar al-Islam (Partisans of Islam), which United States and Kurdish officials accuse of harboring followers of Osama bin Laden in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, said the murders foiled a plot against it by the U.S.-backed Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.

The Saturday night killings have intensified pressure on the PUK to crack down on the militants in advance of a possible U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. But there was no sign on Monday that PUK leaders were preparing to act.

Instead, reinforcements arriving at the front lines said there were fears that Ansar might take advantage of a four-day Muslim holiday that begins on Tuesday to attack the PUK-controlled town of Halabja.

Police were stopping all minibuses entering Halabja and requiring passengers to get off for questioning.

Two statements on Ansar's new Web site, neither of which could be independently verified, said the PUK had offered 150 militants "unimaginable" amounts of cash to defect, attack the group's mountain stronghold from the rear and allow the PUK to recapture the area.

The Web site, in Arabic, Turkish and Kurdish versions, is at http://66.246.51.215.

In a claim that may have been intended to sow discord among Kurdish groups hostile to both Saddam Hussein and Ansar, the Web site said the defectors also were to attack the PUK's political rival, the Kurdistan Democratic Party.

The statement claimed that Ansar militants went along with the scheme until it was about to be concluded.

"Brothers who swore an oath of death to God" and "abandoned the pleasures of the world for the sake of Doomsday" killed Gen. Shawkat Hajji Mushir and the two senior PUK security officials, said one statement. Shawkat was a veteran guerrilla who was on the PUK leadership council and was the party's chief negotiator with Ansar.

The three attackers escaped and took three PUK guards with them. The hostages were being held in the Ansar-controlled village of Byara, said a senior PUK commander, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Four civilians were killed, including an 8-year-old girl who succumbed to her wounds on Monday, said PUK-run television. Eight other people, including the security chief of Halabja, were injured.

PUK officials, who said Shawkat was killed after he was lured to a meeting with the militants on the pretext of completing a defection deal, had no immediate comment on the group's claim of responsibility.

The PUK is among the main Iraqi opposition groups that would assist a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. The Bush administration is also counting on the PUK's 30,000-strong militia, hardened by decades of fighting, to help U.S. and other troops prevent ethnic and religious hatreds from splintering Iraq after Saddam's ouster.

"We've worked closely with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan for many years," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Monday, condemning what he called "this act of terror."

The PUK and the KDP have presided over quasi-democratic administrations in northern Iraq since Saddam Hussein withdrew his forces from the Kurd-dominated area in 1991. But some political experts said the assassinations could make the PUK's job harder by encouraging new challenges to its authority.

The attack raised "not only doubts about their (the PUK's) abilities, but questions about why they don't act," said Asos Hardi, the editor in chief of Hawlati, an independent newspaper in Sulaimaniyah, where the party has its headquarters.

The slaying of Shawkat is the latest in a series of audacious acts by Ansar. During a Muslim holiday in December, it attacked a PUK outpost and videotaped the operation and the corpses of dozens of fighters it slaughtered. In April, the group tried unsuccessfully to kill PUK Prime Minister Barham Salih.

Senior PUK officials contend that rugged, mine-sown terrain, a shortage of heavy weapons and a threat of Iranian intervention on Ansar's behalf are blocking an assault on Ansar's stronghold.

The PUK has asked for U.S. military support. The Bush administration is considering the request because of worries that Ansar is providing al-Qaida with a base and a crude poison-making laboratory.

[BlueNgold]

2 reasons I fear a Dean nomination:
1) On the surface it would seem to be a good thing for the President, since Dr. D has not shown that he can dent the President, much less win. However, upon securing the nomination of the Dem party Dr. D will then be privy to daily briefings on security matters. Once he is in possession of actual knowledge, instead of his normal media sources, he will be able to twist, turn, and (as Clinton and Gore did) lie about situations knowing full well that to discount them is to reveal classified intel. I would not be surprised to see an interview with Dean post nomination: "Now that I have been fully apprised by the intel community, all I can say publicly is that all of my fears were justfied, and all of my conclusions have been born out." Without mentioning a single detail he could assert that the intel community is against the President and that the military is failing. It's been done before in softer terms, but he is just the kind of snake to try to make public hay out of his private courtesy briefings.
2) He strikes me as the kind of man who might actually reveal classified information, in bits and pieces, either overtly or through leaks, that he believes will spin his case. I would not be shocked to see him state publicly 'downside' intel (which all brefings include) without bothering to mention the upside. Then, when called on the carpet - "Oops, I'm sorry, I can't say anymore, (especially about things that prove I'm a snake and a liar) that information is classified." (Too late, Doc, the the security breach has already been made.) Actual intel in the hands of this man and his campaign is a danger to national security ... in my opinion anyway.

[weegee]

Qadaffi saw the writing on the wall and has ended his own WMD program (which was reportedly tied to Al-Qaeda). Certainly fewer WMD in the Muddled East has got to make the world at least a little safer, Dean...

Only a simpleton would think that claiming the capture of Saddam would make the world "a safer place" could be extended to mean it was the end of all evil in the world and the world is now "a safe place".

[Helms]

Lookie Down Here Howie!

[jagrmeister]

Dean is either oblivious of the measures we've taken to attack Al Queda cells, trap their communication, and interefere with their plans or is he is lying. The truth is that we've captured or killed a large number of Al Queda terrorists. The further truth is that Dean is an inveterate liar.