Democrats uniting behind criticism of Bush on Iraq (RATS Handing 2004 To Bush on a Silver Platter!)

MSNBC ^ | July 10, 2003

[Dont Mention the War]

Democrats uniting behind criticism of Bush on Iraq

July 10 — John Kerry and other Democratic candidates accused the president of misleading the country on Iraq. NBC’s Andrea Mitchell reports.

NBC, MSNBC AND NEWS SERVICES

WASHINGTON, July 10 —  Two Democratic presidential candidates seized on the administration’s admissions that the U.S. presence in Iraq could be longer and costlier than expected to accuse President Bush of misleading the public Thursday, signaling that Democrats could be uniting behind an issue that until now had caused the sharpest divisions among the president’s challengers.

[More excerpts below]

       THE ACCUSATIONS, by Sens. John Kerry of Massachusetts and Bob Graham of Florida, represented a significant shift toward the outspoken opposition to the war effort that has helped propel former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean into the top tier of Democratic candidates.

       But the statements by Kerry and Graham and a similar blast Wednesday from Rep. Richard Gephardt of Missouri represented a sudden and sharp shift toward themes Dean has ridden to surprising popularity, said Charlie Cook, publisher of the Cook Political Report.
       “Clearly, there is a large and growing antiwar constituency within the Democratic Party,” Cook said in an interview with NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell.
       Dean vocally opposed the war before it began and has kept up the pressure ever since, energizing liberal voters who helped him raise more money in the most recent quarter than any other Democratic candidate.
       As his rivals began moving closer to his themes, Dean raised the stakes, calling on any administration or federal employee who failed to tell Bush about the false uranium claim to resign.

       The Republican National Committee dismissed the criticism, with senior adviser Ed Gillespie telling The Associated Press that Democrats were tripping over themselves to get to the left of Dean.
       “Their politics may appeal to their antiwar base, but their lack of policy won’t make our country more secure,” he said.

[Dont Mention the War]

[I excerpt not because it's from MSNBC, since MSNBC articles are 100% acceptable on FR as long as they don't contain Newsweek or Washington Post material. I excerpt because MSNBC articles are total HTML disasters that takee forever to post unless you just clip bits and pieces.]

Gillespie is right. The RAT candidates are acting like lemmings, and mind-numbed moronic ones at that. They're all fighting to be more like HOWARD DEAN?!? It's as if they're all flashing back to 1972 and trying to make themselves even more liberal than George McGovern!!

They cannot win this way. It's numerically impossible. And with the rise of the new media, the statements they make today will not be forgotten come autumn 2004. They still think the old rulebook applies, and what they say and do to win the RAT nomination will be treated as a totally separate contest from the winner's race against Bush and ignored. It doesn't work like that any more, kids. These idiots are not going to be able to pretend to be moderates after positioning themselves off in Loony Left Kookville for the primaries.

They. Are. Doomed.

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[PhiKapMom]

Remember the guy Ambassador Wilson that so many RATs are pinning their hopes on. Look what I found from Wilson's own biography:

Here is the tie-in to the RATs from Wilson's own biography:

"In 1985-1986, he served in the offices of Senator Albert Gore and the House Majority Whip, Representative Thomas Foley, as an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow."

[MJY1288]

John Kerry Heinz will most likely win the nomination and I can't wiat for that slack jawed French looking boob to start speaking reeeaaall sllloooowwwww when he debates george W. Bush.

John Kerry Heinz makes Al Gore look like exciting

[Paul Atreides]

John Smallberries looks like the grim reaper.

[MJY1288]

I will find the speech Josef Stalin Wilson gave to a university titled "The Case Against Regime Change in Iraq" and post it as a thread of it's own

[PhiKapMom]

Great idea! Now that I know he worked for Gore, I see things in a different light! And I thought he was bad before!

[YaYa123]

Republican pollster Frank Luntz was on Hardball last night. He said democrats were making a mistake in running against Bush by making their criticisms directed personally at him. He said the American people like Bush, trust him, and like the way he talks to them. Luntz said people will resent Democrats for attacking "their" president.

The subject Luntz and Mathews were discussing was the State of the Union speech on Iraq buying iranium, but I think Luntz' point is well taken on any subject dealing with our national security. I agree with Luntz, and apparently with you, that the Democrats, so full of hate for Bush, so resentful, and so meanspirited, are making classic mistakes in judgement.

[pierrem15]

Don't underestimate them or the treachery of the press: they will try to skip 1972 and go directly to 1974. Don't forget that Clintoon had 8 years to stuff the CIA, Defense and State with dem moles giving snippets of classified info to the right people and/or standing ready to leak any info that can be construed as damaging at any time.

Finally, don't forget if they just tell the same lies long enough, there's a plurality of imbeciles who will believe them.

[MJY1288]

Since this is a slow thread, I'll post an interesting interview with Joseph Wilson,

Note that this interview was in March just before the war, Why didn't he mention the Niger Intel here if it was such a big scandal

The World Today - Thursday, 13 March , 2003 12:24:06

Reporter: Eleanor Hall

ELEANOR HALL: Well as the stalemate continues in the UN, one of the United States' top diplomats, who was at the forefront of pushing for military action against Iraq at the time of the last Gulf War, is taking a very different position this time.

Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who was the last US official to meet Saddam Hussein, says he strongly backs the goal of disarming Iraq and has been pushing for international action on this for at least five years, but he says he's concerned this war is no longer about eliminating weapons of mass destruction and he warns, instead of improving America's security in the world, it will fuel an increase in terrorist action against America and its allies.

Ambassador Wilson spoke to me from Washington a short time ago.

JOSEPH WILSON: What I fear most is that the objectives, the war aims, have changed from the time when the President went to the United Nations and said we will, he will disarm, or we will disarm him; and now you have the President and leading officials in the US administration speaking of everything from ties to terrorism, which case they have not made, to wars of liberation, to bringing a democracy to the Middle East, all of which may be noble political aims, but are not necessarily why you mobilise 200,000 troops to go in and effect a terribly violent conflict, invasion conquests and subsequent occupation of Iraq, which sits in the middle of a very hostile region and a region which will likely emerge even more hostile to our broader national interest.

ELEANOR HALL: Let me just clarify this though, you're saying that this is not a war about weapons of mass destruction anymore.

JOSEPH WILSON: Well I think that's very clear. The President, in a speech he gave last week or the week before last at the American Enterprise Institute, barely mentioned disarmament, he mentioned a lot about liberating Iraq from a brutal dictator, which Saddam is; and he mentioned about bringing democracy to the Middle East.

ELEANOR HALL: And why are you so concerned about this broader goal?

JOSEPH WILSON: Well, I'm concerned about it for two reasons. One, I think you have to ask yourself the very really hard question as to whether or not that is what you've constituted your military to do, and then secondly I'm concerned about it because the task is one, democratisation, as noble as that objective is - and I've done democratisation for 25 years in third world countries - it is much more difficult when you're imposing it at the point of a gun.

ELEANOR HALL: To what extent, though, is this a risk for the United States, because everyone seems to agree that even if it's a longer war than the US would like, the US will still win it.

JOSEPH WILSON: Oh I have no doubt whatsoever that the United States is going to win the battle for Baghdad. We will go in, there may be some surprises, there may be some real nasty surprises, but we will succeed in our objective of throwing out the regime of Saddam Hussein and occupying Baghdad. But that is only the first battle. The success or failure of this operation won't be known until after we have effectively withdrawn from Iraq.

ELEANOR HALL: So is the US then taking a big gamble in this sort of a project?

JOSEPH WILSON: Well I think it's taking a terribly large gamble, and I'm not sure it's a necessary gamble for the purposes of assuring our national security. I think, on the contrary, that if the photos coming out of Baghdad after we implement our strategy or anything like the military has described it, it may in fact become a wonderful recruiting tool for Osama bin Laden and others like him.

We need to assume that after a brief period, when we're perceived as liberators, we will come to be seen as occupiers. That will then have the effect, I think, of alienating a broader swathe of the Arab and Muslim world, from Indonesia to Mauritania.

ELEANOR HALL: And how does the opposition of the UN factor into this? I mean, the US will go to war, it seems, without UN sanction; does that increase the sorts of risks that you're talking about?

JOSEPH WILSON: Ah, certainly people will point to the fact that this was not a UN-sanctioned war if, in fact, we don't get the second resolution. The problem is political. I think that unilateralism and I think the way that we've exercised leadership, which has been terribly offensive to a lot of even our closest friends and allies, it's something that may come back and haunt us; and it behoves us to keep in mind what the legacy of our time at the top of the heap is.

We've done some wonderful things, in my judgement, over the past 20 years. We've introduced such concepts as democratisation and respect for human rights and we've been champions of the rule of law, and I would not want to see that spoiled by some adventures that may end up in real disasters.

ELEANOR HALL: So are we looking, then, at a completely new world order?

JOSEPH WILSON: Well, I think that that's a very fair question. I think it's very clear that the way the administration is proceeding, and its willingness to go despite the United Nations, and the willingness to use the military option before a good part of the world believes that war is the only remaining option, puts at risk the rule of law and it also puts at risk the whole multi-lateral system which we've worked so hard since 1945 to build.

And there are those, and I'm not yet one of them, but there are those who look at this and see that that is in fact one of the, one of the objectives of those who are pushing so hard for this war, at this point.

ELEANOR HALL: It's one of the objectives to overcome the multi-lateral system?

JOSEPH WILSON: One of the objectives is to basically emasculate the multi-lateral system and the United Nations system.

ELEANOR HALL: Now, you're the last American in an official capacity, I believe, to meet Saddam Hussein. How do you think he'd be responding now? I mean, some suggest that he may already have left Iraq, others say that look he'll be backed into a corner, he'll stay there and he'll use weapons of mass destruction. What's your assessment?

JOSEPH WILSON: Well, you're right, I was the last American official to have met with Saddam Hussein and I think a couple of things that are going on in Saddam's mind now. One, ever the fighter he is still trying to figure out how he can drive a wedge between the United States and the rest of the world, and he's been pretty successful in that.

Secondly, I suspect that what's going on in Baghdad and around Saddam these days is something of a little bit of fatalism that this is going to happen whatever they do, and with good reason. He has heard nothing from the President in the last two months to suggest anything other than the President's going to come and kill him.

And third, I wouldn't be surprised if he's not plotting a death as a martyr, which he could perhaps try and effect by drawing Israel into a war, which then becomes a broader Arab-Israeli war.

ELEANOR HALL: The picture you paint certainly doesn't sound like a simple war.

JOSEPH WILSON: I don't think it is going to be a simple war. I think the battle, the first battle, will go in a way that's favourable to the US military, but that is only going to be the first battle. The war is really going to be for the hearts and minds of Iraqi citizens, and it is a very aggressive role that we are going to be imposing on them.

ELEANOR HALL: Ambassador Joseph Wilson was the head of the US Embassy in Baghdad during the last Gulf War, and he was speaking to me from Washington.

[PhiKapMom]

Great Job! Maybe since he worked for Gore, Wilson is reinventing himself with this information!

[TheDon]

John Kerry, the pro-Sandinista Demorat is speaking about foreign policy? Yeah right.

[Gorilla44]

Did anyone catch this statement by Blair yesterday?

Mr Blair stood by the claim in the September dossier that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger to make nuclear weapons. He insisted the claim was based on different intelligence to the forged documents which have been dismissed by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Mr Blair said: "This is terribly important, because this has again been elevated into something that really is not warranted by the actual facts. There was an historic link between Niger and Iraq. In the 1980s Iraq purchased somewhere in the region of 200 tons of uranium from Niger. The evidence that we had that the Iraqi government had gone back to try to purchase further amounts of uranium from Niger did not come from these so-called forged documents. They came from separate intelligence. In so far as our intelligence services are concerned, they stand by that."

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=422946

[Brimack34]

On O'Really show he said this will haunt Bush. So will everything else cause thats all I hear. Cry Wolfe. Also he said Jim the idiot Angle(FOX) said this is the most secret admin. he has ever covered. Where the hell was this moron during The Clinton (executive privelige) Admin???

[smoothsailing]

Certainly the Left is going full bore on destroying America.

The hate from the Left is obvious.

The politeness of Patriots is well intended although not well informed.

I choose Truth and Justice.

On these the Left will lose.

[MJY1288]

Here is a link to an interview by the Wash Post of Joseph Wilson in April and no mention of this terrible scandal ove Niger

Is Joseph Wilson Believable

[MJY1288]

Maybe you should ping a few to these articles

[MJY1288]

Joe Wilson is a Democrat party hack period

[Dont Mention the War]

I agree with Luntz, and apparently with you, that the Democrats, so full of hate for Bush, so resentful, and so meanspirited, are making classic mistakes in judgement.

Yup. Every poll shows the voters support Bush and do not personally blame him for the state of the economy, any problems in Iraq, or anything else. The RATS are setting themselves up for a Mondale-level defeat.

[PhiKapMom]

More info concerning the latest RAT attacks against the President concerning Niger!