Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post

host · 08-10-2006, 12:11 AM

I found this column to be intriguing in a number of ways. I'd like to read other reactions to it, and further discuss my own:

Quote:

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drm...834769,00.html
Rocky Mountain News

Campos: Lieberman: Iraq war puppet
July 11, 2006

I sometimes get e-mails from conspiracy theorists about 9/11. These people always claim that the 9/11 attacks were actually carried out by the U.S. government to create a pretext for the Iraq war.

I also get e-mails from people who encourage the American public to believe something just as crazy: that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the 9/11 attacks.

There's a subtle distinction between the former and the latter correspondents. I'm pretty sure the former e-mails come from pathetic lunatics living in basements, who post their rants on Web sites that get 10 hits per day. I'm completely sure who sends me the latter messages: the White House Office of Communications.

All of which leads me to ask several of my fellow liberal columnists the following question: Remember when Sen. John McCain gave those speeches in which he accused the Bush administration of carrying out the 9/11 attacks? I'm sure you recall how much that upset Republican voters, especially in McCain's own state of Arizona.

And I bet you haven't forgotten how Charles Kraut- hammer and David Brooks and Victor David Hanson all rallied to McCain's defense, arguing there had to be room for diverse opinions in Republican Party, and that by backing McCain's opponent in Arizona's Republican senatorial primary Republican activists were demanding a dangerous ideological purity from their candidates.

None of this rings a bell? That's not surprising, because it's inconceivable anything like this could ever happen. Indeed, such a hypothetical is beyond absurd. Yet we live in such peculiar times that something rather similar is happening among Democrats.

Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman has upset a lot of Democrats, especially in his home state, for several reasons. The biggest complaint isn't that Lieberman continues to support the Iraq war. After all, he is merely one of several prominent Democrats who do.

It isn't even that he wholeheartedly endorses President Bush's conduct of the war, although he does. It's that Lieberman goes out of his way to repeat the most outrageous Republican propaganda on this issue over and over again.

Consider what he said just last week: "The situation in Iraq is a lot better that it was a year ago," Lieberman observed. The Iraqis "are on the way to building a free and independent Iraq. Two-thirds of their military is now ready, on their own, to lead the fight with some logistical backing from the U.S. or stand up on their own totally. That's progress. And the question is, are we going to abandon them when they are making that progress?"

This might as well be a press release from the Ministry of Truth. Indeed, it's substantively identical to the "This Week in Iraq" e-mails I get from the White House. I'm sure my fellow liberal pundits get the same e-mails, and are similarly appalled by the willingness of the administration to continue to spout transparent nonsense in the service of a bankrupt policy. (Someone who claims "the situation in Iraq is a lot better than it was a year ago" deserves precisely as much respect as someone who claims President Bush carried out the 9/11 attacks).

So why are some liberals sticking up for Lieberman? The Bush administration sold the Iraq war on a phony premise. It worked hard to convince Americans that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11. And it succeeded. (More than half the public believed this by the fall of 2002.) After utterly botching the occupation and causing incalculable damage to America, Bush's "plan" consists of continuing to pretend the whole thing isn't a catastrophe until the day he dumps it in his successor's lap. And Lieberman has been one of the president's biggest cheerleaders, every bloody step of the way.

Yet according to various liberal commentators, supporting Joe Lieberman's opponent in a Senate primary is somehow wrong. Have these people lost their minds?

Paul Campos is a professor of law at the University of Colorado. Reach him at paul.campos@colorado.edu.

Now that Joe Lieberman lost the Connecticut democratic party's primary on Aug. 8th, in a race that enabled the winner, Ned Lamont, to run on the democratic ticket in that state for the U.S. senate, for the seat that Lieberman has held for three terms....18 years, as of this coming January, and.....after reading Paul Campos's column, above, written last month, I'm thinking, out loud here.....why is the following statement that Paul Campos asked, above;

Quote:

(Someone who claims "the situation in Iraq is a lot better than it was a year ago" deserves precisely as much respect as someone who claims President Bush carried out the 9/11 attacks).

.....not an accurate one ?

Lieberman's defeat is already spawning republican "talking points", parroted, as expected, by political reporters of the MSM, that the reaction by Connecticut democrats who chose an unknown member of their party, with little experience as a political office holder, to run for the senate in Lieberman's place.....let's take a peak:

Quote:

http://www.time.com/time/nation/arti...224692,00.html
Posted Wednesday, Aug. 09, 2006

.....the Republican Party worked ferociously at every level to try to use the primary defeat of Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut to portray the opposition as the party of weakness and isolation on national security and liberal leanings on domestic policy. Doleful Democrats bemoaned the irony: At a time when Republicans should be back on their heels because of chaos abroad and President Bush's unpopularity, the Democrats' rejection of a sensible, moralistic centrist has handed the GOP a weapon that could have vast ramifications for both the midterm elections of '06 and the big dance of '08.

At breakfast time, Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman was in Cleveland, decrying "an unfortunate embrace of isolationism, defeatism, and a blame- America-first attitude by national Democratic leaders at a time when retreating from the world is particularly dangerous." In early afternoon, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow told reporters in Crawford, Tex.: "It's a defining moment for the Democratic Party, whose national leaders now have made it clear that if you disagree with the extreme left in their party they're going to come after you." And an hour or so later, Vice President Cheney told wire-service reporters in a conference call: "It's an unfortunate development, I think, from the standpoint of the Democratic Party to see a man like Lieberman pushed aside because of his willingness to support an aggressive posture in terms of our national security strategy."......

Okay.....???? Can anyone explain how the statements above, are any less "fantastic" than Lieberman's pronouncements concerning "the situation in Iraq", or the "Bush knew in advance or "did the 9/11 attacks", POV's, when the following is considered:

Quote:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea.../20060808.html
Press Gaggle by Tony Snow - August 8, 2006
Crawford Middle School
Crawford, Texas

....Q Tony, there's a new Washington Post poll out today as to which political party people would trust to do a better job handling the U.S. campaign against terrorism? And Democrats got 46 percent, Republicans got 38 percent. Are you concerned that in this particular category, in which Republicans have always done better than Democrats, here, as well as in other categories, Republicans are falling behind?

MR. SNOW: For the umpteenth time, I will remind you that the President is not trying to conduct foreign policy in the war on terror in response to public opinion polls, but to the realities on the ground, and I am sure that that is going to be an important consideration voters are going to have to make this November:.....

More on the "who do Americans trust more in the fight against terrorism" poll,
in my recent post here:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...4&postcount=84
and there is this:
http://mediamatters.org/items/200608080005
Three of the last four Washington Post polls have found that a plurality of Americans trust Democrats rather than Republicans to handle the "campaign
against terrorism." Four consecutive Post polls -- and seven of the last eight -- have found that a plurality trust Democrats more when it comes to handling "the situation in Iraq." The lone exception found the parties tied."

So....I ask you, folks....please consider and comment as to what constitutes political statement and belief that is "on the fringe", versus what is a reasonable POV. If the opinion of the majority, or of a plurality, has some influence over what is, or what isn't "on the fringe", where do the viewpoints that "democrats are weak on national security", and "considering the progress being made by the presence of 132,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, a plan to withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq is the same as cutting and running", fit now....when compared to poll results of what Americans actually think these days? Are those two opinions, "mainstream", or "on the fringe"? Are a majority of Americans now worthy of "the extreme left" label?