Dumping On Dean (TomPaine.com)

[dajabr]

Unless Howard Dean gets caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy (to borrow the pungent imagery of ex-Louisiana governor Edwin Edwards), he appears at this point to be nearly unstoppable in his drive toward a Boston coronation. Which is why his principal challengers for the Democratic nomination are flailing desperately at Dean on the Iraq issue, with rhetoric dipped in vitriol that can only bring glee to George Bush and his handlers.

But the latest installment of the anti-Dean attacks, over the doctor’s comments following Saddam’s capture—particularly the howitzer blasts coming from John Kerry and Dick Gephardt—are wrong-headed. Moreover, those who make them are setting themselves up for a fall.

When Dean gave a major foreign policy speech in Los Angeles on Dec. 15, the doctor himself penciled into it the following phrase: “The capture of Saddam Hussein has not made America safer.” The next day, Dean made this comment a part of his stump speech and fleshed it out, declaring, “I hope very much this will begin to diminish attacks on our troops, but I do not think it will make America’s homeland safer.”

Kerry immediately pounced on this statement—but distorted it, denouncing Dean as one of “those who doubted whether Iraq or the world would be better off without Saddam Hussein” and who therefore was lacking “the judgment to be president.” Is the world better off without Saddam, and is Iraq? That’s not disputable—one less sanguineous dictator is always a good thing.

More: http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/9651

[Raya]

1. Dean is being Criticized for VALID PROBLEMS with his Words and Record

I find the number and extent of weaknesses with Dean's record and numerous statements he make that seem intended to deceive or
pander.

For me, almost every smear of other candidates that Dean launches would be more appropriately said of him:

Politics-as-Usual
Bush-Lite
Say whatever to get elected
Pander to special interest

The facts that have come out really make Dean look like a hypocrite, and supporters on DU truly tend to use logically specious arguments
to defend him.

DO WE WANT TO TAKE OUR COUNTRY BACK OR NOT. Well lets take a painfully
honest look at our candidates and do what we have to beat Bush.

[Scott Lee]

3. Such as?

[Raya]

6. I think we all know some of the TERRIBLE WEAKNESSES

1. Campaigning like a liberal activist when he was a politics-as-usual Governor.
2. Pretending to be an environmentalist when he fought them in Vermont
3. Dodging the Vietnam Draft onto ski-slopoes while poorer cohort had to serve.
4. Having no foreign policy experience, yet constantly making blustering and factually questionable remarks on foreign policy
5. Blocking access to his record in office while pretending to have nothing to hide and using the "I will let a judge decide" stall tactic
6. Appearing to be regularly shading the truth about numerous issues including Wes Clark V.P. offer, his brother as military rather than civilian, his changing position on IWR as well as all the issues above.

[dajabr]

7. My review of "Gone with the Wind"

Uh, it's a movie about the Civil War.

[liberalnurse]

10. So, you don't see dean as the good guy huh?????

Is this a pro-active thought?

[Rose Siding]

11. Listing bogus hype doesn't make it so

1. Campaigning like a liberal activist when he was a politics-as-usual Governor.

Dean has said repeatedly he's a centrist. In July the WaPost quoted him:

Dean says he doesn't mind being called a liberal and welcomes progressives to the campaign. ("I'd be delighted if the Greens supported me!") But he chuckles at the liberal label, considering that "I am probably the most conservative of the candidates when it comes to gun control." It's a states issue, he says, and his state, with its low crime rate, doesn't need it.

"I think it's pathetic that I'm considered the left-wing liberal," Dean said. "It shows just how far to the right this country has lurched."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A11710-2003Jul5¬Found=true

He's right and if you bought the media's "liberal/far-left" label, don't blame Dean.


2. Pretending to be an environmentalist when he fought them in Vermont

Dean has an excellent environmental record in VT, setting aside 8% of the state as protected land and developing emmisions standards that exceed the standards of Kyoto!

3. Dodging the Vietnam Draft onto ski-slopoes while poorer cohort had to serve.

Dean reported to the recruiter voluntarily and rec'd a medical classification for health issues. Did you think he should have lied about his physical condition?

It's true the health care system sucks for the poor but, ironically, Dean will change that.

4. Having no foreign policy experience, yet constantly making blustering and factually questionable remarks on foreign policy

He has as much foreign experience as the last four presidents. I appreciate his frankness and his confidence to speak with candor. I'm tired of the blow dried, airburshed pols to which ad-addicted Americans have grown acccustomed.

5. Blocking access to his record in office while pretending to have nothing to hide and using the "I will let a judge decide" stall tactic

Spinning Dean's willingness to let the judge decide as a "stall tactic" is nothing more than hype. To avoid the appearance of politicizing his own choice, it is wise to handle it the way he is. You have absolutely zero evidence or fact to justify the charge that he is "pretending" anything at all.

6. Appearing to be regularly shading the truth about numerous issues including Wes Clark V.P. offer, his brother as military rather than civilian, his changing position on IWR as well as all the issues above.

"Numerous issues", uncited means nothing. Not even Clark said that Dean directly offered him any position, rather "it was sort of discussed". If Clark wants to interpret that as an offer, ok, but according to Dean (the one supposed to have been doing the offering) it wasn't.

His brother was MIA- a military designation, and that's what Dean said.

Dean's position on the war in Iraq has been unambiguous since the beginning. No case was ever presented that met any kind of acceptable causis belli. There is one candidate who wasn't sure from one evening to the next morning about his position, but it wasn't Dean.

[liberalnurse]

5. So, is going to be another

4 years of *bush? This is the real problem with this massive field of candidates......Eveyone dumps on the leader.....

[Scott Lee]

2. Apples and oranges

"One less dictator in the world being a good thing" and "Being safer as Americans because of Saddams' capture" are two completely different things. Dean knows this - apparently his detractors and opponents do not.

[dajabr]

4. "But who can forget Kerry’s hour-long speech in the Senate..."

--snip--

All these claims at the heart of the Bush administration’s rationale for war have been revealed as phony. But who can forget Kerry’s hour-long speech in the Senate preceding his vote for a blank check for war, when the Massachusetts senator declared, “I believe the president.” The lies which Kerry and Gephardt, post-war, denounced as having “misled” the American people were lies swallowed whole by both of them when it mattered. Who, then, lacks the “judgment” to be president? Perhaps it’s an overly gullible senator from Massachusetts. Or a too-credulous Congressman from Missouri, co-author of the blank check, who eagerly ingurgitated the same untruths, and rushed to the Rose Garden to stand side-by-side with the president who manufactured them for his politically motivated drive to war.

http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/9651

[Karmadillo]

8. How about this guy? Too gullible, too?

http://www.demog.berkeley.edu/~gabriel/dean2004blog/Dean_MTP_June_22_2003.htm

<edit>

MR. RUSSERT: ...and I'll show it to you. You said in January, Governor, "I would be surprised if didn't have chemicals and biological weapons."

DR. DEAN: Oh, well, I tend to believe the president. I think most Americans tends to believe the president. It turns out that what the president was saying and what his administration's saying wasn't so. We don't know why that is. So...

MR. RUSSERT: But the Iraqi people are not better off without Saddam Hussein?

DR. DEAN: I think right now they are. Here's the problem. If we can't get our act together in Iraq, and if we can't build Iraq into a democracy, then the alternative is chaos or a fundamentalist regime. That is certainly not a safer situation for the United States of America. And we don't know for sure if it is or not. Saddam Hussein is a dreadful human being. He's a mass murderer. I think it's terrific that he's gone. But the fact is, that in the long term, we went into Iraq for reasons the president of the United States still has not made clear. And because of that, we really don't know what the outcome is going to be.

MR. RUSSERT: What did you think of Senator John Kerry's comments that President Bush misled the country.

DR. DEAN: Well, I thought it was Senator Bob Graham that said that and I agree with that. And Bob Graham is in a position to know. He's a senior senator on the Intelligence Committee and...

MR. RUSSERT: No, John Kerry said the president misled us and...

DR. DEAN: Well, I wasn't aware that Senator Kerry said it. I knew Senator Graham had said it in Iowa. But I believe that. I think we were misled. Now, the question is did the president do that on purpose? Was he misled by his own intelligence people? Was he misled by the people around us? Or did he, in fact, know what the truth was and tell us something different. I've called for an independent investigation headed by Republicans and Democrats who are well respected in the country to find out what the president did know and when he knew it. We essentially went to war, supported by Senator Kerry, Representative Gephardt, Senator Lieberman and Senator Edwards, based on facts that turned out not to be accurate. I think that's pretty serious and I think the American people are entitled to know why that was.


more...

[wyldwolf]

9. Here is ANOTHER Tompaine.com article on Dean worth reading

http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/8387