Sorry if I'm late to the party on this, but I've seen a few diaries already bemoaning Howard Dean's comments on some San Antonio morning show yesterday. I've also noticed the coordinated piling on of the noise machine on what appears to be a fiery new statement from him.. that we can't "win" the war in Iraq. The cacophony from the right has reached enough of a fever pitch that the top Google searches now for "Dean Iraq" yield a page of stories from all our favorite nemeses and more.. with headlines like
"Dean Iraq is Vietnam: Let's cut and Run" (courtesy Rush Limbaugh)
"Dean digs Dems a hole" (courtesy NY Daily News)
"Howard Dean, defeatist" (courtesy NY Post)
Of course, there are the many predictable comments on RW blogs questioning Dean's sanity, patriotism, etc etc etc.
I could write an entirely different diary on this obsession with the word "win" and what it even means in Iraq... In my view, what Howard was talking about was that continuing to "stay the course" in Iraq cannot result in a "win" in terms of a Western style democratic U.S. friendly Iraq.
I could write an entirely different diary about those on the supposed left who join in the right wing attack on Dean, or the cowardly backpedaling from his remarks by some of those supposed "centrist Democrats".
I could write an entirely different diary about those Dkos members who choose to use their precious daily diary allotment to moan about how Dean doesn't speak for them.
But I think I'll just use this opportunity to post the entire transcript from Dean's "treasonous" (according to Michael Reagan) remarks for the benefit of those of us who value more than slogans and sound bites from our news organizations.
You can judge for yourself if the last paragraph that Dean spoke in this 8 minute interview was any more news-worthy or relevant than the rest of his conversation. See if you can discern the subtle bias of the questioners.
Note: Full audio can be heard here:
http://cctvimedia.clearchannel.com/...
Dean Interview
By Joe Pags, Bob Guthrie, Stan Kelly of WOAI San Antonio
WOAI: I wanted to ask you about one thing first, and that's the issue of whether the intelligence was good or bad going into Iraq.. that was something that was really hard fought by John Kerry and by the president in the last campaign and call me crazy, I'm not a lobbyist, I'm not a Democrat or Republican when it comes to pushing for politics, but why bring that up again when that was so thoroughly gone through last time?
Dean: Well because it wasn't thoroughly gone through. What's happening now, oddly enough is there's so many parallels to the Vietnam era that it's a little scary. What we see is very much like what was going on in Watergate. The Watergate burglary for example happened before the election but the president wasn't forced to resign until afterwards because there was so much additional information. Now it turns out there's a lot of good evidence that the president didn't tell the truth when he was asking Congress to give him the power to go to war, but a lot of that didn't come out until after the election was over. So I think that what the president's finding now is now that the election is over and the sort of the he-said she-said nature of the discussion is gone, there's a whole big body of evidence that suggests that the president was not truthful with the American people, pretty convincing evidence and that's why it's all coming back up again now.
WOAI: Is congressman's John Murtha's demand that all US troops be withdrawn from Iraq, is that in the mainstream of democratic party philosophy now?
Dean: Well he actually didn't demand that at all, he didn't even use the word withdrawal and I don't use the word withdrawal either. I think we need a strategic re-deployment over a period of 2 years. What John was basing his discussion on was a report by Lawrence Korb who's actually a defense department official with the Reagan Administration. He has a way of getting out of Iraq which I think makes a lot of sense and I think the Democrats will coalesce around it. Basically he says bring the 80,000 guardsmen home. They don't belong in a conflict like this anyway...
WOAI: He did say re-deploying you're absolutely right about the terminology, but he also did say 6 months, whereas you're saying in a couple of years, Nancy Pelosi's saying 6 months, and some other major democrats are saying a couple of years. If I'm on the fence whether I'm going to be a Democrat or Republican or how I'm going to vote coming up in the next election, I'm not really sure what you guys are saying. Is there a specific time frame that you want to tell us today about when that redeployment should happen?
Dean: I think as you just pointed out, there's not unanimity among the Democrats right now, but the big difference between the Democrats and Republicans is that the president wants to make a permanent commitment to to a failed strategy and what we want to do is to have a strategy to protect American troops. I believe, and I believe this is ultimately where the Democratic party is going to come out, is we ought to bring the guardsmen home now, over the next 6 months.. that's 80,000 guardsmen and reserves, and we ought to have a redployment to Afghanistan of 20,000 troops where we don't have enough troops to do the job, and we need a force in the middle east to stay there but not in Iraq, in a friendly neighboring country so we can deal with the problem of Zarqawi, who came to Iraq after this invasion. We've got to get this target off the backs of American troops. This is an Iraqi problem.. I grant you the president made it much worse, but we cannot have our troops being the targets there and that's what the problem is now. 80% of Iraqis think we ought to leave. It's their country. President Bush got rid of Saddam Hussein, that was a great thing, but that could have been done in a very different way. But now that we're there, we've got to figure out how to leave, because we cannot have a permanent commitment. I remember when we went through this in Vietnam. Everybody kept saying, just another year and we're going to have a victory. Well we didn't have a victory then and it cost us 25,000 more American troops because the people were too stubborn to be truthful about what was happening...
WOAI: Governor, I've heard you say that 80% of the Iraqis want us out, I've heard other people say it, who exactly is doing this polling, how do we know that's a fact, and if you would, when you say the president didn't tell the truth about the intelligence, well then we would have , and I know you would agree with this because it's true, then Hillary Clinton didn't tell the truth and John Kerry didn't tell the truth and and all of the senators and congresspeople who also voted for this and saw the same intelligence they weren't telling the truth. Don't you have to assume that as well?
Dean: They didn't see the same intelligence. That's also something the president said last week that wasn't true. They did not see the same intelligence.. The president said they did. That's flat out wrong. You don't have to take my word for it.. I'm a partisan. Go take a look at the 9/11 commission which was headed by a Republican, Tom Kean. In fact he just had a big piece out this morning saying that not only was the president not accurate, but that he hasn't done the things recommended by the 9/11 commission to to keep us safe here at home.
WOAI: I promise I'm not trying to argue with you, I'm trying to be as factual as I can as far as the last election cycle. Now there is a Senate intelligence committee, there is a house intelligence committee. These people certainly were privy to this intelligence that the president is hanging his hat on, and they're saying that the intelligence was there and that they followed what the intelligence was and that the intelligence was bad. You're saying the president didn't tell the truth. Is there a difference?
Dean: Yes the president withheld some of the intelligence from the intelligence committee. He withheld reports from the CIA that said there was no evidence that there were weapons of mass destruction, that they did not have a nuclear program. He withheld the reports from the CIA that said there was no meeting between Saddam.... They selectively gave intelligence to the US Senate and Congress. The senators themselves that you've named have said if they had been given the full intelligence there would have never been a vote to go into Iraq because there was no evidence that Iraq was a threat to the United States. The 9/11 commission agreed with that.. Don't take my word for it, take the Republicans who ran the 9/11 commission's word for it.
WOAI: We've got one more question for you, Stan? Governor Dean, the key to eventually getting the US forces out of Iraq is going to be having the Iraqis doing a better job of defending themselves and taking a greater role. Are we on the right track to achieving that goal?
Dean:.. Well I think our military's working very hard to do that, but let's not forget. This is ultimately what America had to do in Vietnam. Ultimately we said we're going to turn this over to the Vietnamese and of course the South Vietnamese couldn't manage to take care of their own country. I supported the first President Bush's war in Iraq, I supported this president Bush's war in Afghanistan but I do not believe in making the same mistake twice and America appears to have made the same mistake twice. I wish the president had paid more attention to the history of Iraq before we had gotten in there. The idea that we're going to win this war is an idea that unfortunately is just plain wrong. I've seen this before in my life and it cost us 25,000 brave American soldiers and I don't want to go down that road again. We need to maintain a presence in the area so we can deal with terrorism but not in Iraq.