In this disgusting piece of filth, Marshall Wittman of the DLC says that,
"the Democratic Party desperately needs more Joe Liebermans who are tough on security and progressive on domestic issues. Yet, the luna-lefties in the party are engaged in a despicable and contemptible smear, sewer campaign against him."
No, Mr. Wittman, we do not need any more Joe Liebermans. Mr. Wittman seems to makes the mistake of supporting Iraq as being "tough on defense." In fact, supporting Iraq is the opposite of being tough on defense. Let's consider what kind of a danger Saddam posed to our nation:
After the Gulf War, Saddam was a shadow of his former self. He did not even have political authority in parts of his nation and had incredibly weak and disorganized armed forces. He had no chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons. He did not support al Qaeda, which in fact was quite hostile to his regime. Was Saddam a threat? Hardly. We had him contained. If he tried invading Kuwait again, he knew the entire world would be against him. Plus his army would probably have deserted at the first orders to invade. So what threat did he pose to us? What exactly was he going to harm our country with?
Supporting Iraq weakened our national security. Why? Because it diverted resources away from capturing Osama bin Laden, a man whose very existence is an insult to the people who died on 9/11. Every day that he remains free, he is able to plot more attacks. Thus, it would seem to be a national security priority to kill him. But Bush declares he "doesn't care" where bin Laden is, and sets out after Saddam. So we have a choice:
i) go after Saddam, who has not and cannot harm us
ii) go after Osama, who killed 2,000 Americans and most certainly can harm us
Marshall Wittman and Joe Lieberman would tell us that the obvious "tough on defense" choice is to go after Saddam. What Joe Lieberman did through supporting the war aided and abetted Osama bin Laden in elluding capture. Invading Iraq required a massive diversion of resources away from the hunt for bin Laden.
And so Joe Lieberman is to be praised in Marshall Wittman's opinion, for supporting the invasion of a country that could not have laid a finger on us even if they wanted to? Bravo, Joe, bravo! And then he accuses us of engaging in a smear campaign against Joe Lieberman. No, we're telling the truth. Joe supports a war that did NOTHING to improve the national security of this country. And now he wants to "stay the course." Let's see: the violence keeps getting worse in Iraq, so obviously, we should stick with what we're doing, right?
Marshall Wittman also aids the RNC noise machine by presenting the false choice of:
i) Be strong on security by supporting Bush on Iraq
ii) Be weak on security by cutting and running from Iraq
Ever consider that maybe the Iraqis should set up their country themselves? We cannot build them a country. A country is something only the people living there can build. It is the Iraqis who have to defeat the insurgency and decide what their political future is. As long as they have us there as a crutch, they will never do anything for themselves. Unless our presence there is creating visible progress (and no, more people dying does not count as progress), there is no reason for me to believe that the result will be any different if we pull out now as opposed to 5 years from now.
And Marshall praises Lieberman for continuing to back Bush unquestiongly. It is horrible for anyone to close their eyes and pretend we are winning as Lieberman is doing. If he really cared about the United States, instead of Bush, he would be asking what is going wrong. Why are more people dying? Why is Iraq less stable than it was last year? But instead of asking these questions, Lieberman supports Bush unquestioningly. This is not a smear campaign, it is the truth, which while it may hurt for Marshall, does not make it any less true.
So I challenge Marshall Wittman to:
i) Show how Iraq was a threat to the United States by pointing to specific things Saddam could do to harm us
ii) Show us some of Ned Lamont's nasty smears without reverting to the Bush straw man tactic
Update: As has been noted, Marshall Wittman is a former Republican, which is no surprise. His problem is that he has internalized the Republican lie that the Democratic party is way out of the mainstream and is losing because it is too liberal. Opposing Bush=too liberal in Marshall's book, so I expect every time the Democrats stand up to Bush, we'll see a gloom and doom post from Marshall. The sad thing is that he is taken as a serious voice in the Democratic party by the MSM. This needs to change. Marshall Whitman is bad for the Democratic party because he reinforces Republican lies. Republicans say Feingold's censure resolution will hurt Democrats. Whitman and few others agree. So the MSM looks, sees both sides see censure=bad and report it as fact. Then they conduct polls and see that actually, supporting censure is a mainstream position. With friends like Wittman, who needs enemies?