In a previous story, I noted that the Army's top general, Peter Schoomaker, appears to have found himself in agreement with Howard Dean, three years after the fact.
Dean, of course, famously said that, "the capture of Saddam has not made America safer," a pronouncement that provided ammunition not only for the wingnuts, but even for certain of his Democratic rivals for the presidency.
And as yesterday's post detailed, the Army's top general, Peter Schoomaker, in an effort to explain away the failure to capture Osama bin Laden, took a roundabout logical jaunt that led him right down Dean's path: that Saddam's capture had done nothing to make America safer.
Which is what Dean said. And Dean was pilloried for it, not only by the wingnut right, but also by Democratic rivals Kerry and Lieberman.
But there were other Democrats commenting at the time, too. Take, for instance, this passage containing a quote from Hillary Clinton, delivered by the notorious Moonie-loving Kool-Aid aspirators at the Washington Times, under the headline, Hillary, Dean differ on Saddam's capture:
Two of the Democratic Party's leading lights — Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and presidential contender Howard Dean — gave conflicting views on what the capture of Saddam Hussein means, as both delivered major foreign-policy speeches yesterday.
"The capture of Saddam has not made America safer," Mr. Dean, former Vermont governor, said in a speech to the Pacific Council on International Policy in Los Angeles. He also noted that his "position on the war in Iraq has not changed."
But Mrs. Clinton, speaking to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, proclaimed herself "thrilled" by the capture, and said she had kept an ear on the radio all day Sunday for the reports.
"We owe a great debt of gratitude to our troops, to the president, to our intelligence services, to all who had a hand in apprehending Saddam," she said. "Now he will be brought to justice, and we hope that the prospects for peace and stability in Iraq will improve."
Bam! A devastating shot from the right by Clinton! Proof positive that Hillary is both stridently pro-war, and stridently anti-Dean! In your face, Howard!
But wait a minute. Looking back at the quote by itself, isolated from the context the Moonie Times tacks onto it, it really doesn't look that bad, does it? Dean himself, after all, quite rightly proclaimed, "Our troops are to be congratulated on carrying out this mission with the skill and dedication we have come to know of them," and that Saddam's capture was, "good news for the Iraqi people and for the world." Isn't that pretty much what Hillary said?
So what's going on here? How did the Moonie Times (and not a few grassroots Dems) end up taking this Hillary quote as a frontal challenge to Dean?
Josh Benson at Salon.com lost no time in figuring it out:
While Howard Dean and his Democratic rivals fought an increasingly bitter war of words over Iraq this week, the debate was joined by a leading Democrat who's not running for president, Sen. Hillary Clinton. And in a measure of the sway the Clintons continue to hold over Democrats, both sides sought to put their own spin on her words.
OK. Spin. We should expect as much by now. So what was the spin? Who said what?
Well, I'm gonna make my point by reversing the order in which Benson presented his case. First, the Dean camp:
"Hillary Clinton talked about what she would do in Iraq, but everything else she believes is not that much different from Howard Dean," said one of Dean's foreign policy advisors. "I think the only people who would see a division here are the ones who say that the only way you can have hair on your chest is to be 'right' about Iraq, and who think what happens in Iraq now is the single dominant issue in foreign policy right now. There are a lot of experienced people on the left and right who don't feel that to be the case."
Given her stature in the Democratic party, the Dean camp wasn't in any rush to pick a fight with Hillary, so this spin seems entirely natural and expected. Further, given what was actually said, it's not that difficult a view to defend. They've said essentially the same things here, as we've observed above.
Could it be that the mouth-breathers at the Washington Times created this split from whole cloth? Maybe. It's not beyond them.
But there's a reason lazy journalists become and stay lazy. And it's because when it comes to Democratic politics, there's always someone else willing to write their stories for them. They certainly approached Benson, but he appears to have seen through them to some degree, even if he did agree to carry their water in the interest of reporting the story of a split someone badly wanted to see in print:
Figures in the Democratic firmament already fearful of Dean's formidable candidacy tried to use Clinton's speech to show there's a significant -- and worrisome -- distinction between the Dean worldview and the foreign policy legacy of the Clinton administration.
Hmm. Who might that be?
Democratic Leadership Council founder Al From, who has been scathingly critical of Dean, praised Hillary Clinton's Monday speech for "laying down some markers" that he hoped would affect the debate in the Democratic Party.
"I think she's first of all staking out this position because she thinks it's right for the country and the Democratic Party," said From, who helped shape Bill Clinton's centrist platform in the early '90s. "I also suspect she's laying down these markers because she hopes that Dean or whoever the nominee is will pay attention to it. She's an important voice in this party. And the Clinton legacy on foreign policy, on the domestic front, on the economy and reducing poverty is a legacy built on eight years of success, not a legacy determined by activity on the Internet five weeks before a primary, before anyone has cast a vote."
Wow. What a crock of shit. Aside from the fact that From tries to shoehorn a commercial's worth of subject matter irrelevancies in there -- legacy, economy, reducing poverty -- what's motivates the "five weeks" shot, given that the positions staked out are the same, and Clinton's not running?
There's more, expressed considerably less artfully by Rep. Anthony Weiner, who, while clomping his way through a completely superfluous dig at Dean, lays this egg:
"Even the most strident opponents of the war would have to be taken aback by what seems to be Howard Dean's unwillingness to treat Saddam's capture as a major victory for America."
(I wonder if Weiner's still clinging to that particular turd? Doubt it!)
Point is, if you've ever found yourself scratching your head and wondering how it is that the one-time champion of universal health care somehow became the scorn of progressive-side party-builders, look no further than the pocketbook-over-party schemers at the DLC. They were then as they are now, the go-to source for journalists in need of spicing up their stories with a little Dem-on-Dem violence.
Divisive, manipulative, and single-mindedly focused on themselves, they practice trash-others-to-build-yourself-up Republicanism within our ranks -- and sometimes without, as Lieberman's crazed ramblings demonstrate even today.
This year, the DLC is poised to deliver its deadly "Dems Divided" venom through From's cadre of vipers, including Will Marshall, Marshall Wittmann, and a few new clowns still a bit to green to rate mention.
Having already cost the Democrats the opportunity to be right about the war in 2004, they seem curiously intent -- for a band of losers, anyway -- on costing us the opportunity to be right about it in '08 as well. They've already eaten one of their own, former DLC Chairman Tom Vilsack, who'd managed to wriggle free and for one brief, shining moment, lead an opposition to the Bush-McCain escalation in state legislatures across the country.
I don't know that we'll be able to banish these serpents from the garden any time soon, but if they're absolutely bent on delivering yet another of their anointed to (newly-selected Chairman) Harold Ford's fate -- and let's be clear, that fate is electoral defeat -- better we do what we can to see to it that they meet that fate this year rather than next.
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