I am always telling myself to quit cleaning out old files, it makes me too upset over how we got to be in this mess in this country today. Well, today, nearing the one year anniversary of Howard Dean as chairman of the DNC….I openly admit to be wee bit sentimental.
I just found this article by Jimmy Breslin about the day Howard said we were no safer now that Saddam was caught. It is a truly great column, and we need to be reminded of it now and then. He points out the hypocrisy so well.
The New American System of Justice
He describes a scene in New York City around New Years after Saddam was captured.
In all my time in my city I have never seen this many guns. Not just little guns that you fit in a holster. But great big cannons that were being held by men peering out from under helmets and dressed otherwise for battle. This was on New Year’s Eve, after our 140,000 troops captured Saddam Hussein and made America safe for freedom and liberty and democracy.
Then he reminds us of the one person who dared to admit we were no safer, and he reminds us how they ripped him apart for it. See, this is why I really do have to stop going through my old stuff.
On the other side of politics, Howard Dean, Democratic candidate for president, didn’t think Saddam Hussein’s capture made us any safer in America. The other politicians screamed that was un-American. It was John Kerry who said, How could Dean dare say that we were not safer now? Kerry is so sure we’re safe that he mortgaged his house the other day to have the money to say Dean is a traitor. This is only before the first primary and Kerry goes for the roof over his head. He seems ready to go naked on these primaries.
Howard Dean then said that he was old-fashioned and he didn’t think you could judge or punish Osama bin Laden until you had a trial and found him guilty.
Breslin goes on to excoriate the others who condemned him so soundly, and he calls Lieberman a “nasty little man.” His ending is powerful.
Yet Joseph Lieberman, who is a peripheral candidate now and thus a nasty little man, said that because he relies on the Constitution, Dean is a weakling who would melt in the face of George Bush.
John Kerry and Dick Gephardt were wildly opposed.
Yet all Dean has to do in this big Des Moines debate today is ask each candidate, “Are you in favor of sentencing bin Laden before you have a trial?”
Let them answer in front of a country that is better than they are.
And this picture is of Howard Dean in Vermont this week, still fighting. This time fighting for campaign finance reform. Happy one-year anniversary to him.
