Joe Lieberman Bails on Katrina

There are some people I know that still don’t understand why I hate Joe Lieberman. Hate is not a healthy thing. We should only hate people that are both powerful and despicable. And we should never allow ourselves to be consumed with hate. So, I try to keep my hatred of Joe Lieberman in check. I try to give him a chance. I attempt to see things from his point of view. But it never fails. Lieberman is scum. He is scum of the lowest order.

Sen. Joe Lieberman, the only Democrat to endorse President Bush’s new plan for Iraq, has quietly backed away from his pre-election demands that the White House turn over potentially embarrassing documents relating to its handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans.

…Last year, when he was running for re-election in Connecticut, Lieberman was a vocal critic of the administration’s handling of Katrina. He was especially dismayed by its failure to turn over key records that could have shed light on internal White House deliberations about the hurricane, including those involving President Bush.

Asserting that there were “too many important questions that cannot be answered,” Lieberman and other committee Democrats complained in a statement last year that the panel “did not receive information or documents showing what actually was going on in the White House.”

Lieberman isn’t going to do any investigation of Katrina. He isn’t going to compel the White House to turn over documents that would show their criminal indifference to the plight of New Orleans. He isn’t going to do this even though this is precisely what he promised he would do if re-elected.

I used to think that decent people could disagree about the war. But I no longer think that. If you haven’t figured out by now that the war was the wrong decision and must be stopped, you are nothing better than a sociopath. Joe Lieberman is a sociopath. I’m not kidding. He has a criminal indifference to the suffering of other people. If there is such a thing as evil, Joe Lieberman is evil. I don’t even care if he decides to caucus with the Republicans. He belongs with Republicans. Get this:

[Marshall] Whitman [the chief spokesman in Lieberman’s office] says Lieberman is trying to take on the role that Henry (Scoop) Jackson played in the 1960s and 1970s—a tough “national security” Senate Democrat who was willing to cross party lines to work closely with Republican presidents like Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. “That’s the tradition he is following,” Whitman said.

Scoop Jackson?

In addition to Richard Perle, neoconservatives Paul Wolfowitz, Elliott Abrams, Charles Horner, and Douglas Feith were former Democratic aides to Jackson who, disillusioned with the Carter administration, supported Ronald Reagan and joined his administration in 1981, later becoming prominent foreign policy makers in the 21st-century Bush administration.

Neoconservative Ben Wattenberg was a prominent political aide to Jackson’s 1972 and 1976 presidential campaigns. Wolfowitz has called himself a “Scoop Jackson Republican” on multiple occasions. Many journalists and scholars across the political spectrum have noted links between Senator Jackson and modern neoconservatism.

Jackson biographer Robert Kaufman says “There is no question in my mind that the people who supported Iraq are supporting Henry Jackson’s instincts.”

Scoop Jackson wasn’t evil but his disciples are drenched in blood. Evil.

No sooner did President Bush finish his speech Wednesday night than Lieberman put out a statement applauding Bush for his “courageous course”—a notable comment, given the lukewarm response the president’s speech received from many leading Republicans.

Evil.

Author: BooMan

Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.