Lieberman shows off his foreign policy chops

September 27, 2006

It’s been weeks since I criticized our old friend Joe Lieberman (I), but this clearly deserves it.

Even the news about the National Intelligence Estimate, which found that the Iraq war had spread terrorism, did not deter Lieberman.

“Are there terrorists in Iraq? Of course there are. That’s a reason we went in,” he said. But he would not comment on the report itself, saying, “We don’t know what it says. We have to see it.” (emphasis added)

So that’s why Lieberman thinks we invaded Iraq? Because of the terrorists in the country before the war? As Greg Sargent asked, “Anybody have any idea who Lieberman’s referring to?”

Our best guess is that he’s talking about al Zarqawi, whose presence in Iraq has been held up at times by various Bush administration officials as proof of “ties” between Saddam Hussein and Zarqawi. But the recently-released Senate Intelligence Committee report concluded that there were no ties between the two men, that Saddam didn’t “harbor” him, and that Saddam viewed Al Qaeda as an enemy.

And as Atrios reminds us, Lieberman is supposed to be a “serious person” on foreign policy. It’s a shame no one can remember why.

Lamont & Company should stomp all over this.

  • Even if LIEberman was referring to Zarchawi, that statement is flawed. Zarchawi was killed, yet violence is still on the rise. Let’s face it, LIEberman is behind Bu$h because of the Israeli factor. So, we have a United States Senator (soon to be ex-Senator God willing) that cares more about the security of a foreign country than he does about the country in which the citizens he is SUPPOSED to be representing live.

  • I am getting absolutely fed up with various politicians claiming that they can’t comment on various news items that undermine their positions because “they haven’t read it.” That may be an acceptable response if you’re talking about some obscure source of questionable validity, but when you’re talking about something like the official U.S. assessment of the state of the great war on terror, it’s outrageous. It’s about time some reported with balls (a mythical beast, kind of like a unicorn) responded to this kind of BS by saying, “But Senator, if you haven’t read the NIE, how can you possibly consider yourself qualified to offer a recommendation for what our policy should be in Iraq?”
    Isn’t it a confession of outright negligence and dereliction of duty to say you haven’t read it? I have (the released portion, of course), and I’m not running for Senator –

  • Stabs a guy in the back when he’s not looking, and then offers a smile when he’s in the same room. Sounds like Joe Lie is perfecting his version of “Heckuva job, Brownie”—now doesn’t it? Either Lamont pounds this guy into the dust come September—or Dems need a “Lucky 7” in the Senate elections—so they can send this “de-evolved Dem” out into the hall when it’s caucus time.

    Darth Lieberman, Dark Lord of the Reich….

  • And that little fact that Zarqawi happened to have his camps in the Kurdish north, which just happened to be north of our no-fly zones, which just happens to mean that (shocker) he was in our reach without us ever invading Iraq… I mean, how hard would it have been to ease one of our F-16’s a little north on a bombing run?…

  • Ever since Al Gore choose Lieberman as his running mate, I have always wondered why. At first glance, Lieberman resembles Droopy Dog in voice as well as likeness. I assumed Gore chose him to reach out to conservative voters. With all that has been going on lately with Lieberman, I think Gore was smoking crack back in 2000.

  • I see a bigger problem here…”We don’t know what it says. We have to see it.” It is possible that Leiberman has actualy contracted Golumitis. I seems to be speaking in the third person and he sure looks like he could use more sun. Could the Senator from Connecticut really be a 500 year old riverperson kept alive all these lyears by a magic (albiet evil) ring of power?

  • Oops I mispelld his name. It should be Lieberman. How can I remind myself to start Lieberman with LIE? A pneumonic device?

    OH! Got it! The war in Iraq started with a big LIE. Sweet!

  • Castor Troy gets it in one.

    Or should we also note that Saddam, like the Princes of the House of Saud, gave money to the families of Palestinian Suicide Bombers (after the fact) as charity to honor their ‘martyred’ children. Of course, the fact that these attacks were not aimed at Americans, but at Israelis, kind of makes Joe’s position clear. The destruction of the fighting competency of the United States Army and the United States Marine Corps is not too great a price to pay to further Joe Lieberman’s policies.

    CB, puzzle me this one. How can we be on the verge of a titantic struggle of civilizations up to which the United States must step and yet the Republican’ts are still trying to campaign on a fear of Democratic tax increases? I suppose $300,000,000,000 spent on the war by borrowing from the Communist Chinese is just alright by them.

  • Hmm. I’d like to hear the tape.

    “That’s a reason we went in” makes no sense, linguistically or otherwise.

    “That’s the reason we went in” makes perfect sense…

    The GWOT is Bush’s bread and butter. He has used it to get everything he wants. Tax cuts, the right to spy without warrants, the right to torture people to get useful “intelligence”, money for cronies, and last but not least… he used it to win elections. Just enough sheeple can be convinced that they need to vote for the Republicrooks even if their leader is an idiot. Even when the Republicrooks flush all their kids’ money down an Iraqi toilet. Even when the Republicrooks wipe their butts with the Constitution and spit on the founding fathers’ graves.

    They were told before the Iraq invasion what would happen. They knew it would increase terrorism. They KNEW.

    By going into Iraq, the neocons made SURE we would have a nice long GWOT, not just a war in Afghanistan. They made SURE we would have more terrorists, not less. They made SURE that new generations of terrorists would be motivated to kill Americans and trained how to kill Americans. They knew they benefitted from terrorism. This may be changing, finally, but at the time the terror issue was their bread and butter.

    So they built a bread-and-butter factory.

    But why would Lieberman go along? Because he, like many “Israel-right-or-wrongers”, thought Americans would be more sympathetic to Israel’s struggle with terrorism if we had one too. Saddam was Israel’s enemy more than ours. And going in put us right next to Israel, so we’re in the soup with them no matter what they pull next.

    So when Joe says “Are there terrorists in Iraq? Of course there are. That’s (the?) reason we went in” it makes sense. It’s not just the flypaper strategy, it’s the huge pile of crap strategy. Do you want flies? Make a huge pile of crap.

    Maybe Lieberman slipped up and told us the truth. Maybe Iraq is screwed up by design.

  • #5

    I mean, how hard would it have been to ease one of our F-16’s a little north on a bombing run?

    The Pentagon tried three times to get permission to attack Zarqawi in his camp in Northern Iraq before the war (MSNBC):

    The Pentagon drew up still another attack plan, and for the third time, the National Security Council killed it.

    Military officials insist their case for attacking Zarqawi’s operation was airtight, but the administration feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam.

    Bush put promoting the Iraq War ahead of actually fighting the war on terror.

  • Seems like voters in CT don’t share your foul sentiment towards Joe… here’s the latest poll.

    Sen. Joe Lieberman has a 10-point advantage over Democrat Ned Lamont among likely Connecticut voters, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday.

    Lieberman, a three-term Democrat running as an independent after losing the party nomination in a primary, is favored by 49 percent to 39 percent over Lamont in the three-way race. Republican Alan Schlesinger trails with 5 percent.

    The race has tightened slightly since an Aug. 17 poll that showed Lieberman leading 53 percent to 41 percent.

    Needless to say, EVERY poll since the primary leans in Joe’s direction, with very little movement towards Lamont’s direction, so hopes of him gaining momentum as we get closer to Election day are quickly fading.

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