Jewish World Review Dec. 8, 2005 / 7 Kislev, 5766

Dean's gaffes a blessing

By Tucker Carlson

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | More than once, in print and on television, I've turned to Howard Dean in desperation, looking for material. On a slow news day, when the usual sources of outrage and farce are tapped dry, Dean is always there: a bottomless well of almost unbelievable quotes. He's as reliable as taxes, and far more amusing. The average 10-minute Howard Dean interview contains more headlines than a month of the Congressional Record. For a journalist on deadline, Howard Dean is like Santa.

Once again, Dean has not disappointed. In an interview with a radio station in San Antonio Monday, Dean confidently predicted a loss for U.S. forces in Iraq. The "idea that we're going to win the war in Iraq is an idea which is just plain wrong," he said. Republicans immediately jumped all over him, denouncing Dean's comments as defeatist, even immoral at a time when American soldiers are being killed in a war that at this point is hardly lost. Republicans have a point. But as usual they've missed the greater outrage.

That came in the next paragraph, when Dean explained what we ought to do with the 160,000 troops currently facing defeat in Iraq. "I think we need a strategic redeployment over a period of two years," he said. His plan: bring home the guardsmen and the reservists immediately. Send 20,000 troops to Afghanistan. And then this: "we need a force in the Middle East, not in Iraq but in a friendly neighboring country, to fight [terrorist leader Abu Musab] Zarqawi."

In other words, what we need to do is send American troops to yet another Arab country, from which they could fight the war they've been waging so unsuccessfully in Iraq. That way, not only could we prolong the war in Iraq, we'd get to destabilize another country in the region, this time one of the few we still consider an ally. It's a clever plan, the perfect combination of recklessness and stupidity. You can see how Dean came up with it.

What you can't see is how he's allowed to continue to embarrass his party by saying things like this in public. Where are the adults? Why doesn't someone get the hook? Who's running the Democratic Party, anyway? Oh, yeah. Howard Dean is.