News anchor Wolf Blizter grilled Sen. Joe Lieberman on Sunday’s (Jan. 25) “CNN Late Edition” about U.S. arms inspector David Kay’s determination that, when the U.S.-led coalition ousted Saddam Hussein, Iraq probably had no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.
Lieberman, a real liberal, told Blitzer that Saddam’s failure to account for his illegal weapons was only one reason to remove him. The bigger reason for toppling his regime was Saddam’s long record of repression and murder.
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JOE LIEBERMAN: “For me, Saddam Hussein was a weapon of mass destruction. And what do I mean? He caused the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of people.“So for me the war against Iraq was always about getting Saddam Hussein out of power before he killed more of his people and killed more Americans. And that's why I continue to believe that the war against Saddam was just, and that we're safer with him in prison and not in power….”
WOLF BLITZER: “The problem that you have is that, now, especially with David Kay saying there were no weapons of mass destruction on the eve of the war, there might have been some in the '80s but none existed before, by all accounts that was the major rationale...”
LIEBERMAN: “Wrong.”
BLITZER: “... for going to war.”
LIEBERMAN: “Wrong.”
BLITZER: “It wasn't just to remove Saddam Hussein.”
LIEBERMAN: “No, no, no. You missed my point.”
“John McCain and I, in 1998, made it the law of the United States of America to change the regime in Baghdad. It was about Saddam, a mass murderer, a brutal dictator, invaded two of his neighbors, tried to kill former President Bush, supported terrorists, an enemy of the United States. Weapons of mass destruction, which in the '90s he said he had, were part of the argument....
“In an age of terrorism and tyranny, the American people are not going to vote for a candidate, no matter how angry they are at George Bush about their lost jobs, their higher-cost health insurance, the desecration of our environment and compromise of our rights. Not going to vote for a Democrat unless they believe that Democrat can keep them safe....”
BLITZER: “Howard Dean says you and some of your colleagues are personally responsible for the death, the continuing death of American soldiers. Listen to what he said in the debate Thursday night.”
Video rolls: HOWARD DEAN: “Someone earlier made a remark about losing 500 soldiers and 2,200 wounded. Those soldiers were sent there by the vote of Senator Lieberman and Senator Kerry and Senator Edwards.”
BLITZER: “He's blaming you for the almost-daily deaths of American troops in Iraq.”
LIEBERMAN: “Wolf, that was an irresponsible statement. You could say that about the soldiers who died in the Second World War, who saved the lives of millions of people here and around the world from Nazism and fascism. You could say the same about those who died in President Clinton's just war to stop aggression and genocide in the Balkans....
“And here's the point about Howard Dean: The lives that have been lost, they're heroes, but they're going to save thousands and thousands of other lives that Saddam Hussein would have ended, American lives.
BLITZER: “Was this war, this war in Iraq, just as just, as justified as World War II?
LIEBERMAN: “Every war is different.
“Some people say to me, Saddam wasn't Hitler. Somebody said that to me. I said, you know, Hitler wasn't Hitler until the world let him become Hitler.
“Saddam Hussein was responsible for the deaths of a million people. This man was brutal, a homicidal maniac. Most of them his own people, a lot of them Kurdish Iraqis and Iranians.
“You let someone like this go, you let evil like this go in the world, there's no question that he would have ended up being the cause of the deaths of thousands and thousands of Americans. That's why we're all safer with this tyrant in prison.”
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Joe Lieberman puts the pseudo-liberals to shame. The only complaint a real liberal can have about the liberation of Iraq is that it didn’t come sooner.
Frank Warner
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