The Senate’s best Democrat, 18-year veteran Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, faces the fight of his political life in a primary scheduled for Tuesday. He will go up against a rich leftie who thinks the administration should have brought the boys home from Iraq yesterday. National Democrats have one fundamental operating principle — embarrassing George Bush.
Lieberman supports the Bush administration enterprise in Iraq specifically, and its war against jihadist terror generally. While embracing apologies for certain treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, Lieberman noted in contrast that “those who were responsible for killing 3,000 Americans on Sept. 11, 2001, never apologized.” Partly for that “outrageous” comparison, The New York Times has endorsed Lieberman’s opponent.
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With his 10-month trial nearing a conclusion, Saddam Hussein has admonished the court to “remember that Saddam Hussein is a military commander and should be shot by bullets, not hanged like a regular criminal.” (In fact, although Saddam declared himself commander of the Iraqi armed forces, he never served; 50 years ago, he failed the Baghdad Military Academy’s entrance test.) The verdict in this quarter: Hang him.
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Two headlines from the war on terror:
(1) “Al-Qaida Group Controls Somalia”
(2) Regarding plans to blow up commuter tunnels under the Hudson River connecting New Jersey and New York: “Plot to Attack New York Foiled.”
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Let’s not overlook the perhaps related discomfiting datum about the grand globalization tour by Castro clone Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. In London he saw not Prime Minister Tony Blair but London’s way-out (and jihadist-sympathizing) Mayor “Red Ken” Livingstone. In Belarus he lauded Europe’s last surviving Communist autocracy as “a model of a social state.” In Hanoi he hailed Vietnam for nobly defeating imperialism and retaining “socialism in the ideological arena.”
In Moscow, declaring he has “thwarted the goal of the empire of the United States to disarm Venezuela,” Chavez bought billions worth of advanced Russian aircraft. It includes 33 armored day-night helicopters and 20 Sukhoi Su-30MK2 fighter jets — comparable to U.S. F-15Es. Chavez also received licenses to build Kalashnikov factories in and near Caracas — the AK-47 Kalashnikov for nearly 60 years having been worldwide Communist guerrillas’ standard weapon of choice. Next stop for Chavez? Iran — for the fifth time.
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