Republicans using same tired playbook

Rudolph Giuliani is using a familiar play out of the Republican playbook. From The NYT:

MANCHESTER, N.H., April 25 — In his two months on the campaign trail, the central animating theme of Rudolph W. Giuliani’s presidential campaign has been that his performance as New York mayor on Sept. 11, 2001, makes him the best candidate to keep the United States safe from terrorists.

But when Mr. Giuliani broadened that message here on Tuesday night, saying that Democrats “do not understand the full nature and scope of the terrorist war against us” and that if they were elected the United States would suffer “more losses,”…

[snip]

In his speech before Republicans here on Tuesday night, Mr. Giulani called the fight against terrorism “the defining conflict of our time.” If a Democrat were elected president, he said, they would “wave the white flag” in Iraq, cut back on surveillance of terrorists, restrict the ability of law enforcement officials to gather intelligence and limit interrogation techniques, curtailing their effectiveness.

“Make no mistake about it, the Democrats want to put us back on defense,” he said.

The Democrat presidential nominee hopefuls are taking the opportunity to call Mr. Giuliani’s remarks what they are:

Senator Barack Obama of Illinois accused Mr. Giuliani of “taking the politics of fear to a new low.” Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York used the remarks to link Mr. Giuliani to a failure by the Bush administration to quash Al Qaeda. John Edwards called the remarks “divisive and just plain wrong.”

Of course, the Dems don’t talk about their complicity in this war. Now that I think of it, the Rs and Ds are both using tired plays. We have seen this ballgame before. It was only the Libertarian Party that stood against this Iraq fiasco from the start. From a press release dated August 8, 2002:

Moreover, while the U.S. government has made vague claims that the Iraqi regime has terrorist links, it has produced no public evidence specifically linking Saddam to the September 11 attacks, Dasbach pointed out.

“Since Bush has no legitimate reason for waging war on Iraq, he has cobbled together a list of accusations, none of which provide sufficient justification for invading a sovereign nation and risking American lives,” he said. For example, Bush claims that:

Saddam Hussein is a ruthless dictator. “True enough, but there are dozens of ruthless dictators around the globe, starting with Fidel Castro; the leaders of Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia; the Chinese communists; and various tyrants sprinkled throughout Africa, Asia, and Latin America,” Dasbach said. “Is Bush going to send troops to topple them all?”

According to Freedom House, an organization that tracks the status of democracy around the world, only 120 of the world’s 192 nations are electoral democracies, Dasbach noted. “So unless Mr. Bush plans to launch strikes on the 72 other captive nations, he owes the American people an explanation as to why they should fear Iraq more than other despotic regimes,” Dasbach said.

Saddam has weapons of mass destruction. “According to the Pentagon, 12 countries have nuclear weapons programs, 13 have biological weapons, 16 have chemical weapons and 28 have ballistic missiles,” Dasbach said. “So what makes Saddam’s chemical weapons more menacing than, say, Pakistan’s nuclear bomb?

Saddam supports terrorism. “According to the State Department’s official list of terrorist sponsors, 45 nations have active al Qaeda cells,” Dasbach said. “So even if terrorists are operating inside Iraq, that in itself makes Iraq no more of a threat to the United States than Malaysia, Somalia, or the Philippines.”

The bottom line is that Bush’s wide-ranging indictment against Saddam Hussein is missing one key element: proof that Iraq poses a direct threat to the United States, Dasbach said.

“Instead of struggling to find a justification for war, Mr. Bush should be looking for a way to avoid war – and avoid the needless loss of American lives that could result.”

I’m thinking that it is time to see a new team play ball. The current teams seem more like a bad bookie and cheating player; the outcome of the game is fixed, but not in your favor.

~ by Miche on April 26, 2007.