Cleaning out files, found this Breslin article from Jan. last year.

[madfloridian]

I saved the whole article, because it so completely conveyed the outrage I felt. I see some change now in how the party members are speaking out, but I still remember times like this. Not reliving the primaries, just rereading a heartfelt column from a crusty old codger type who never pays many compliments.

This article standing up for Dean is a compliment of the highest order.
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No Safer With Saddam In The Slammer
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Jimmy Breslin

January 2, 2004

First, the other day, Howard Dean, candidate for president, said he didn't think that the capture of Saddam Hussein made us any safer in America. The other politicians screamed that he was un-American. It was John Kerry who said, How could Dean dare say that we were not safer now? You could see that just by watching how we examined Saddam Hussein for scarlet fever in front of the world.

After Saddam's capture, there was a weekend of propaganda that will be examined someday as the ultimate show of vulnerability and failure by the American news industry. The Pekingese of the Press raved about the government and its soldiers.

We had 140,000 troops trying to find Saddam for almost a year.
On the day he was found, an American soldier was killed. After that, 10 more were killed in a week. The Homeland Security raised the alert to orange. Planes coming to New York from Paris, London and Mexico were canceled. New Year's Eve in Times Square was a neon arsenal......

SNIP...."Of course we were no safer with Saddam in a detention pen. And Dean was a miserable traitor for saying this, his opponents raged. Howard Dean then said that maybe he was old-fashioned but he didn't think you could judge or punish Osama bin Laden until you had a trial and found him guilty.

That was as controversial as saying that when it rains in Queens, the Van Wyck Expressway gets wet.

But suddenly, the Democratic candidates said the statement was atrociously unpatriotic. How can this man Dean say that bin Laden deserves a trial? They said that this was a perfect illustration of Dean talking without thought. And completely un-American, too.

I watched and read all this while having a couple of days off, and I was amazed. National politicians, and the news industry calling out, What are you talking about innocent until found guilty? We're not even going to have a trial for this guy....."

SNIP..."Joseph Leiberman, who is a peripheral candidate now and thus a nasty little man, said that because Dean wants a fair trial Dean is despicable and so weak that he would melt in the face of George W. Bush. John Kerry and Dick Gephardt were wildly opposed.

Yet all Dean has to do in this big Des Moines debate Sunday is ask each candidate, "Are you in favor of sentencing bin Laden before you have a trial?"

Let them answer in front of a country that is better than they are.

My friend David Greenfield, a top lawyer in Manhattan who takes on murder cases, was reading some of this over the holiday. He was saying, "This is insanity. I thought everybody knew that no matter how high the crime or the criminal, the punishment phase always must follow the trial. These people, they want off with his head and we'll see if he's fit to stand trial."

The newsmen ought to be asked, too. Story after story said that Dean had made another gaffe; he had called for the Constitution to be used. I was put into shock when I read a total insanity about this in a column by Robert Novak. I mention him because he is big enough to take anything. The rest of the people I read are fleas.

And then here they came: every old Democratic job-holder, hoping for a comeback and knowing Dean isn't the man to bring them back.

I made Joe Lockhart the worst. He is a former Clinton flack, which made him the press agent for a red light house. He explained Monica Lewinsky to reporters. He is one of those news business failures who took up dreary government press agentry. He works somewhere and keeps one foot in the bucket of the old team. He is one of those described by the late John Gregory Dunne as "the main-chancers who work for politicians more than the politicians themselves."

When Dean spoke of bin Laden, here came Lockhart, pushing in front of a microphone to bleat: "It's the unplanned, offhand comments that often seem to play a critical role. You've got to be able to become a master of the game, not someone who just rails against the game."

Here is a grubby press agent, a flack, who described a thought about a fair trial as a flip comment. The newspapers and television let him get away with it.

These are open attacks on basic American rights. And in order to protect yourself from terrorism by politicians, it seems time to pay attention to things like the American system of justice. We did pretty good with it. I'd hate to try it without it.

Copyright (c) 2003, Newsday, Inc.

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This article originally appeared at:
http://www.nynewsday.com/news/local/newyork/columnists/nyc-bres0103,0,2114805.column?coll=ny-ny-columnists