Lamont to Lieberman: just how dense are you?

[tpsbmam]

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/themix/42106/

Last week, Holy Joe Lieberman, Connecticut's neocon candidate for the Senate, gave a speech in which he shucked and jived and completely avoided any mention of that pesky little occupation thingy we have going on in Iraq (rather annoying subscription process req'd).

That probably wasn't a bad idea, considering that Joe didn't just support Bush's Iraq policy -- it was Lieberman's Iraq policy that Bush implemented (and I wish folks would get that straight).

But now, the whole issue is probably going to be tougher for Lieberman and the rest of the hawks because both the New York Times and the Washington Post splashed one of those 'Water is Wet!' headlines across their front pages this weekend, reporting what we've all known for a long time: Iraq has increased terrorism and, although they didn't quite bring themselves to say it, we're losing the GWOT badly because of it -- the occupation has been a fetid, festering wound in America's foreign policy for the past few years.

Even though that's not news -- it's been the conclusion of one Israeli, two American and two British defense think-tanks, a study by the Saudi government and 87 of 100 of America's top international relations experts polled by Foreign affairs -- this was significant because it's the consensus opinion of the United States' 16 intelligence agencies.

Anyway, Lamont's taking the report and going on the offensive. His campaign released a nice open letter to the incumbent Senator, which you can read on the flip:

Dear Senator Lieberman:

<snip>
With this report being released on the eve of your major address on Iraq, I and thousands of other citizens in Connecticut expect to hear your response to this news in your speech, considering you have echoed President Bush's claim that the Iraq War has made our country safer, and that staying the course will help keep us safe. As the NIE now shows, that is absolutely not the case - in fact, the Iraq War has and continues to unnecessarily endanger U.S. national security. Never again can a political leader claim otherwise, lest they deliberately ignore the concrete facts presented to us by our intelligence agencies.

<snip>
In recent weeks, your campaign has told reporters that you have "repeatedly and harshly criticized the Bush administration" for its Iraq policy. Yet, you were the primary author of the Senate resolution backing the Iraq War policy, and, as the New Yorker noted just last year, you have since been "unapologetic about defense of Bush's Iraq policy." 4 As you told that magazine, "Bottom line, I think Bush has it right." 5 At the time the article was printed, Iraq had just experienced two of the deadliest attacks in the growing insurgency, and its neighbors told international media that they feared a civil war was already underway inside the country. 6 Can you explain why you are now claiming to have always been a critic of this war, when the facts show otherwise? And can you explain why you continue to defend the Bush administration's conduct of this war, when it's execution has been so severely flawed and as a result severely compromised our national security?

<snip>
Few argue that one way a U.S. Senator can honor our troops is to fulfill his/her most basic responsibility by casting votes on the Iraq War. 7 Yet, Senate records show you have skipped roughly half of all U.S. Senate votes on the Iraq War - even when they were on the most critical life-and-death issues.....

And more. Gotta read open letter from Lamont to Lieberman. Way to show the Democrats how to go on the attack, Ned!

[KurtNYC]

1. The full letter

Since it is an open letter I think we could copy the whole thing here but I defer to the Mods on that legalism.

Here is a link to the whole letter on Ned Lamont's site:
http://nedlamont.com/news/1540/