Demanding Accountability from Ned

(Posted October 11, 2006)

Ned loves to talk about holding other people accountable. Well, it’s time to for Ned to be held accountable for running the most systematically dishonest campaign in a major race in recent American history.

With his campaign’s latest attack on Joe today, Ned has shown that it is now not enough to just repeatedly distort Joe’s record for him to try to get elected -- he must now openly lie about it.

In their ‘Daily Cup of Joe’ (link) attack piece this morning, the Lamont campaign repeated its claim that Joe is ‘continuing to back President Bush’s stay the course policy.’ That is not just a mischaracterization – it is an out and out lie. And the Lamont campaign knows it.

The fact is, in his major Iraq policy speech on September 25th, Joe explicitly rejected a stay the course strategy and called for a new approach to end the war without undermining our security. Here are the direct quotes from Lieberman’s speech:

I believe it would be every bit as much of a mistake to stay there indefinitely, both for the Iraqis and for us, and I have consistently opposed an open-ended commitment of American troops. That is something Ned Lamont and I do agree on.

Continuing on the same course we are on now is not a viable option either. We have to confront the reality that what we are doing now is not working, and to begin pursuing new approaches for achieving our mission in Iraq.

Let me repeat that, because it is important. Just continuing to do what we have been doing is not a solution. We must begin to pursue new approaches to get the job done in Iraq.

The Lamont campaign’s attack piece goes on to say that Joe is ‘isolated’ from several Republican skeptics, most notably former Secretary of State James Baker. Again, that is an out and out lie.

The fact is, James Baker’s recent statements closely mirror Joe’s assessment.

Here is what James Baker said:

I think it's fair to say our commission believes that there are alternatives between the stated alternatives, the ones that are out there in the political debate, of 'stay the course' and 'cut and run.

He explicitly rejected a rapid withdrawal from Iraq, saying that would invite Iran, Syria and ''even our friends in the gulf'' to fill the power vacuum.

Here is what Joe said in his speech:

I want to get past the false and empty choice between continuing to do just what we are doing and just giving up and pulling out, both of which are recipes for more failure and less security, and put forward some new approaches for getting the job done in Iraq.

The truth is, Lamont’s plan is not a plan for changing course. This is a plan for giving up in Iraq. For giving up on the hopes of the Iraqi people for becoming free and independent. And for giving up Iraq to the terrorists, the sectarian militias, and to the Iranians and Syrians, who would exploit the resulting chaos.

If anyone is out of step with the mainstream, it is Ned. As the facts show, Ned’s naïve and deadly plan for ending the war in Iraq — pulling all our troops out to meet an arbitrary pre-set deadline 9 or 12 months from now, depending on which day you ask Ned — has been explicitly rejected by the overwhelming majority of Democrats in the U.S. Senate, as well as by former President Bill Clinton.

The bottom line: how does Ned expect to change anything in Washington when the people of Connecticut can’t even trust him to tell the truth?

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Posted by: Eric Blankenbaker on 10/11/2006 at 12:38 PM