Huffington upset

Arianna Huffington blogged With Plamegate dominating the day, the table is set for the Democratic Party to seize the moment. The scandal has reignited a national debate about the White House lies and deceptions that led us to war in Iraq, public support for the president’s handling of the war has hit an all-time low, and the 2,000th soldier killed in action has put the human cost of the war back on page one. So how have the Democrats reacted? You be the grand jury (Warning: have some Xanax or other suitable anti-depressant handy):

Exhibit A is the story NPR ran on Tuesday in which Senate Dems were asked if they regretted their votes to authorize the war in Iraq. Ben Nelson was among those who defended his vote, saying, “You just don’t look back.” Really? Why not? Afraid you might actually learn something from your mistakes, Senator?

No, he just knows that the voters in Nebraska know that thins are really going a lot better than the MSM is pretending, and he is going to have to run for reelection after Iraq is a free Democratic country and our troops are back home.

Hillary Clinton refused to even address the question, telling reporter David Welna, “I really can’t talk about this on the fly, it’s too important”. As with everything Hillary says and does these days, you could hear her and her consultants doing the math: Expressing regret = too soft for the Oval Office. Continuing to express support of the administration’s Iraq policy = risking being overtaken by the post-Plamegate reassessment of the war. (So would offering a glowing assessment of progress in Iraq, as Clinton did during her visit there in February when she explained that suicide bombers are “an indication” of the “failure” of the insurgency, and that much of Iraq was “functioning quite well”).

That is the best she can say, and preserve her chance of being elected President.

Clinton and Nelson should get a copy of the NPR segment and listen to the responses of Sens. Dodd, Feinstein, Rockefeller, and Harkin who all said they would not have voted the way they did. They should also listen to the speech John Kerry gave today in which he said that “knowing what we know now” he would not have voted to give the administration the authority to go to war.

What he knows now is that whether he was for the war before he was against it, or against it before he was for it, he never was going to be President.

Exhibit B was Chuck Schumer’s disheartening appearance on Meet the Press last Sunday. When Tim Russert asked him if he regretted having voted for the war, Schumer replied: “No, Tim, because my vote was seen -- and I still see it -- as a need to say we must fight a strong and active war on terror” (a ludicrous response he echoed on NPR). The senior senator from New York really ought to have gotten the memo by now that the Iraq-al Qaeda connection was just a Bush fantasy.

Or at least the loony left wants people to think that.

Until we invaded Iraq, that is. And far from leading to “a strong and active war on terror”, his vote has helped turned Iraq into a breeding ground for terrorists while making us far less safe here at home.

Really? How many buildings have fallen since 9/11? Would you rather have our military confront the Islamoterrists in Baghdad and Basrah or in Broken Arrow, Boston, or Beumont; in Mosul or in Muskogee, Memphis, or Mesquite; in Karkuk and Karbala or in Ketchum, Kansas City, or Kilgore; in Tall Afar and Tikrit or in Tahlequah, Texas City, or Texarkana.

.... Have Democratic leaders completely forgotten that we are at war? A war that’s going very badly? A war Plamegate has brought to the forefront of national consciousness? A war the majority of Americans now feel was a mistake?

Because they have been fooled by the MSM. But wait until our troops come home from a Democratic Iraq and tell them what really happened over there.

Cindy Sheehan hasn’t. She’s making it clear that “any candidate who supports the war should not receive our support”. Including Hillary Clinton, about whom she blogged: “I would love to support Hillary for president if she would come out against the travesty in Iraq. But I don’t think she can speak out against the occupation because she supports it.”

Which she has to pretend to do in order to have a chance of being elected President. The danger comes from the sharp left turn she will make after being elected.