Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : WHO IS RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT IN 2004 -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Carragher who wrote (8624)	1/7/2004 4:26:55 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10965

"Well, that didn't take long - Dean is already being forced into defense mode on the Osama issue. Typical example of the way the issue is being framed: the Newsmax story headlined 'Dean defends bin Laden'. Dean's response to this was quick - a telephone interview with the AP: "'In a wide-ranging interview with The Associated Press, Dean also said he wants Osama bin Laden to get the death penalty, seeking to minimize fallout from a New Hampshire newspaper story Friday in which he was quoted as saying the terror leader's guilt should not be prejudged. 'As a president, I would have to defend the process of the rule of law. But as an American, I want to make sure he gets the death penalty he deserves,' Dean told the AP in a phone interview. "'The former Vermont governor, who solidly leads the field of Democratic presidential candidates in both polls and money, said he was simply trying to state in The Concord Monitor interview that the process of trying bin Laden needs to be fair and credible. In that interview, Dean was quoted as saying, "I still have this old-fashioned notion that even with people like Osama, who is very likely to be found guilty, we should do our best not to, in positions of executive power, not to prejudge jury trials." Dean told the AP that sentiment doesn't mean he sympathizes in any way with the al-Qaida leader. "I'm just like every other American, I think the guy is outrageous," he said.' "AAAARGH!The problem here is that Dean still hasn't realized the depth to which his opponents will sink. The 'no safer after Saddam' comment should have opened his eyes, but in my opinion he remains remarkably deaf to the way his own words can be twisted about. Since he did say in the Monitor interview it wasn't appropriate to 'pre-judge' Osama (in terms of deciding a punishment), and now in the AP interview admits he wants to see a death penalty (in consistent line with his earlier views, I might add), he can easily be caricatured as flip-flopping on the issue. "If the original remark was poorly thought-out, that's understandable, because it was defensible from a righteousness point of view. But with the additional interview he has weakened his position, opening himself up to a new charge of inconsistency, which actually obstructs his own record of consistency about the death penalty and undermines his original point about the necessity for a fair trial." Not everyone on the blog is a Deaniac: "Howard Dean spits out verbal diarrhea any time he is asked to defend his statements, any time he speaks. He constantly has to retract statements, apologize for things he has said...The guy's so incompetent in foreign affairs, instead of proposing his own road map to peace, he's begging Clinton, who failed for 8 years, to do it for him." washingtonpost.com