Howard Dean is just completely amazing.
What follows is a quote from Dean, taken from a radio interview he did. This is a more complete version than is being quoted all over the internet, to give some context. I'll bold the quote that everyone is hung up on. It's also worth nothing that my transcription is very kind, it leaves out the numerous stutters and mumbles, which characterize Dean's speaking. It also ignores the fact that Dean says “idears“ and not “ideas“ because he is, in fact, retarded. In any case, here it is:
“Let's not forget, this is ultimately what America had to do in Vietnam. Ultimately they said, well, they're gonna turn this over to the Vietnamese, and of course the South Vietnamese couldn't manage to take care of their own country. I wish the President had paid more attention to the history of Iraq before we'd gotten in there. The idea that we're gonna win this war, is an idea that unforunately is just plain wrong. And I've seen this before in my life, it cost us 25,000 brave American soldiers in Vietnam, I don't want to go down that road again.”
That's the whole thing, in context.
Now, obviously Dean's handlers don't like this sort of stuff. I don't know how many iterations of this it's going to take before they fire the guy, but apparently it's more than the two or three dozen we've seen so far. But, as per usual, they jerk on his leash, pull him back in, send all their apologists out to try to cover for him, and send him back out to say he's been naughty.
What a job he did with that... Here's his “apology.”
“It was a little out of context, they kinda cherry picked that one, the same way the President cherry picked the intelligence going into Iraq.”
This is what I love about Dean. This is a man who can go on a talk show, with orders to repair an incredible gaffe he made the previous day, and he's got all guns blazing. I just love the cherry picking game he plays. That's classic Dean. He's such a mean-spirited little fuck. Any time somebody gets him on something, he responds with some incredibly poorly segued attack, and then just launches off into his idiot spiel. He could be on trial for raping a baby... “Speaking of rape, look at how George Bush is raping the social security checks of the nation's elderly!”
But, whatever. He was taken out of context. When he said the idea of us winning the war was wrong, he meant it in the context of Vietnam, which, as we all know, is one of America's proudest military victories, and not at all something that the Democrats got us into, horribly mismanaged, blamed on Nixon, and now use as their sole concept for how American wars will operate. So, clearly, out of context.
But Dean has more. He's got a little note pinned to his backpack by his handlers, and it says:
Howie,
Don't forget to clean up your poopie, OK?
Love,
Mommy/Government
So Howie has to clean up his poopie. Watch him go:
"We can only win the war -- which we have to win -- if we change our strategy dramatically. The Democrats are coalescing around a very different strategy. We hope the President will join us. This is a strategy of strategic redeployment. We want to serve our troops well who are doing a fantastic job in Iraq, and if we want to win the war on terror we cannot pursue the failed strategy we've pursued the last three years, and start telling the truth to the American people about what's happening there. We have a plan to do that and I would be hap to outline it for you."
He adds:
“We can and we have to win the war on terror.”
So, a complete reversal of what he said only days before. This is the guy that the Democrats, the “Kerry flip-flop” Democrats want for their DNC chair. Even as the Democrats lambaste Bush for “not admitting his mistakes” they keep Dean at the head of the DNC.
Let's be honest. In the entire Iraq war, there has not been a single mistake that was so concretely and obviously a mistake, as it was for the Democrats to put Dean in charge of the DNC. This is a man who is most famous for losing control of his own mouth during the 2004 primaries, and shrieking like a deranged chimp. That's the qualification he brought to the job of being a mouthpiece for the Democratic party.
Howard... You rule.
NOTE: I've been trying to figure out why Howard said that only 25,000 Americans died in Vietnam. This is grossly inaccurate, the actual figure is around 58,200 total. I assume he's just stupid, and said the wrong number, but I do notice that 25,000 is almost exactly the number of soldiers that died after Nixon took office. As this page points out, Nixon took office on January 20th, 1969. It notes that the total American death toll is 33,641 as of April 30th, 1969. If we subtract that from the total, we get 24,559. Is that a coincidence? Possibly. But I wouldn't put it past Howard Dean to suggest that American deaths in Vietnam under Democrat Presidents “don't count.” There's no limit to the depths of dishonesty the man will sink to.