The Political Chase

Joe Lieberman on Meet the Press

George Bush has Sen. Joe Lieberman (D I-CT) so snowed, Lieberman is now no more than a mere echo of the President.

This video clip is from today’s Meet the Press show. Lieberman is now invoking 9/11 in the exact manner and context as Bush does.

The video begins with a brief statement by Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) on Bush’s new policy in Iraq and Russert asks Lieberman to respond.

Transcript:

SEN. DODD: We need to move to a different strategy. The emphasis needs to be on robust, muscular diplomacy, deal with regional leaders, insist upon the kind of political leadership inside the country, and then ask our military people to do the border kind of security, the training that can be done, the counterterrorism activities, but get them out of these major urban areas and insist that the 300,000 Iraqis, those, those 10 divisions, those 36 brigades and 118 battalions which we’ve trained, to assume that responsibility in their own country.

MR. RUSSERT: Senator Lieberman, you’re a fellow Democrat, fellow Nutmeg resident with Senator Dodd. You disagree with him and you agree with the president?

SEN. LIEBERMAN: I do, because there is so much on the line in Iraq. We overthrew Saddam Hussein. We, we have been working, and, as the president said the other night, a lot of mistakes, terrible mistakes, have been made, but we’ve been working in the larger context of the war on terrorism, the war against the Islamic radicals who attacked us on 9/11, the threat that Iran represents, to create in Iraq an alternative path to the future which is democratic, small D, self-governing, self-protecting. And we’ve made some progress, but obviously there’s a terrible crisis because of the sectarian violence in Baghdad. And it - this is a new plan the president has offered. Nobody’s happy with where we are now, but this plan offers the prospect of the security which is the precondition to the political settlement and the economic development that we know has to happen for Iraq to take off on its own.