Date:   5/6/2003 9:50:01 AM ( 22 y ago)
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Looking to election, Democrats
change views on war

By Donald Lambro
THE WASHINGTON TIMES


Two of the Democratic presidential candidates and the
party's Senate leader suddenly are abandoning or softening
their criticism of the Iraq war in a move to strengthen their
national security postures in the 2004 elections.
With the approval percentage
for President Bush's handling of
the war against Terrorism and the
overthrow of Saddam Hussein's
regime soaring into the high 70s,
some of his fiercest war critics
have flip-flopped or revised their
positions.
Senate Democratic Leader
Tom Daschle of South Dakota,
who has denounced Mr. Bush for
failing "miserably" to find a
diplomatic solution to avoid a war
with Iraq, gives the president
"great credit" for his leadership in
winning the war.
Abandoning his harsh antiwar rhetoric, Mr. Daschle, who
faces re-election next year in a state where Mr. Bush is
popular, calls the war necessary and justified.
"I don't think there's any more justification required than
what we've already seen in terms of the purpose of the
military operations. Regime change was a legitimate goal, was
accomplished, and I think that's laudable in and of its own
right," he said late last week in a conference call with
reporters in his home state.
Former Gov. Howard Dean of Vermont, whose
vociferous opposition to the war has lifted him into the top
tier of Democratic presidential contenders in New
Hampshire, also has changed his tune.
For many months, he said Iraq was "the wrong war at the
wrong time" and more recently doubted whether the Iraqi
people were better off with Saddam gone.
One week after campaign officials for Sen. John Kerry of
Massachusetts, his chief rival, attacked him as unfit to be
commander in chief, Mr. Dean dropped his fierce antiwar
rhetoric and said he was "delighted to see Saddam Hussein
gone."
Even Mr. Kerry, who voted for the congressional war
resolution but repeatedly criticized Mr. Bush for not gathering
more international support, made subtle shifts in his position.
Mr. Dean was running neck and neck with Mr. Kerry in New
Hampshire, and the senator's strategists were looking for a
way to undercut Mr. Dean's surge in the polls.
To toughen his image on national security, Mr. Kerry had
his chief spokesman, Chris Lehane, attack Mr. Dean for
suggesting that the United States would not always be the
strongest military power in the world.
"The dilemma they have is that there is an energetic and
large element in the Democratic Party that remains against the
war. But the vast majority of voters, including many
Democrats, support and appreciate the skill with which it was
executed and the firmness of the president in deciding what to
do," said Republican strategist Ed Gillespie.
"Bush had the foresight to do what is necessary in the war
with Iraq, and now you have those who want to challenge
him belatedly and begrudgingly follow him to that same
conclusion," he said.
The consensus among debate watchers was that Sen.
Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, who was one of the
president's most loyal backers in the war, came across as the
strongest candidate in Saturday's forum in Columbia, S.C.
He sternly lectured Mr. Kerry and Mr. Dean for their
criticism of the war and accused the senator of taking an
"ambivalent" position on the conflict that "sent the wrong
message from our party."
"No Democrat will be elected president in 2004 who is
not strong on defense, and this war was a test of that
strength," Mr. Lieberman said.
Mr. Kerry insisted that "there's no ambivalence" in his
position on the war, but the Lieberman campaign sent out a
newspaper clip to reporters after the debate that quoted Mr.
Lehane saying, "The country is clearly ambivalent about Iraq.
Kerry has been exactly where the country is."
"Some of these guys are beginning to contradict their
contradictions. At some point, it becomes extremely difficult
to discern exactly what they stand for," said Jim Dyke, chief
spokesman for the Republican National Committee.
 

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