Paul Bass of the New Haven Independent catches up with President Lieberman, who says a public plan is not going to happen — because he’s going to rally a bipartisan Senate group against it.
Which, of course, instantly spawned much fond nostalgia from veterans of the 2006 campaign.
I’ve long said it’s time to give Joe Lieberman the boot, and his stance on torture makes me think we need to revive the Lieberman Must Go campaign. In an interview with Fox’s Greta Van Susteren yesterday, the hawkishly Independent Connecticut Senator said of President Obama’s decision to release the torture memos, “It wasn’t necessary. It just helps our enemies. It doesn’t really help us.”
Then, when Van Susteren asked whether waterboarding constitutes torture, Lieberman fell short of actually defining it as such and went on to suggest the President ought to be able to use methods like torture in the future. What’s more, Lieberman again claimed that waterboarding and other abhorrent interrogation techniques are successful in extracting information:
Well, I take a minority position on this. Most people think it’s definitely torture. The truth is, it has mostly a psychological impact on people. It’s a terrible thing to do. I’ve said in the past, and I’ll say it again to you — that I want the President of the United States, in a given circumstance where we believe somebody we’ve got in our control may have information that will help us stop an attack, an imminent attack on the United States like 9/11 or, God forbid, worse, we ought to be able to use something like waterboarding. But generally speaking it ought not to be on the table.
Incidentally, I believe General Hayden when he says that not just waterboarding, which he stopped, as I understand it, but a number of the other items on that list that has been published, really did work — did help to give us a lot of the information that we have about Al Qaeda.
First of all, why is Fox still asking the question of whether waterboarding constitutes torture? When Attorney General Eric Holder calls waterboarding torture, it’s no longer up for debate! Even John McCain, the object of Lieberman’s Senatorial bromance, thinks it’s torture. Is Fox actually trying to show us how foolish Lieberman looks? If so, Lieberman beat Fox to the punch by joking about waterboarding at a black-tie event last year.
Israel is capable of debating sensitive national security issues dealing with a variety of Israeli-Arab issues, but this does not appear to be possible in the United States. During the presidential campaign last fall, Barack Obama told a Jewish gathering in Cleveland that he was “struck” while visiting Israel by “how much more open the debate was around these issues in Israel than they are sometimes here in the United States.”
And now that he is president, Obama has learned that the Israeli lobby in the United States can successfully block a distinguished appointee. Retired Ambassador Charles W. Freeman Jr., who had been selected to fill an important position in the intelligence community, was forced to withdraw from consideration after a storm of criticism organized by the Israel lobby. Freeman was a regular lecturer at the National War College between 1986 and 2004, when I served on the faculty there.
So the Democrats have forgiven Lieberman for maligning Obama throughout the election. What's more, they allowed Lieberman to hang onto his Homeland Security Committee chairmanship, even though he repeatedly undermined progressive values, refusing to investigate the Bush administration when it came to Hurricane Katrina and Iraq war profiteers. And yet Lieberman still won't apologize for his actions.
Today on Meet the Press, Lieberman told Tom Brokaw that he regrets "some of the things" he has done. When Brokaw pressed Lieberman on that point, however, asking whether that meant he was apologizing, Lieberman merely said:
Well, I do — I regret it. I mean, you know, I’m going forward. You can take from the word "regret" what you will. I wish I had not said some of the things I’ve said. But again, we all do it.
No wonder Obama isn't returning Lieberman's calls! I thought our Lieberman Must Go campaign was coming to an end when the Democrats capitulated on the Homeland Security gavel, but rest assured we will continue to monitor Lieberman's behavior going forward. (h/t Faiz and the Think Progress crew)
I just want to reiterate a very, very simple that I've made over and over again. It's a point that is really important to make before the vote on whether Joe Lieberman remains chairman of the committee whose main mission is to investigate the executive branch.
Joe Lieberman has made clear he thinks Barack Obama is a socialist who is a danger to the United States as president. Therefore, putting any personal animosity against Joe Lieberman aside, it's clear that giving Joe Lieberman subpoena power on a committee whose mission is investigating the executive branch of the supposed socialist who supposedly is a danger to the United States doesn't seem like a very good idea.
In fact, if anyone remembers the interchanges between Dan Burton and the Clinton administration, it seems like denying Lieberman that subpoena power is quite literally the only way to guarantee the "bipartisanship," "comity," "reconciliation" and whatever other synonyms the David Broders and Unity '08-ers and self-ordained "centrists" in Washington, D.C. purport to love.
The tension surrounding tomorrow's secret ballot vote to determine Lieberman's fate in the Democratic caucus continues to build. Late last week, Senators Sanders and Leahy publicly called for Lieberman's ouster from the Homeland Security committee. Then Rachel Maddow challenged Lieberman to appear on her show to defend his partisan politics and poor committee leadership. And today, Senators Carper and Dorgan came forward to claim Lieberman should be punished for actively campaigning against Barack Obama and other Democrats throughout the election, an amazing twist considering Carper was Lieberman's Delaware campaign chairman when he ran for president in 2004.
All of this comes on the heels of our Lieberman Must Go campaign, in which over 1,700 people have already called their Senators and asked them to take away Lieberman's gavel tomorrow. Forget the myth about needing Lieberman for a 60-seat filibuster proof majority — or check out Mark Karlin's post at Buzzflash if you need that myth debunked. Instead, think about what would happen if Lieberman were to remain chair of the Homeland Security committee. All of his ugly smears of President-elect Obama would go unpunished. All of his hawkish views of Iraq and Iran would go unchecked. And all of his ineptitude when it comes to investigating the Bush administration for Hurricane Katrina or war profiteers would go unnoticed, as he sets his subpoena power sites on Obama.
It's not to late to call your Senators and tell them Lieberman Must Go.
We now have our first Dem Senator who has come on the record and called for Joe Lieberman to be booted from his plum spot on the Homeland Security committee.
In an interview with Vermont Public Radio today, Senator Patrick Leahy left no doubt whatsoever: He believes Lieberman should be given the push:
"Every Senator will have to vote the way he or she believes they should," Leahy said, in a reference to the upcoming vote on Lieberman's fate in the Dem caucus next week. "I'm one who does not feel that somebody should be rewarded with a major chairmanship after doing what he did."
"I felt some of the attacks that he was involved in against Senator Obama…went way beyond the pale," Leahy continued. "I thought they were not fair, I thought they were not legitimate, I thought they perpetuated some of these horrible myths that were being run about Senator Obama."
"I would feel that had I done something similar," Leahy concluded, "that I would not be chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in the next Congress."
Many in the blogosphere, including OpenLeft (here and here), have noted that the removal of Joe Lieberman from his committee post isn't about revenge — it's about political pragmatism. In specific, it's about making sure a guy who has repeatedly displayed his deep personal and irrational hatred for Barack Obama doesn't have the subpoena power to embark on witch hunts against President Obama. MSNBC's Rachel Maddow last night took all of those arguments and summed them up in a really great piece.
To reiterate: removing Lieberman is not about revenge, it's about helping make sure the next administration doesn't have to spend all it's time fending off a crazed McCarthyist with subpoena power.
Maddow's final point is really important — it's a point I made earlier: This idea that Democrats can just strip him of his chairmanship the moment he gets on his first witch hunt is absurd. Once he's down that road, he becomes almost impossible to control, because he will be portrayed as the Honest Crusader, and Democratic efforts to restrain him will be likened to Richard Nixon's "midnight massacre" where he fired Archibald Cox. It will, in short, create a martyr more powerful than even a Chairman Lieberman.
What part of "Lieberman Must Go" don't Democrats understand? The Huffington Post reports that President-elect Obama and Senators Dodd, Carper, Nelson and Salazar not only want Lieberman to remain in the caucus, but they're seeking alternative ways to punish him rather than simply taking away his Homeland Security Committee chairmanship. To complicate matters, Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN) said on Rachel Maddow's show that Lieberman needs to offer a "sincere apology" in order to hang onto his gavel.
While I would get a kick out of seeing Lieberman offer a profound mea culpa — particularly on Maddow's show — a heartfelt apology simply will not undo months and months of Lieberman's partisan rancor. And for Bayh to suggest that Democrats might actually need Lieberman to bring an end to the Iraq war is downright preposterous, considering both he and Lieberman have been two of the war's biggest proponents.
The reality is, though, that we're running out of time if we want to make our voices heard about Lieberman's fate. The entire Democratic caucus will convene soon to decide whether to strip Lieberman of his committee chairmanship. That's why you must call your Senators today and tell them "Lieberman Must Go!" Over 1,300 people have already made the call.
