Disclosure: I worked for the Lamont campaign doing web design and production and some writing for the official blog (from 9/5/06 to 11/07/06).

Thursday, May 25, 2006

 

Lieberman to be Honored by Neocons Tonight

He once said "some of my best friends are neocons." And those friends are honoring him tonight at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C.

Sens. Lieberman and Kyl (R-AZ), honorary co-chairs of the resurrected Committee on the Present Danger, will reportedly be honored with the group's first annual "statesman award" tonight:

"The Statesman Award will be given each year to a person or persons who have exemplified statesmanship and thoughtful leadership in support of the nation's security. Senators Lieberman and Kyl certainly fit that description," said R. James Woolsey, co-Chairman of the Committee.

Who is this group? An Alternet article from 2004 sheds some light:

Chaired by former CIA director James Woolsey, the reborn Committee has 49 members in all, including many well known hawks and neoconservatives affiliated with the American Enterprise Institute (Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Danielle Pletka, Joshua Muravchik, Laurie Mylroie, Newt Gingrich, Michael Rubin), former Attorney General Edwin Meese, Victor Davis Hanson of Stanford's Hoover Institution, Norm Podhoretz of Commentary fame, Charles Kupperman of Boeing Missile Defense Systems, former Reagan official Jack Kemp, former Congressional staffer-turned-lobbyist and Project for the New American Century board member Randy Scheunemann; and several anti-arms control hawks – Henry Cooper, Jim Woolsey himself, Kenneth Adelman, Max Kampelman [founder of the Committee's 1976 iteration] – reminiscent of the Committee's earlier two incarnations.

And what is their purpose?

So, what then, are the Committee's real goals? They seem to be twofold: First, to broaden the "war on terror" in the American public mind beyond al-Qaeda, targeting a vast network of interlinked "Islamist-jihadist" terror groups worldwide, including Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and their state sponsors, and to think about this war on terror not just from the standpoint of the US as the potential victim, but of key US allies as being potential victims.

The second goal appears to be to lobby influential American policymakers to support a US defense posture and weapons programs that Committee members believe would benefit the security of both the US and key allies, such as Israel.

Not all conservatives are ready to embrace this essentially neoconservative, if bipartisan Committee.

Not all conservatives were ready, but Joe Lieberman certainly was when he co-wrote (with Sen. Kyl) a Washington Post op-ed introducing the group in July 2004.

Anyway, good for Joe. He could use a break, some time among his real friends.

I'm sure he will get an infinitely warmer reception from the leading neoconservative ideologues in D.C. tonight than he received from the members of his own party in his own state in Hartford on Friday night.

Update: Check out Joe's comments from a July 2004 press conference announcing the reincarnation of CPD.
Comments:
"First, to broaden the "war on terror" in the American public mind beyond al-Qaeda, targeting a vast network of interlinked "Islamist-jihadist" terror groups worldwide, including Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and their state sponsors, and to think about this war on terror not just from the standpoint of the US as the potential victim, but of key US allies as being potential victims."

translation: their mission is to conspire and propagandize to make israel's enemies OUR enemies, SOLEY for ISRAEL'S benefit.

treasonists all here, and they should all be imprisoned for conspiring to embroil the USA in a foreign war against israel's enemies, a war which has no benefit for our own country.

so funny, even bush/cheney no longer satisfy this group of sick treasonous bastards.
 
John McCain back "good friend" Lieberman.

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Good_friend_McCain_not_taking_sides_0525.html
 
I found an interesting perspective on this event.

An Excerpt:
But at my table, indeed sitting right next to me, was Karen Finney, Sen. Lieberman's Director of Communications, who is an utterly charming and deeply knowledgeable woman. Lieberman, as some of you will know, is facing a serious challenge in the primaries from the Democratic Party's loony-left--Ned Lamont, a millionaire Connecticut resident, a champagne socialist by anyone's definition, whose ad campaign tends to highlight the deranged. Although Lieberman is publicly identified as being at odds with his party on national security, the point that I always like making is that, probably 90% of the time, he's voting with his party, and even when he isn't, he's rarely the deciding vote. And if Connecticut Democrats, especially those who disagree with him on, say, the war on terrorism, heard his speech last night, where he expressed his loyalty to his party and showed how his views fit comfortably within the Democratic Party, I don't see how voters could ditch him in favour of an untried, overly-bumptious, limousine liberal who in 2000 probably drove his Jaguar to the polling station to cast a vote for Nader because it would rebalance the cosmos.
 
Thanks, spazeboy. Interesting how there were no reporters at the event, isn't it? It's almost like Joe didn't wan't anyone to know about the event....
 
Spazeboy, you sat at the same table with Karen Finney???!!!?? She's a Lieberman supporter? Did she do any weird things with vegetables and body parts?

Next time you hear someone spouting off about what a good Democrat Lieberman is, you might want to have all the facts and figures of his awful votes on hand. Aside from Iraq, he's been particularly Republican on Labor Rights and, of course, corporate subsidies (a voting record that has been richly rewarded by his sponsors from Big Business). His voting record is closer to being a pure GOP voting record than every Senate Democrat with exactly 5 exceptions, frightened, weak, reactionary Democrats Tom Carper (DE), Blanche Lincoln (AR), Mary Landrieu (LA), Max Baucus (MT) and Ben Nelson (NE). Connecticut deserves better-- much better-- than Joe Lieberman.
 
DWT - That wasn't spazeboy's comment. He was quoting from the link he provided.

Wouldn't want you to think he was on the dark side!
 
DWT, I checked your facts and figures. It seems like Lieberman isn't that bad after all. He has a reasonably high Progressive index of 76%, and ranks 39 out of 100 in the Senate. Not the to the right of some Democrats, but clearly not a Republican or Bush supporter.
 
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