Is Orin being honest? No.

Deborah Orin throws out a challenge: IS DEAN BEING HONEST? WELL, DEFINE ‘HONEST’.

Sure, I can do that. First, let’s see an example of dis-honesty. Heck, we don’t have to look any farther than the end of Orin’s column:

Dean also said this week, “I opposed the Iraq war very early on – and the reason why is I simply did not think the president was being candid about the uranium deal with Iraq.”

There’s no doubt Dean opposed the war early, but not because of President Bush’s uranium claims. They didn’t come until very late, in Bush’s Jan. 28 State of the Union speech, just weeks before the war began March 19.

Oh really?

September 2002: “Powell, appearing before a closed hearing of the Senate Foreign Relation Committee, also cited Iraq’s attempt to obtain uranium for Niger as evidence of [Iraq’s] persistent nuclear ambitions.” (New Yorker, 3/31/2003)

December 2002: In a letter released on Tuesday, the International Atomic Energy Agency said it was forced to wait six weeks for the evidence – from December 2002 to early February 2003 – at a critical time, when it was investigating US charges that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear programme.

During that period, the US several times repeated the allegations, most notably in President George W. Bush’s January State of the Union address. (Alden, Edward, Guy Dinmore and James Harding, Financial Times, 7/09/2003)

“Washington, for the first time, publicly identified Niger as the alleged seller of the nuclear materials [to Iraq].” (New Yorker, 3/31/2003)

These clips are from the Dean website itself.

So, define ‘honest’? Ok: honest is the opposite of Deborah Orin.

Filed under: politics/2004