Message to Dems: Get One (re Iraq) -- Salon.com

By Jeremy Heimans and Tim Dixon

Dec. 17, 2003 | With the capture of Saddam Hussein, the Democrats now stand at a critical juncture. Either they reframe the national debate about Iraq -- and fast -- or they face the same likely fate as Saddam: a spectacular public death timed to coincide with next year's election.

<SNIP> the Democrats risk again making the terrible mistake of allowing the Bush administration to reframe the Iraq debate and the way in which voters judge the success of its policy. Since early summer, the major Democratic presidential candidates <SNIP> have been setting themselves up for a fall on Iraq even while stridently criticizing Bush. It was around this time that the major candidates coalesced around a fairly consistent message about Iraq as a "quagmire": The occupation has been a mess, the administration has bungled the diplomacy and postwar planning, and more international help is urgently needed to set things right. This message might be accurate, and it has helped chip away at the president's popularity in recent months. But it leaves the Democrats badly exposed when, as was perfectly foreseeable, things started to look "better" in Iraq (as Saddam's capture suggests to most Americans), or when Americans simply tune out (witness forgotten Afghanistan). <SNIP> Bush, meanwhile, is relatively unscathed by the failure to find WMD, successfully distracting the country with images of the search for lice in Saddam's unkempt hair. <SNIP>

So is it too late to reframe the national debate on Iraq? No -- just look at (the reframing) the Bush administration has been doing ever since it "launched" the idea of intervention in Iraq around Labor Day last year. To recap: In the first phase, the administration said it wanted "regime change" -- a suitably vague formulation <SNIP>. In the second phase, <SNIP> the drumbeat was "Saddam Hussein must be disarmed" because he posed a burning threat to America. After the war, the message shifted yet again. With no WMD and no proven links to terrorists, the new justification for the war is simply "the people of Iraq are better off now that Saddam Hussein has gone." <SNIP> At each stage, the major Democratic candidates (with the exception, largely, of Howard Dean) ceded the basic assumptions of the administration's argument and quibbled instead over the how, when or with whom. <SNIP>

The reason many Americans don't seem too concerned that the president misled them over the war is that they think he is still protecting them. To make the attack on the Iraq policy stick, Democrats will need to use the weapon Republicans have been using ever since 9/11 -- fear. Remember, Americans supported the war in Iraq on the basis of fear, because the president linked Iraq to terrorism. The fear of a major new terrorist attack matters to Americans far more than the suffering of the Iraqi people, our relationship with allies, or even relatively low-level American military casualties in Iraq, <SNIP>.

To counter this, Democrats need a fear campaign of their own, but one grounded in the real risks the administration is creating. This should be based on the message that every day we mismanage Iraq we also rejuvenate al-Qaida, producing thousands of new recruits for future terror attacks. <SNIP> Democrats must also find a way to make the failure to turn up evidence of WMD or links between Saddam and al-Qaida damage the president personally. It is too late to simply remind voters that no weapons or links were found. Rather the issue needs to be used as a testimonial to the president's lack of integrity, and invoked on a variety of domestic and foreign policy issues <SNIP> As Americans really start worrying about the risks of further terrorist attacks as a consequence of Iraq, they are also more likely to look with skepticism and outrage at (the president's) prewar claims about WMDs. <SNIP>

MORE at http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2003/12/17/saddam_dems/index.html

exactly on target!!

The Dems need to make absolutely clear the Bush is making the US less secure, less safe.

Once there's a democratic nominee, we have to hope that former high ranking officials who are respected will come out publicly and criticize the Bush foreign policy as a disaster.

I think that things are getting so bad overall that they will be willing to do this. I just watched "Uncovered" the film about the lies of the Bushies on going to war with Iraq and was very impressed by the fact that so many insiders came out to tell the truth.

We have to hope, and the campaigns have to pressure for this, that high level people, for example Brzezinski, Albright, Nunn, etc. with high profiles and experience in foreign policy, press the case that Bush's foreign policy is absolutely a disaster for the US, for security and safety.

is one way people have started saying that Bu$h has made us less safe & less secure.