Thanks to Renee for the transcript and the link to the audio. We missed it and appreciated her work doing this. Dean is pretty outspoken.
http://howardempowered.blogspot.com/2005/12/howard-dean-on-stephanie-miller-show.htmlHoward: I think Democrats are coming together. I had a long talk with a group of senators this weekend about this. You know, there's different points of view, but when Jack Mutha stood up, a 37 year Marine corps veteran, he really, I think, got the attention of the country. And the basis of some of his (Murtha's) discussions were based on a paper by a guy named Lawrence Korb, who was oddly enough an official in the Reagan administration, who *has* a way out, and I think it makes a lot of sense--
Stephanie: --I do too--
Howard: --and the president is flying off someplace not paying attention. But this is a sensible plan, he calls it strategic redeployment. What he says is that we ought to take 20,000 of the troops and send them to Afghanistan, because we need more troops there, and that *is* a war that has something to do with national defense. Then we ought to bring home the 80,000 National Guardsmen and Reserves--they have no business being in a war like this. They shouldn't have been there in the first place. That we ought to take 14,000 troops and put them in a nearby friendly country. Because we are going to have a real problem--I mean this isn't going to go away when leave, all this chaos over there. And we are going to have to deal with Zarqawi, which was not a problem before--
Then they talk about how the Republicans call names and make people afraid to stand up for what they believe in.
Stephanie: Governor, I hope we've learned our lesson though as Democrats that--when you add in the phony pre-war intelligence--that we have to stop being afraid of being called weak on terror or weak on national security. I was saying earlier in the show, I feel like the Republicans take away the ability for us to have a reasonable discussion about what to do in Iraq, because they immediately call you a coward, basically. You're a "cut and run" guy--you're a coward.
Howard: I blame the Democrats for that, not the Republicans. The Republicans are a bunch of name callers and all that, but we just need to stand up against them. Jack Murtha did that. And Harry Reid did it when he shut down the Senate and said "You promised us a year ago you'd tell the truth and do an investigation, you haven't done it, and we're going to do it now. That's the kind of thing that makes people say yes, the Democrats will stand up and fight for us. If the Democrats get intimidated by a president who hasn't been truthful with us, then we deserve what we get. And I think that those days are coming to an end.
And he used the word "incompetent" 4 times in one paragraph.
Stephanie: You can be honest with us, 'cause there's hardly anyone listening, Governor. When you see the latest poll numbers every week, do you giggle, a little bit?
Howard: No. (Stephanie can be heard giggling in the background). I don't take any great pleasure in the poll numbers because this is fundamentally bad for America. You know, the Republican party, I think they're corrupt, and they have not done the things that need to be done in America. But this is not so great for America to have three more years of a leader who people don't trust and don't believe. Who is unfortunately incompetent...incompetent in conducting the war, incompetent in dealing with the economy, incompetent in dealing with national disasters...this is a sad presidency and it's a sad day for America. But we're going to change that. We have some things that we are going to do that are going to improve things dramatically.
Thanks to Renee who does transcripts so quickly and so well.
The site has been down most of the day has have most blog-spot sites, but it appears to be back up now.
Excellent interview.
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