New York Times Hits Bayh For Membership In NeoCon Committee For Liberation Of Iraq

New York Times Hits Bayh For Membership In Committee For Liberation Of Iraq
By Greg Sargent - August 12, 2008, 9:55AM

Today's New York Times profiles Senator Evan Bayh as a Veep candidate and hits on a point we've been banging away at here: Bayh's Veep prospects are clouded considerably by the fact that he co-chaired the neocon Committee for the Liberation of Iraq along with John McCain:

Mr. Bayh's support of authorizing force in Iraq stands in sharp contrast to Mr. Obama's oft-stated view that he showed the good judgment to oppose the conflict from the start. After his vote, Mr. Bayh in early 2003 joined Mr. McCain as an honorary co-chairman of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, which made regime change in Iraq its central cause.

"He was not only wrong, he was aggressively wrong," said Tom Andrews, national director of the Win Without War coalition, referring to Mr. Bayh. "In my view, he would contradict if not undermine the Obama message of change, turning a new page on foreign policy and national security."

Indeed. Bayh would muddle Obama's message considerably. One key to Obama's candidacy has been a general refusal to let the terms of the foreign policy debate be dictated by the GOP and a willingness to challenge Republican frames on national security. Bayh, by contrast, is a darling of the class of Democrats who leap through GOP frames whenever Republicans say "jump," like so many trained seals jumping through hoops.
Bayh would indeed undermine Obama's message that it's time to turn the page on foreign policy. To be sure, any member of Congress who voted for the war would face a bit of a similar problem as Obama's Veep. But Bayh's co-chairmanship with the Committee, along with McCain, puts him in a separate class entirely. As Tom Andrews told The Times, Bayh "was not only wrong, he was aggressively wrong." The GOP talking points would write themselves.


http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/new_york_times_hits_bayh_for_m.php

The NYT must of gotten the call from Karl. "OK Boys, get Bayh."

It would turn off a lot of his Progressive voters. That wouldn't be such a good thing....given his cave on FISA and some other things.

I'm not sure there is a clothespin large enough.

Wait... found one!

I will be sorely disappointed if he is; he doesn't fit the 'change' message.

I wrote Mr. Clemons and asked him if he has any insight into Evan Bayh's neoconservative connections.

I would be greatly relieved if someone could assure me that this was just normal politics in Washington and nothing to worry about.

"This is a hallmark of Evan Bayh. A former chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council and a past recipient Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson Award for Distinguished Service from the neoconservative security think tank JINSA, Bayh has been running to the right of his Democratic colleagues on foreign affairs for a while now.

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/02/03/evan_bayh_tough_but_smart.php

-----

The Committee for the Liberation of Iraq (CLI) is pleased to welcome Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) as an Honorary Co-Chairman. Bayh becomes the third U.S. Senator to join the committee after Sens. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) announced their participation on January 28.

The Committee is a neo-con group that was formed to propagandize the country into war. It boasted such illustrious neocon members as Bill Kristol, former CIA director James Woolsey, and even McCain senior foreign policy adviser and Chalabi-bamboozler Randy Scheunemann, whom Josh has been blogging about.

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/07/bayh_as_veep_he_cochaired_wing.php

Sorry to hear Bayh jumped in with the backward-thinking group who want to handle all conflict with open warfare because they are affiliated with war profiteers. They intend to handle the three or four more wars they want to start by continued privatization of military services, using our tax dollars to pay double for military services we used to do in-house.

We need intense international cooperation to solve complex ecological problems. We will have to deftly handle negotiations with all kinds of friends and enemies.

We will need to use our military resources wisely and reverse a lot of the privatization the Bush-Cheney gang have implemented. We need to reverse the privatization so we can exercise more quality control. We didn't electrocute our own soldiers in the shower when we were doing the jobs in house. We need a more modern results oriented thinker, willing to reverse course when it has led us into massive debt and demoralizing low quality services.

Edited to add:
We need leaders with the courage to stand up to the automatic statement that all privatization makes things more efficient. The Bush team has proven that is not so. The Bush team has shown how horrible military services can become if they are privatized. They've allowed contractors to lose billions and perform horribly. They've allowed huge profits to be made from simple military services we used to do much more efficiently in house. The Obama team will need courage to face the truth and judge the privatization of the military by its results, which have been disastrous.

--like a radioactive sore. Why would he want to throw that away? Besides which, Bayh is a fucking BORE, and we could use an attack dog in that position.

sums it up nicely!