Just when Howard Dean appeared to begin to recover in the polls from his primal scream fiasco, as noted by The American Thinker's Richard Baehr, he sabotaged his own effort. The latest gaffe will drive the last nail in his political coffin. There is no longer time for recovery. Dean's rise in the estimation of New Hampshire primary voters is over. He is playing out a script which doesn't end well. The title should either be Howard's End or Death Wish.

Speaking Sunday in New Hampshire, with the primary election less than 48 hours away, the AP reports he said,

"You can say that it's great that Saddam is gone and I'm sure that a lot of Iraqis feel it is great that Saddam is gone. But a lot of them gave their lives. And their living standard is a whole lot worse now than it was before."

Dean is apparently unable to stop picking at the scab of his obsession with the evil he feels George Bush wrought by fighting the war with Saddam. This compulsion leads him to deny obvious truths, such as that the capture of Saddam Hussein has made America safer, and the end of a brutal kleptocracy has made the Iraqis both safer and richer.

On a factual basis, his claim is ridiculous. While there were some civilian casualties in the American bombing, these must be balanced against the end of Saddam's domestic killing machine, which murdered hundred of thousands of Iraqis. The killing fields of Iraq have already yielded abundant proof of the magnitude of the slaughter. The number of Iraqis who would have given their lives to Saddam had he remained in power this past several months probably exceeds any reasonable calculus of civilian war casualties. The Iraqis are ahead of the game, on a net basis, and the margin increases every day that people are no longer fed feet first into the chipper machines.

As for the Iraqi standard of living, it is obviously improving rapidly. The number of cars on the roads of Iraq has multiplied many—fold, which accounts for the well—reported shortages of gasoline, especially when aggravated by the pipeline sabotage undertaken by Ba'athist remnants and Islamist terrorists. Longtime observers of Iraq agree that the streets bustle with entrepreneurial energy, unleashed by the end of the oppressive and greedy corrupt rule of the Saddamites. Electricity production exceeds prewar levels. More Iraqis were able to participate in this year's Haj to Mecca than were in the past few years under Saddam.

On what basis, then, does Dean make his claims? More likely than not, he reads, and believes, the editorialists of the New York Times, and gains a vague impression of dire straits for Iraqis from the ABCNBCCBS newscasts, the only ones available on his non—cable—equipped home television, which have no doubt remained his sources of choice when on the road. Thus, his obsession with Iraq—as—blunder gained enough reinforcement to lead him to speak obvious nonsense.

In other words, Howard Dean is a victim of media bias.

Posted by Thomas  01 25 04