Joe Lieberman

Don't Criticize Escalation, Lieberman Begs

Paul Kiel | January 23, 2007, 12:19PM

During Gen. David Petraeus' hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee today, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) took time out to "make a plea to [his] colleagues in the Senate" to "put the brakes" on the gathering bipartisan momentum for a nonbinding resolution condemning the president's plan to increase troops in Iraq.

The Senate should "step back for a moment and give you [Gen. Petraeus] a chance…. Perhaps a last chance, to succeeed in Iraq," Lieberman said. "If God forbid, you are unable to succeed, then there will be plenty of time for the resolutions of disapproval or the other alternatives that have been contemplated."

Joe Lieberman

Historical Parallels Gone Wild

Paul Kiel | January 5, 2007, 1:47PM

We were just watching Sen. Joe Lieberman's (D-CT) talk at the American Enterprise Institute, when our collective jaw dropped as he set off on a death-defying string of historical analogies. It seems that his ability to survey our times with Churchillian clarity short-circuited:

Here's the transcript as I could best transcribe it:

There are people who have spoken of this moment in history as if it were the 30’s, and there are some parallels, I fear, there. People say the war in Iraq is comparable to the Spanish Civil War, and the war in Iraq, to the larger war against Islamist terrorism, comparable to the Spanish Civil War, to the Second World War, the late 30’s and the failure to grasp the growing threat of fascism in Europe until it was almost too late. The painful irony of this moment in our history, is that while in some senses it is comparable to the 1930’s, it’s also already 1942. Because Pearl Harbor [9/11], in this war, has already happened.