Howard Dean appeared yesterday on Face the Nation. I thought he did a great job countering spin and staying on message.
Face the Nation Transcript (warning this is a PDF file)
He came out swinging:
First thing we need to do have a plan for leaving. And the second thing we need to do is to make sure that to the best of our ability we can influence the writing of the constitution. It looks like today, and this could change--as of today, it looks like women will be worse off in Iraq than they were when Saddam Hussein was president of Iraq. That's a pretty sad commentary on this administration's ability to do anything right.
Remember this quote
Asked if the President should meet with Cindy Sheehan:
Sure, he should. I mean, he's--he asked her to give up her son. She did give up her son. There's been many American women and men who've lost their lives and we're trying to understand for what. Today--today, also in your paper, there was an article that said that this--the troops still don't have the proper equipment. What are these people doing that are running the armed forces? I'll tell you what they're doing. People like the president, and people like Secretary Rumsfeld, are ignoring the career experts like General Shinseki who told them before we went in that we needed adequate equipment and adequate troops. They thrust that aside. These people do not know what they're doing that are running this country. They have no conception of what it's like to fight a war because none of them ever have. And that's the great--that would have been the great positive that John Kerry would have brought to the presidency.
On what the Democrats plan is for getting out of Iraq:
Well, Bob, the president of the United States is commander in chief. It is up to him to come up for a plan. You can't expect a congressman and senators who don't have the same access to intelligence as the president does to come up with a plan to withdraw our troops from Iraq. We look--the president got us into Iraq 'cause people were willing to trust the president, even some Democrats were willing to trust the president in assuming he knew what he was doing.
On Intelligent Design (my personal favorite):
The president has been anti-science for a long time. This is the most anti-scientific regime I've seen in my lifetime
If you don't mind PDF, read the whole transcript. There are so many good points he makes. Better yet if you know a link to view Dean's interview let me know and I will post it.
Now the fun part, that venerable news organization, the Washington Times came out with this:
http://washtimes.com/national/20050814-115425-7424r.htm
In a brief statement yesterday, the Republican National Committee said, "Dean's wild assertion that Iraqi women would be better off living under Saddam Hussein than democracy is not only counterproductive to meaningful debate, it demeans the hard work of American servicemen and women serving in Iraq."
I suspect that we will see more of this revisionary reporting in the lead up to Melhman's Face the Nation appearance next week.
Update [2005-8-15 18:6:25 by NYC Sophia]: You can view Howard Dean on Face the Nation here http://www.crooksandliars.com/
Thanks inclusiveheart