Sleaze

This is the kind of thing that should make a person the target of a censure motion in the Senate (DeMint rips war ‘wimps’ by James Rosen The State/McClatchey 05/30/07):

Sen. Jim DeMint on Tuesday blamed Democratic "wimps" in Congress for American casualties in Iraq, and cited Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for special censure.

During a luncheon speech to 100 constituents in Spartanburg, DeMint also took issue with the now widespread belief that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, saying the executed Iraqi dictator had "stockpiles of chemical weapons" that still exist.

DeMint devoted most of his comments to the current immigration debate in the Senate. But he spoke about the war when a woman in the audience stood and asked him how long U.S. troops will remain in Iraq.

"Al-Qaida knows that we’ve got a lot of wimps in Congress," DeMint said. "I believe a lot of the casualties can be laid at the feet of all the talk in Congress about how we’ve got to get out, we’ve got to cut and run."

Asked later who he had targeted in his comments, DeMint replied:

"To a large degree, the Democratic party and those who basically declared defeat like Harry Reid."

Rosen notes that DeMint has apparently achieved a dubious "first" in the Iraq War debate:

While Vice President Dick Cheney and other Bush administration officials have accused war critics of giving comfort to the enemy, DeMint's comments are believed to be the first time a supporter of the president’s war policies has directly blamed critics for American casualties.

He said he thinks al-Qaida strategists in Iraq "feel that if they continue to do harm to American soldiers, they will eventually win in Congress and the funding will be cut off. That's the clearest signal the Democrats have sent."

These people see things through such an ideological fog that they think the whole world is running according to their culture-war dogmas. Worse than pathetic.

I saw this link via Steve Soto of The Left Coaster (Grab A Rifle DeMint 05/31/07), who notes that DeMint "was draft age during the Vietnam War but went to college instead, and who has military age children".

Tags: iraq war, jim demint