things that make you say "hmm..."

Howard Dean on Sunday:

Howard Dean on Sunday launched an attack on President Bush's foreign policy acumen, saying Bush has “no understanding of defense,” is conducting diplomacy by “petulance” and lacks “the backbone to stand up against the Saudis.”

At a Merrimack high school, Dean said of Bush, “I think he's made us weaker. He doesn't understand what it takes to defend this country, that you have to have high moral purpose. He doesn't understand that you better keep troop morale high rather than just flying over for Thanksgiving,” as Bush did last week.

At a meeting in Manchester, Dean said, “Mr. President, if you'll pardon me, I'll teach you a little about defense.”

The former commander-in-chief of the Vermont National Guard on Monday:

Iran is a more complex problem because the problem support as clearly verifiable as it is in North Korea. Also, we have less-fewer levers much the key, I believe, to Iran is pressure through the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union is supplying much of the equipment that Iran, I believe, most likely is using to set itself along the path of developing nuclear weapons. We need to use that leverage with the Soviet Union and it may require us to buying the equipment the Soviet Union was ultimately going to sell to Iran to prevent Iran from them developing nuclear weapons.

In Dean's defense (like I will be doing that very often) he did refer to the USSR as “former” elsewhere in the interview. But just imagine the headlines if President Bush was to make such a gaffe—especially four times in three sentences, and especially with such masterful turns of phrase as “we have fewer levers much the key…”

And it isn't as if Dean's core constituency is any less factually challenged.

As part of an effort to spread “peace quotations” around the world, anti-war activists are pushing Abraham Lincoln's declaration that — “There's no honorable way to kill, no gentle way to destroy. There's nothing good in war except its ending.” Thing is, according to the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, Lincoln never said that. In fact, the quote comes from a character playing Lincoln in an episode of Star Trek.