Day of reckoning for US warmongers

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - Tuesday’s defeat in Connecticut’s primary election of US President George W Bush’s “favorite Democrat”, Senator Joe Lieberman, by a little-known anti-war candidate marks a major setback to neo-conservative hopes of maintaining bipartisan support for the administration’s aggressive foreign policies, particularly in the Middle East.

Lieberman, the Democrats’ vice-presidential candidate in the 2000 campaign, received strong support from prominent neo-conservatives, especially those who had led the campaign to invade Iraq, in the closing days of the primary battle, when it became clear that his challenger, Ned Lamont, was on the verge of victory.

“What drives so many Democrats crazy about Lieberman is not simply his support for the Iraq war,” complained Weekly Standard editor and co-founder of the Project for a New American Century, William Kristol, in response to polls last week showing that Lamont had pulled ahead of the three-term incumbent by a large margin. “It’s that he’s unashamedly pro-American.”

In the event, Lieberman, who was backed in the primary by both Bill and Hillary Clinton, among other prominent establishment Democrats, did not do as poorly as last week’s polls indicated, losing by a 48-52% vote.

The relative closeness of the final results clearly encouraged him to announce, even as he conceded the primary on Tuesday night, that he will run as an Independent against both Lamont and the Republican candidate, Alan Schlesinger, in the general election in November.

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