Readers of the Cleveland Plain Dealer this week might be excused for wondering if Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota is beginning to sound an awful lot like ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
 Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D. |
In a front-page story Monday, the paper quoted Daschle declaring, in reference to the United States, “The evil ones now find themselves in crisis, and this is God’s will for them.”
In a correction, however, noted by the Wall Street Journal’s Best of the Web, the Cleveland daily said because of an editing error the quote from an audiotape purportedly of Saddam Hussein was misattributed to the South Dakota senator.
The paper said, “It was the speaker on the tape, not Daschle,” who said the Baathist leadership should return to power.
The story had Daschle saying the only solution for Iraq was for “the zealous Iraqi sons, who ran its affairs and brought it out of backwardness … to return … to run its affairs anew.”
Actual comments by Daschle, nevertheless, have been denounced by Republicans as verging on treason.
In March, just prior to the Iraq war, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., said remarks in a speech made by the Senate minority leader “may not give comfort to our adversaries, but they come mighty close.”
In the March 17 speech, Daschle said he was “saddened that this president failed so miserably at diplomacy that we’re now forced to war.”
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