Howard Dean Comes Full Circle

At Hot Air, Allahpundit writes:

To cleanse the palate, via RCP, skip ahead to 6:00 and see for yourself the depths to which this guy will sink to defend interventionism once there’s a Democrat giving the “go” order in the Middle East instead of a Republican. Remember, in 2003, Dean-o was the anti-war candidate, the guy who galvanized the nutroots by lashing Bush on Iraq. Fast-forward eight years, past a stint as party chairman, and now he’s mumbling about having to “take chances.” When Joe Klein calls him on the hypocrisy, he waves him away with leftist boilerplate about having been lied to about WMD. In fact, though, Dean opposed the Iraq war before we knew anything about the fate of Saddam’s weapons program; he was thinking about running for president and saw an opening among the anti-war crowd and he filled it. The whole reason progressives hold him in such esteem is that he questioned the war before the WMD issue came to the forefront — just as Obama did, long before his own metamorphosis into a humanitarian interventionist.

Before skipping ahead to the six-minute mark in the Real Clear Politics video, skip ahead to about 45 second into this clip (or watch the whole thing if you’ve never seen it before; it’s remarkably instructive), to see Dean in action in 1998 defending President Clinton and Vice President Gore’s calls for regime change in Iraq. “There are such things as international outlaws. I’m not sure China is, but I’m quite sure Iran and Iraq are,” Dean was saying back then on the DC chat show circuit.

[youtube N5p-qIq32m8]

Of course, by 2003, much more pressing domestic issues would occupy Howard’s mind.

Update: And since Joe Biden is featured on the above video’s screen-cap, it’s worth mentioning that he’s made some remarkable pivots himself on the topic.