Howard Dean said "again that the capture of" Saddam "did not make 'America safer,'" the Washington Post reports. "But in rapid succession," Sen. John Kerry, Sen. Joseph Lieberman and Rep. Dick Gephardt "assailed Dean as wrongheaded, inconsistent and exhibiting dubious judgment on one of the campaign's paramount issues."
Kerry, "who has been highly critical of Dean's foreign policy experience, is now waging an all-out assault on his statements on the war in Iraq, which Dean opposed and Kerry supported," the Des Moines Register reports. The New York Times says Kerry attacked Dean "as inexperienced, inconsistent and weak on foreign policy, and maintained that Dean lacked both 'the judgment to be president' and 'the credibility to be elected president' for asserting that America was no safer because of" Saddam's capture."
Lieberman "argued that Dean's antiwar stand has become part of a larger problem for the former Vermont governor and onetime physician -- naysaying on many issues, without offering constructive alternatives," the Los Angeles Times reports. "Dr. Dean," Lieberman said, "has become Dr. No."
However, the New York Sun notes that a former Democratic candidate, Sen. Bob Graham, had kinder things to say: "I thought the speech that Governor Dean gave earlier this week on foreign policy laid out a visionary blueprint for Americans."
