A RARE RESPECTABLE POST-WAR POSITION FROM THE LEFT

Joe Lieberman's presidential campaign may be stalled, but at least he understands that his party is headed for electoral ruin if its White House hopefuls keep on questioning the war that toppled Saddam Hussein.

Four of the candidates actually voted to authorize force in Iraq. Yet all but Lieberman are now running away from that position - and accusing President Bush, in increasingly strident tones, of deceiving the American people.

"Some in my party threaten to send a message that they don't know a just war when they see it," the Connecticut senator said in a speech last week.

"And, more broadly, [that they] are not prepared to use our military strength to protect our security and the cause of freedom."

Indeed, he said, the furor over those 16 words in Bush's State of the Union Address has a "disquieting zeal," adding that too many Democrats have seized on the speech "as though it offers proof that they were right all along" to oppose the war. And the same, he said, "is true of some who supported the war but now seem to have forgotten why" - referring specifically to rivals John Kerry and Dick Gephardt.

Lieberman also singled out Howard Dean as one of those who fail to appreciate that "Congress did the right thing in authorizing the war."

Moreover, said Sen. Joe, "nothing we have learned since the end of the conflict should make us doubt that we were right to liberate the Iraqi people from Saddam Hussein and protect America and the rest of the world from his aggression."

We couldn't have said it better ourselves.