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SEPTEMBER 5, 2003
- Today we give you the most charged issue from the debate,
letting the candidates talk to you in their own words. The
coverage in the rest of the press is the usual silly combination of
oversimplifying, ignoring most of what was said, and playing it in a
biased way in terms of their preferences or predispositions.
Here, the candidates words are yours to think about.
IRAQ – GOING BACK TO UN
DEAN – I believed from the
beginning we should not go into Iraq without the UN as our partner…
we can not do this by ourselves… we have to have reconstruction of
Iraq with the UN, with NATO, and preferably with Muslim troops,
preferably Arab-speaking troops from our allies in Egypt and
Morocco. We can not have US troops serving under UN
command… This President is going to have to go back to the very
people he humiliated, our allies… and hope they will now agree with
us that we need their help there… and that’s not a surprise.
GEPHARDT – I told President Bush…
he needed to go to the UN and get their help… I told him we are not
going to need them going in, we are going to need them coming out.
We have a President who has broken up the alliances that Democratic
and Republican presidents have put together over 70 years. We need
our friends now. We can’t afford a billion dollars a week. We
can’t be losing all the people that are being lost over there. It
would be a big difference in Iraq if we had an international force
over there and not just US and British troops. He is not doing his
job. When I am President… we will again lead a world alliance
against terrorism and the other problems that we face.
KUCINICH
– Ahora es el tiempo de volver nuestros soldados de Iraq... To
accomplish that… we need to get and agreement that… first, the UN
will handle the collection and distribution of all oil revenues for
people of Iraq without privatization. Second, that the UN will
handle all contracts, no more Halliburton sweetheart deals (big
applause.) And third, the UN will proceed to work with the people
of Iraq to construct a gov’t the people of Iraq can call their own.
Under those conditions, the US can move away from ‘Bush’s Blunder,’
which is what Iraq will be known as.
KERRY – “Being flown to an
aircraft carrier and pronouncing the words ‘mission accomplished’
does not end a war… I believe we need a President who understands
how to get it right in the beginning. This is the third opportunity
for this President to get it right… They told us they would go to
the UN and build a coalition – the President didn’t do it; he failed
in his diplomacy... Secondly… when that statue of Saddam Hussein
was toppled, that was the opportunity… to say to the world… that we
want the world to join us. This is the third opportunity, and it is
critical that this President gives life to the notion that the US
never goes to war because we want to, we go to war because we have
to… and to hold the UN up for what it is, that if you didn’t have
it, you would have to invent it. And this President needs to
understand that.
LIEBERMAN – Long before George
Bush became President, I reached a conclusion that Saddam Hussein
was a threat… to the world… and particularly to his own people, who
he was brutalizing. I believe that war against Saddam was right and
that the world is safer with him gone… No planning was done by this
administration. As President, I would have listened to the…
military when they said we needed more troops… I would have gone to
the NATO and the UN and asked them to join us in securing and
rebuilding this country… I would negotiate whatever resolution at
the UN will draw our allies with us into keeping the peace,
rebuilding the countries, and holding the hope that our American
soldiers can soon return to their families in peace.
GRAHAM – This administration…
will not recognize that there are consequences for your actions. I
voted against this resolution for a somewhat different reason than
Governor Dean. I voted against it because I believed that it was
the wrong war against the wrong enemy which represented the lesser
threat to the people of the US… I came to the firm conclusion that
the greatest threat to the people of the US was al-Queda, Hezbollah
and the other international terrorists who have demonstrated the
will and the capability to kill Americans… Today the question is one
of how do we extricate ourselves from Iraq, and I believe the first
step in that extrication is going to be to rebuild relations with
our key allies. It’s not just Iraq, it’s the Kyoto treaty, it’s the
ABM agreement, it is agreement after agreement, which were critical
to the maintenance of the victory in the Cold War and now to
environmental sanity… no wonder we have so much trouble getting
support when we need it.
BRAUN – Let me mention a name
that probably nobody has heard in a long time, and that’s Osama bin
Laden. Been missing. We haven’t been looking for him because we
got off on the wrong track… The Constitution… calls on the Congress
to declare war… That didn’t happen… The resolution allowed this
President to go off hell-bent-for-leather on this, what I called a
misadventure, that has really, now is beginning to come back, the
chickens are coming home to roost… However, we don’t cut and run… we
have to support our troops in the field… I spoke to the mother of a
young man who is serving in Iraq now, and she was complaining about
that they don’t even have the things they need in the field. So we
are in a position now in which this administration has… put us in a
situation in which they have no answer for the American people how
we can get out with honor… I welcome the international community… I
hope that it will allow us… to extricate ourselves with honor, but
continue a viable war on terrorism that gets bin Laden and his pals
and all the people that would do harm to the American people.
EDWARDS – What we see happening
on the ground in Iraq right now is part of a long-term pattern by
this President, and it’s not just his alienation of our allies in
Europe, he’s doing the exact same thing to our friends in Latin
America, in Mexico, his relationship with President Fox being a
perfect example… I said a year ago that it was crucial… that in this
effort we bring our friends and allies in and that we have a clear
plan for what would happen now. We have young men and women in a
shooting gallery now, and the primary reason for that is because
this President had no plan. And now he stubbornly continues to
fight an effort to bring others in… This started a long time ago, it
didn’t begin on Sept. the 11th and it didn’t begin in Iraq. It
began… with his unilateral disengagement from Kyoto, unilateral
disengagement from the biological weapons convention, a whole series
of nuclear non-proliferation agreements… I will lead in a way that
shows that America is strong, but… that we will solve the world’s
problems with the rest of the world in… a way that brings the power
and force of the entire planet to the effort to solve the world’s
problem… That is the most effective way to create respect for
America… The American people are safer and more secure in a world
where America is looked up to and respected.
IRAQ – SOLDIERS DYING, WHAT IS NEXT STEP
GEPHARDT – We can not cut and
run…. This President is a miserable failure. (big applause) I some
days just can’t believe… it’s incomprehensible that we would wind up
in this situation without a plan and without international
cooperation to get this done… We’ve been the leader… this President
doesn’t get it. He’s a unilateralist. He thinks he knows all the
answers. He doesn’t respect others…. You’ve got to respect other
leaders… you’ve got to work with them, talk to them, put together
the coalitions we need… get the help we should have gotten from the
beginning… work out a resolution consistent with all the traditions
of the American military… We’ve done this in Bosnia, we’ve done it
in Afghanistan, we can do this, but this President has to lead, and
he is not leading, he is a miserable failure on this issue and he
must be replaced in the election. (big applause)
LIEBERMAN – I would send more
troops… A year ago I called for an international force…. I would say
to the parents of Americans who are serving there, your sons and
daughters are serving in a heroic and historic cause… They are now
involved in a critical battle in the war on terrorism, because
terrorists have come in there to strike at us and strike at the
instruments of civilization… These are enemies of civilization, and
if we don’t get together and defeat them now, shame on us. This
administration let down our troops… in not having a plan to secure
the country, in not having international help… and in doing so, they
exposed American soldiers more danger than they should have been
exposed to. As President I will never do that, I promise you that.
IRAQ – SPENDING $4 BILLION A MONTH
DEAN – I think the most
important… quality for an chief executive when they are executing
policy is judgment… As Commander-In-Chief of the United States
Military… I will never hesitate to send troops anywhere in the world
to defend the US, but as Commander-In-Chief of the US Military, I
will never send our sons and daughters and our brothers and sisters
to a foreign country in harm’s way without telling the truth to the
American people about why they are going there… We need more
troops. They need to be foreign troops, not American troops, as
they should have been in the first place. Ours need to come home.
IRAQ - $60 BILLION BEING ASKED FOR
EDWARDS - …Just a week ago I
spoke to the wife of a young soldier from North Carolina who had
died who had young children, and what I would say to them is they
have served courageously, they have done an extraordinary job for
their country, but the reason we are in the situation we are in now
is because this President has not led… The very least… the American
people are entitled to is to find out how long he believes we’ll be
there, and what he believes it’s gonna cost… This is the same
administration that while they won’t tell us what Iraq is costing…
say we can’t afford a real prescription drug benefit, we can’t
afford health care for our people, we can’t afford college for our
kids. Well the President needs to tell us the truth about the cost.
GRAHAM – The President has an
obligation to speak candidly to the American people, to answer… what
will be… our long term commitment in Iraq. What will we do about
restarting the war against Osama bin Laden, which he effectively
abandoned twelve months ago. What will we do about those countries
that pretend to be our friends who in fact have been our enemies in
the war on terrorism? What is our exit strategy? And… who is going
to pay this $60-80 billion… Are we going to ask our children and
grandchildren to pay for this by adding to an already staggering
national debt.
KERRY – There are several levels
of failure of leadership here. The… President has failed altogether
to share with the American people the truth, the truth about the
cost, the truth about the reasons, and the way in which he is gonna
protect the troops and the interests of the US… I remember the
lesson of Vietnam is that you need to be able to look a parent in
the eye if you send their kids to war and be able to say to them, we
tried to do everything possible not to lose your son and daughter… I
think… this President did not… pass that test in the way he rushed
to the war. And I and others warned him not to rush to war… because
not only do you gain more support… but that’s they way that you best
protect the troops in the field… The next level of failure of
leadership is in… not doing what is necessary now to protect the
troops. I disagree with Joe Lieberman… we should not send more
American troops, that would be the worst thing… We do not want a
greater sense of American occupation, we need to minimize that...
The final failure of leadership is the failure of this President to
understand the world today, the problems of North Korea before
they’re a crisis… Africa and AIDS, before it’s a crisis, not a…
political stop. This President wants to build a new generation of
nuclear weapons. I don’t want another generation of usable nuclear
weapons (big applause) and we… need the President to say no. |
