Dean stated even before the IWR was voted on:
FTN - 09/29/02
WASHINGTON
DEAN:
Look, it's very simple. Here's what we ought to have done. We should have gone to the U.N. Security Council. We should have asked for a resolution to allow the inspectors back in with no pre-conditions. And then we should have given them a deadline saying "If you don't do this, say, within 60 days, we will reserve our right as Americans to defend ourselves and we will go into Iraq."
But there's been this kind of bellicose talk going on for three or four months now about unilateral intervention and all that. I think the American people are confused about this, and I think it could have been very easily stated from the outset: "Here's the problem. Here's the threat. Here's the conditions under which we will go in."
SCHIEFFER: Let me ask you this, because listening to your first answer this morning, it sounds to me like you may be taking Saddam Hussein a little more seriously today than perhaps you were last week. Is that fair to say?
DEAN: I'm taking Saddam Hussein a little more seriously today than I was two days ago when he began to -- when he, at that time, was not saying what he said yesterday. Today he's very clearly looking like he's going to resist a return of the inspectors. That is not acceptable. He has got to allow the inspectors in, and if he doesn't, then we will be in the position of having to intervene.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/09/30/ftn/printable523726.shtmland again in February of 2003
Unilateralism
While Dean has repeatedly emphasized his belief that war efforts should be pursued through the U.N., Dean has also appeared willing, at times, to accept unilateral war in Iraq.
As recently as February 2003, just a month before the war began, Dean appeared to accept a unilateral approach in Iraq as a necessary evil.
According to an interview with Salon's Jake Tapper, when Dean was asked to clarify his Iraq position, Dean said that Saddam must be disarmed, but with a multilateral force under the auspices of the United Nations. If the U.N. in the end chooses not to enforce its own resolutions, then the U.S. should give Saddam 30 to 60 days to disarm, Dean said, and if he doesn't, unilateral action is a regrettable, but unavoidable, choice.
Five months before this statement, according to a Des Moines Register report on October 6, 2002, Dean said, "It's conceivable we would have to act unilaterally
, but that should not be our first option."
http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/000940.html
Given that the Bush Administration went to the United Nations in Novemeber of 2002, Dean would have unilaterally gone to war in Iraq by the end of January, 2003, according to the terms he would have dictated to the Security Council.
Dean being the only candidate who opposed the war from the start...
Doesnt look so from his earliest statements about the war, which did not change until after the invasion. Only then did he try to cover up his early statements in which Dean, following his own statement about what he thinks should be done, would have had the U.S. attack Iraq a full two months before the current administration did. Dean did not discuss exhausting peaceful and diplomatic means before looking at the situation deciding whether Saddam posed an imminent threat or not.
Deans statements indicate not that the U.S. should determine the level of threat that Iraq posed before attack, as is stated in the IWR, but before that legislation was signed, Dean set up his own time frame for attacking Iraq based only on the U.N.'s failure to enforce its own resolution.
This is hardly leadership.
It is shaping a campaign that states what the voters want to hear based on the polls.
What was among Deans earliest statements on Iraq...
The words "We will go into Iraq" came out of Deans mouth before the IRW was even voted on.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
