Working backwards, Edwards is exactly right. We must stop allowing these front runners (including him) to campaign for the general election before they win the primary election. Nobody, as Ralph Nader says, is entitled to votes. Hillary and Barack may be winning but so what? They still have to be solid candidates worth voting for or else we need to kick them to the curb. After all, Dodd, Biden, Kucinich, and Gravel are far better candidates than Obama, Clinton, and Edwards.
He’s also right about how giving Bush any little bit of support for his crusades in the Middle East give the administration to say Iran has bipartisan support. Being able to sell the war has having Democratic and Republican support based on votes in Congress will be spread all over the media and people will pick it up and that 52 percent who support strikes on Iran will inevitably rise. So, votes like the ones Hillary has cast on Iran are extremely detrimental to our country and any person neglecting America as she is doing does not deserve the presidency.
Williams: Senator Clinton, 30-second rebuttal.
Clinton: Well, I need to rebut this. I don't know where to start. Number one, when we talk about combat missions in Iraq, my understanding is that we had the same agreement -- most of us on this stage -- that we would bring out combat troops but we would pursue a mission against Al Qaida in Iraq if they remained a threat.
Now, I don't know how you pursue Al Qaida without engaging them in combat. So I think we're having a semantic difference here. I think we should get as many of the combat troops out as quickly as possible.
If we leave any troops in, like special operations, to go after Al Qaida in Iraq, I assume that we don't want them just sitting around and watching them. We want them to engage them. That is a very limited mission. That is what I have said consistently.
And you know, when it comes to where I stand, I have been explaining that to the American people. I stand for ending the war in Iraq, bringing our troops home.
But I also know it's going to be complicated, and it's going to take time. And I intend to do it in a responsible manner that is as safe for our troops as possible.
We're going to have troops remaining there, guarding our embassy. We may have a continuing training mission, and we may have a mission against Al Qaida in Iraq. So that's a very big difference than having the 160,000 troops that George Bush has there today.
You know what you need, Hillary. You need to quit being a She-Bush. That’s what you need. You need to go on vacation and pick up books and magazine articles by Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Alexander Cockburn, Greg Palast, George Orwell, and the Constitution, etc. You need to go through all the measures passed in the last eight years from the Iraq war authorization to the PATRIOT Act to the measures you’ve voted for on Iran, the Lieberman-Kyl Amendment and admit to yourself how far off you are in your judgment and how much you are letting down Americans by fueling a misguided Democratic Leadership.
Williams: Senator, thank you.
And a brief housekeeping note here. We have built two or three rather short breaks into tonight's program, this two-hour debate. And we're going to choose to take the first of them right now, mostly so everyone can take a breath on this hot stage on this otherwise cool night in Philadelphia.
We will continue with our debate from the campus of Drexel University in Philadelphia right after this.
(Applause)
(Commercial break)
MORE TO COME AFTER THESE MESSAGES
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