- The Democrat establishment's campaign against President
Bush heated up Friday as Bill Clinton and Ted Kennedy opposed U.S. policy
on Iraq and Al Gore accused Bush of ignoring warnings about Sept. 11.
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- Meanwhile, at the invitation of dictator Saddam Hussein,
three Democrat congressmen visited Baghdad to try to undermine U.S. policy.
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- "I have come here today to express my view that
America should not go to war against Iraq unless and until other reasonable
alternatives are exhausted," Sen. Kennedy, D-Mass., said in a speech
before Johns Hopkins Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies.
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- Kennedy, the dean of Capitol Hill's leftists, said the
U.S. should:
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- * Focus on to returning weapons inspectors to Iraq without
conditions.
- * Work closely with the United Nations to force dictator
Saddam Hussein to comply with resolutions on disarmament.
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- The U.S., of course, has long been cooperating with the
U.N. on Iraq, but the globalist body continues to fail to take action.
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- Kennedy admitted the danger posed by Hussein but said
al-Qaeda terrorists were a graver threat than Iraq.
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- "To succeed in our global war against al-Qaeda and
terrorism, the United States depends on military, law enforcement, and
intelligence support from many other nations ... It is far from clear that
these essential relationships will be able to survive the strain of a war
with Iraq that comes before the alternatives are tried or without the support
of an international coalition," he said.
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- "It is possible to love America while concluding
that it is not now wise to go to war," said Kennedy, taking a cue
from Senate plurality leader Tom Daschle, who quoted from the Washington
Post's false account of a speech by Bush.
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- "The standard that should guide us is especially
clear when lives are on the line. We must ask what is right for our country
and not party."
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- Gephardt: Playing Politics
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- Echoing the theme of Daschle and Kennedy, House Minority
Leader Dick Gephardt, writing in Friday's New York Times, charged that
Bush had "decided to play politics with the safety and security of
the American people. ...
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- "If Mr. Bush and his party continue to use the war
as a political weapon, our efforts to address the threat posed by Iraq
will fail."
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- However, as Fox News Channel noted Friday, Democrats
themselves were obviosly also playing politics with the war effort.
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- Bush: 'Now Is the Time'
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- In Denver Friday, the president told a cheering crowd
that Hussein "can either get rid of his weapons and the United Nations
can act, or the United States will lead a coalition to disarm this man.
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- "I'm willing to give peace a chance to work. I want
the United Nations to work. I want [Hussein] to do what he said he would
do. But for the sake of our future, now is the time. ...
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- "For the sake of your children's future we must
make sure this madman never has the capacity to hurt us with a nuclear
weapon, or to use stockpiles of anthrax that we know he has, or VX, the
biological weapons which he posseses."
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- Clinton: 'Go to the U.N.'
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- Clinton kept playing the Democrat tune of letting the
U.N. call the shots.
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- "I think we ought to go to the United Nations. I
think we ought to get a tough resolution which basically says we'll take
Saddam Hussein up on his commitment to free and unfettered inspections,"
he said Friday from Africa on ABC's "Good Morning America."
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- He, too, conceded Hussein's threat.
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- "He's got a very dangerous program. We need to eliminate
it," the impeached former president said.
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- "If he doesn't comply," a U.N. resolution should
state that the world "is authorized to use force."
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- Clinton avoided the harsh tone his former vice president,
Al Gore, took against President Bush earlier this week and said he had
not read Gore's speech.
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- "I'm overseas, and I don't like to get into comments
on our foreign policy when I'm there," Clinton said. But, "I
think we can walk and chew gum at the same time. That is, I think we can
turn up the heat on Iraq and retain our focus on terror.
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- "Let's don't relax our efforts. Let's intensify
our efforts. They [al-Qaeda terrorists] still have plans to target Americans
within the United states and elsewhere, and I think we should all support
the administration and whatever has to be done to eradicate this network.
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- "I do think that all of us should not forget that
it was Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda who murdered those 3,100 people on
Sept. 11," he said.
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- Clinton questioned Bush's new pre-emptive military policy.
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- "I think, obviously, the further you get away from
the imminence of an attack, the slipperier the slope," he said. "But
when you have ongoing terrorist networks, for example, you see the argument
for it. But it also is fraught with difficulty."
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- Appearing on CBS' "The Early Show," Clinton
said he thought there was "still a chance" for Bush and Democrats
to unite on a strong congressional resolution. "I don't think we should
characterize every difference of policy opinion as a partisan difference,"
he said.
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- Gore: White House Ignored 9/11 Warnings
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- Clinton's former sidekick Gore, perhaps because he still
harbors ambitions for the presidency, took a much more partisan tone against
Bush. He now accuses the administration of ignoring signs that Osama bin
Laden planned to attack the U.S. on Sept. 11, the Washington Times reported
Friday.
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- "The warnings were there," Gore claimed Thursday
at a Democrat fundraiser in Wilmington, Del.
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- Sounding like ousted Rep. Cynthia McKinney, he accused
the administration of ignoring intelligence from the FBI and CIA.
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- He asserted that the White House and the Justice Department
were violating Americans' rights in rounding up terror suspects.
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- "What's going on nationally, with the attack on
civil liberties, with American citizens in some cases just disappearing
without right to counsel, without access to a lawyer - I think that is
disgraceful," he fumed.
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- "I think we need to stand up for our principles
in this country and stand up for what this nation represents, even as we
face the terrible dangers that we have to confront in the world today."
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- Republicans dismissed Gore's latest attack as the rantings
of a White House wannabe.
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- "This has nothing to do with civil liberties. It
has everything to do with Al Gore putting points on the board to improve
his image," a Senate Republican leadership official told the Times.
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- White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said Friday:
"The charges are without merit. Al Gore changes his stories and his
tune so often on so many different issues that it's not an effective use
of time to pay much attention to what he says."
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- 'Nomination Strategy'
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- Political analysts also saw Gore's tactic as partisan
posturing.
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- "He has gotten out in front of all the other Democrats,
even those who have offered some criticism of Bush," said Larry Sabato,
a political scientist at the University of Virginia.
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- Gore, he said, is trying to distinguish himself as "the
peace candidate," which can especially help in Iowa, the first presidential
caucus and home to many anti-war Democrats.
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- "This is a nomination strategy," Sabato told
the Associated Press.
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- The Times noted: "Ironically, while Mr. Gore was
escalating his attacks on the administration, former President Bill Clinton
was planning to attend a Labor Party conference in Great Britain to help
Prime Minister Tony Blair persuade skeptical party members to support Mr.
Blair and Mr. Bush in taking military action against Iraq. ...
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- "Mr. Gore's stance is an almost 180-degree turn
from his previous position on Saddam's regime. When he was a senator from
Tennessee, he was one of a small number of Senate Democrats in 1991 who
voted for a resolution to give Mr. Bush's father authority to go to war
to drive Iraqi forces out of Kuwait. As vice president, he pushed for a
resolution giving Mr. Clinton authority to take military action in Iraq
in 1998. And earlier this year, he said there must be a 'day of reckoning'
for Saddam."
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- Hollywood Tells What to Do
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- The partisan bickering took on comical tones as Barbra
Streisand, the left-wing former film and singing star, ordered the Democrat
establishment to increase its attacks on the president, even as movie star
Tom Cruise and top director Steven Spielberg broke with the Hollywood left
in supporting Bush.
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- http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/9/27/143443.shtml
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