Transcript: Dean on CBS's "Face the Nation" (9/28/03) [View All]

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Click here for the full transcript. Here are some excerpts, with minor typos corrected:

DEAN: (....) This president sent us to war in Iraq without telling the American people the facts about why we went there. He let us believe that Iraq had something to do with al Qaeda. He admitted that wasn't true last week. He let us believe that Iraq and their atomic weapons program was buying uranium from Africa and admitted that wasn't true a few months ago. We have 135,000 troops in Iraq under fire, lost over 300 people and 1100 wounded or injured because this president was not candid with the American people and the administration was not candid with the American people. I think at the very least Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz should resign and I had thought for sometime that George Tenet should be let go as well. And there may be others because this is not over yet. We have been misled. That's why I had such strong disagreements with Senator Kerry, Representative Gephardt and Senator Edwards and Lieberman and now General Clark who also advocated last October that we go into Iraq, despite his opposition to it now. We have to do better in this country. I'm very willing as Commander in Chief to send our people anywhere we have to do it to defend America, but I am not willing to send them abroad in harm's way without telling the truth to the American people why it is we send them there.

DEAN: (....) I'm running against a group of people from Washington who have done the same thing for as long as they've been there, years and years and years. A third of the seniors in my state have prescription benefits. What have Richard Gephardt or John Kerry or Joe Lieberman done in their careers in the Senate to do that? I'm not going to be compared to Newt Gingrich by my rivals. They can say anything they want about me. I did support slowing the growth of Medicare. It was a good thing. It worked out well and Bill Clinton signed the bill and Medicare is solvent because of that. The folks in Washington didn't do one thing about it.

DEAN: (....) We are not going to get change by voting for people for President who behave in the same way for years and years and years. They have been in Washington for too long and not getting the job done.

(....)

SCHIEFFER: How about veterans’ pensions. Do you want to cut veteran pensions now?

DEAN: No, I don’t. I want to restore health benefits President Bush has cut to the veterans.

SCHIEFFER: Do you want to slow down the cost of living adjustments for people on Social Security?

DEAN: No, I do not. The cost of living adjustments for Social Security have dropped to 1.2% per year and they can barely survive on that.

(....)

DEAN: Well, I think that Wes Clark is first of all a good guy. A guy who I sought out for advice on military matters. But I think what you see in the Wes Clark candidacy is somewhat of desperation by inside the beltway politicians. You've got a lot of establishment politicians now surrounding a general who was a Republican until 25 days ago, voted for Ronald Reagan, voted for Dick Nixon, supported the war last October in Iraq, although he has opposed it, I thought eloquently, since that time. Praised Dick Cheney, praised Donald Rumsfeld. What I want is change in the Democratic Party. We are not going to win elections anymore by trying to be Republican-lite. What I think the Washington Democratic establishment is terrified of now is that their candidates are not doing so well -- they've gone out and found another one. Again, a good guy, very qualified, but he was a Republican until 25 days ago, and I think that's going to be hard to swallow for a lot of Democrats.

DEAN: (....) I'm advocating we rework the trade agreements and ultimately you have to, for example, have the right of the trade union movement in the United States to also export what they do. They have to organize plants around the world in a free and open way as we do in this country or as they do in any of the other countries or Europe that I mentioned, in order for trade to be fair. Because right now we are importing products made by 12 year olds in Indonesia at probably less than 50 cents an hour. That's not right. It doesn't help the kids in Indonesia and doesn't help Americans.

(....)

DEAN: I have changed on some of the issues. I think that's one of the hallmarks of who I am. I'm a doctor. I believe if you have a theory and the fact comes along that changes the theory, then you throw out the theory. The Republicans believe that if a fact comes along that changes the theory, they throw out the fact. They deny there is such a thing as global warming. The President made the case that a bipartisan committee in Congress admits was exaggerated, and he ignored the facts for going to war in Iraq. This is pretty serious stuff. I have no complaint and no embarrassment about changing my positions at all. If facts come along that show you things need to change, you need to change them.

I don't think there is virtue in stubbornly clinging to a theory when the theory is wrong and has led us into trouble. The Republicans in this administration have proved that.