From a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, June 25, 2003. Not that any of you are having a hard time remembering Dean's stance on the war.
"Last October, four of the major contenders for the Democratic nomination supported the President's preemptive strike resolution five months before we went to war without, as we now realize, knowing the facts.
I stood up against this administration and even when 70% of the American people supported the war, I believed that the evidence was not there and I refused to change my view. As it turned out, I was right. No Democrat can beat George Bush without the same willingness that John F. Kennedy showed in 1962. A President must be tough, patient, and willing to take a course of action based on evidence, and not ideology.
I question the judgment of those who led us into this conflict this unfinished conflict that has made us, on balance, not more secure, but less. Although we may have won the war, we are failing to win the peace.
I believed then and I believe now that removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq was a just cause. But not every just cause requires that we go to war, especially with inadequate planning and without maximum support."
And from his big foriegn policy speech of December 15, 2003.
"America's interests will be best served by acting with dispatch to work as partners with free Iraqis to help them build a stable, self-governing nation, not by prolonging our term as Iraq's ruler.
To succeed we also need urgently to remove the label "made in America" from the Iraqi transition. We need to make the reconstruction a truly international project, one that integrates NATO, the United Nations, and other members of the international community, and that reduces the burden on America and our troops."
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