The Nation's Nichols to Dean, HRC, at TakeBackAmerica, "Iraq is the Issue"

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?bid=1&pid=3059

Where Dean made no direct mention of the war in Iraq during a lengthy address to the morning plenary that kicked off the fullest day of the annual gathering of progressive activists, Huffington went to the heart of the matter. "We cannot continue to ignore the debacle in Iraq if we are going to have any hope of ever again being a majority party," said Huffington, the conservative who came in from the cold and has recently lent her name and energy to the Huffington Post.

At a conference where the schedule was heavy with domestic-policy discussions but short on discourse regarding foreign policy, Huffington bluntly told the crowd, "We cannot have a solution on the domestic front without addressing what is happening in Iraq."

<>"There is no oversight going on in this most corrupt and most immoral Congress that we have right now," she said, adding that, "I'm very troubled by the way our Democratic leaders go on television and sound like spineless Republicans." (Later in the day, at the one conference session that was devoted to foreign policy issues, former CIA analyst Ray McGovern recalled Dean's recent "now that we're there, we're there" comment regarding the "need" to remain in Iraq and then said, "That sounds like Rumsfeld to me.")

Noting that, in a recent television appearance, US Senator Hillary Clinton said she was not comfortable talking about developing an "exit strategy" to withdraw US troops from Iraq, Huffington said, "With respect to Senator Clinton, if you are not comfortable setting an exit strategy, please point us to someone who is."

"With respect to Senator Clinton, if you are not comfortable setting an exit strategy, please point us to someone who is."

You are either in support of the US occupation of Iraq or you are against it. This is the central issue facing us as a nation. The US must pull its military out of Iraq; it must pull its corporations out of Iraq. The US must stop killing Iraqis and stealing their wealth. This can not be negotiable - not if the US is who we say we are...