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Washington, D.C.

Robert C. Orr: Margaret’s big claim to fame here at the Council is that she is a newly minted member of the Council, so we welcome her as a member and we welcome her this morning to preside over this meeting.

Margaret Warner: Thanks very much. Yes, they pressed me into service right away, in my first week. I’m delighted to be here and to be welcoming Howard Dean to this, I gather, overflow and unusually large crowd of Council members. Before we begin, the usual reminders. First of all, please turn off all your cell phones and pagers. Secondly, this meeting is on the record. I can see we have many members of the press here, some of whom are not Council members. The question and answer session, when it begins after the Governor speaks, is for Council members only. I’ve been asked by the powers that be here to ask the reporters here, some of whom I know well, to honor that request.

It’s a sign, I think, of how far Governor Dean has come in his candidacy that I was tempted this morning to just say, “And now, to a man who needs no introduction, Howard Dean.” Something I would not have said a year ago. But for some of the saner folks in this audience who perhaps have made a determined effort to avoid reading about this pre-primary season, let me just flesh out his biography just a bit.

Governor Dean is actually from Manhattan, not Vermont. He graduated from Yale in ’71, worked briefly on Wall Street and then went to Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Got his medical degree in 1978. He and his wife Judith, who’s also a doctor, moved to Vermont, where he had his residency. They opened a family practice, I think it was together—is that right? But clearly he must have had political ambitions in mind, because just four years out of medical school he had already gotten himself elected to the Vermont legislature. He served there for four years, then was elected lieutenant governor in ’86 and served in that position until ’91, when the then-governor died and he became governor. He later went on to win five terms completely on his own, until 2002.

Initially when he decided to pursue the presidency, it was considered quixotic at best. His mother was quoted as saying, “I thought it was preposterous, the silliest thing I ever heard”—because he had absolutely no national base. But in the last few months, he has shown himself certainly to be a formidable contender, if somewhat of an unusual one. He’s raised much of his money on the Internet. He’s known for his very blunt speaking style, which we’re looking forward to today. He has gladdened the heart of liberals in many quarters by his outspoken criticism of President Bush and by a candidacy that he says stands for the democratic wing of the Democratic Party. The latest poll of likely primary voters in Iowa has him now third, behind Dick Gephardt and John Kerry. The latest poll by the Concord Monitor in New Hampshire, one of my former employers, has him just last week second only to Governor Kerry. So quixotic or not, clearly he has become a major force to be reckoned with in this campaign.

Though he seemed to define his candidacy early on by his opposition to the war in Iraq, his remarks today have been billed by his staff as his first major foreign policy address of his campaign. So looking forward to that, it’s my pleasure to introduce Governor Howard Dean.

[applause]

Governor Howard Dean: The media here is like they are in Vermont, they take the entire podium. I want to just move these microphones a bit around, much to their horror, so I can actually put my speech here.

Thank you. I just want to make one correction to the introduction. My mother did say this candidacy was preposterous, but like a true Scot she also said it’s much too expensive.

Let me thank you all very much for this opportunity. In fairness, I did give a significant foreign policy address in February at Drake University in Iowa, and soon discovered that if it doesn’t happen in Washington, it didn’t happen. So I appreciate the opportunity to come before the Council on Foreign Relations and to be able to talk broadly about our country’s foreign policy, our country’s military policy and defense policy.

Two days ago I formally launched my campaign for president with a call for a great American restoration. I spoke of the need to restore the American people’s faith in the political system, to restore our government’s commitment to the values of community and equality, opportunity and justice, for all Americans. To restore our role as a world leader by setting a positive example and working together to meet the challenges facing the global community in this new century.

I believe that the United States does have a special role to play in world affairs. We’ve long been an inspiration to all those around the world who seek democracy, freedom and opportunity. We’ve shaped our own destiny and we have set an example for the world, which is that hard work will overcome every obstacle. Every candidate who seeks to lead this country must keep this inspiration alive.

In recent months I’ve traveled around the country and found a nation that is deeply troubled about the direction of the United States’ national security policy. Americans do not understand how we could have squandered the extraordinary and precious opportunity after September 11 to unite the world in opposition to the likes of Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. They’re concerned that international support for the war against terror is waning, and along with it admiration and support for the United States. They’re confused that elections in countries long allied with the United States, such as Germany and South Korea, are now being decided on the basis of which candidate is more willing to stand up and oppose American policy. They’re astounded that increasing numbers of people in Europe and Asia and even in our own hemisphere cite America not as the strongest pillar of freedom and democracy, but I think somewhat unfairly as a bigger threat to peace. They’re disturbed that brave men and women in our armed forces are now being targeted systematically, nearly two months after a war that we were told had ended, in a country where we were assured that our troops would be recognized as liberators.

There’s a dawning recognition across our country that despite winning a military battle in Iraq, the United States may be losing a larger war. That we may well be less secure today than we were two and a half years ago, when this administration took office. Yet we have not still seen the report, the details, the events that led up to September 11, so that we can improve our ability to respond in the future.

I believe that Americans are ready to restore the best traditions of American leadership, leadership in which our power is multiplied by the appeal of democratic ideals and the knowledge that our country is a force for law around the world and not a law unto itself. America became America by rebelling against an imperial power. America emerged from isolation to greatness by beating fascist power. America became synonymous with justice by supporting independence for colonies in an imperial world. America’s ideals triumphed when it confronted communism to the point of extinction. America is not Rome. We do not dream of empire. We dream of liberty for all.

In November 2004, the American people will seek a president who’s prepared to use our brave and remarkable armed forces, as I would, to defend against any actual or imminent threat to ourselves or to our friends and allies in concert with others—to also deal with any grave humanitarian crisis. The American people will seek a president skilled at garnering the support of allies, but willing to act, as I would, when it is necessary to protect and defend our country. They will seek a president focused, as I will be, on dismantling of terrorist organizations, the disruption of terrorist operations, the apprehension of terrorist planners and the prevention of terrorist efforts to obtain weapons of mass destruction.

But they will also seek a president who will strive, as I will, not to divide the world into us versus them, but rather to rally the world around the fundamental principles of decency, responsibility, freedom, mutual respect. Our foreign and military policy must be about the notion of America leading the world, not America against the world. Presidents such as Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy built and strengthened international institutions rather than dismissing and disparaging the concerns of allies. They inspired and mobilized other countries because they believed there was no more powerful force on earth than that of a free people working together. They helped build global platforms such as the UN, NATO and the World Bank, upon which free people could stand. Our greatest leaders built America’s reputation as the world’s leading democracy by never resting until they had given life to our American ideals.

That is why I do not accept the notion that a candidate’s national security credentials should be considered suspect for opposing the war in Iraq at the time it was initiated with limited level of international support, lack of postwar planning and failure to make the case to the American people or to the world that a threat was imminent enough to justify preemptive action. Some in the Democratic Party claim that a candidate who questioned the war cannot lead the party in the great national debate that lies ahead in 2004. I would remind them of the Cuban Missile Crisis. President John F. Kennedy took on the hawks among the Joint Chiefs of Staff as well as the “me-too-ers” in Congress. The President and his advisers used toughness, patience and diplomacy. The missiles came out of Cuba and war was averted.

Last October, four of the major candidates for the Democratic nomination supported the president’s preemptive strike resolution five months before we went to war, without, as it turned out, knowing the facts. I stood up against what this administration was doing, even when 70 percent of the American people supported the war. I believed that the evidence was not there. I refused to change my view, and as it turned out I was right. No Democrat can beat George Bush without the same willingness that John F. Kennedy showed in 1962. The president must be tough, patient and willing to take a course of action based on evidence and not based on 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 so. 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. The Bush administration led us into a war without convincing evidence that imminent threat existed; without a strategy for securing nuclear, chemical and biological materials; without planning for financing reconstruction; without a clue how to consolidate the peace or unite the Iraqi people in support of democracy.

Today, we face three critical problems, all connected with the manner in which we prosecuted the war. The first is an accounting for the weapons of mass destruction, vital because of the implications for our own security as well as for the integrity and credibility of the United States and its leaders in the eyes of the world. There are three possibilities. As the search continues, substantial stocks of these weapons may be found. In that case, we still need to know why our intelligence failed and did not lead us to them, where the secretary of defense claimed they were. The other possibilities are that they will never be found because they no longer exist or they will never be found because they’ve been stolen and transferred to others.

In any case, we need to know the truth. Serious doubts about our integrity have been raised, not only in the speech of nations that do not know us well but in the parliaments and press rooms of countries that know us best. The checks and balances in the national security process in our executive branch have clearly broken down. That’s why I believe it is imperative to have an independent, bipartisan, comprehensive and transparent investigation of how our intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction was developed and selectively used to justify the war in Iraq. In other words, what did the president know and when did he know it.

The second major challenge results from a failure to plan for peace as fully as we planned for war. General Shinseki’s professional military advice, that 200,000 troops would be needed, was rejected. I would add at least 50,000 foreign troops to the force in Iraq. It’s imperative that we bring the international community in to help stabilize Iraq. If I were president, I would reach out to NATO, to Arab and Islamic countries, to other friends, to share the burden and to share the risks in the interest of protecting our soldiers adequately. We need to consider the impact on our Guard and Reserve troops operating in Iraq. We should ask the forces of our foreign friends and allies to increasingly assume police and security missions, which they have greater experience than we do at.

Our active duty military forces are the best-trained and the best-equipped of any military force in the world. We must continue to be able to train them and prepare for other potential missions that arise.

This leads me to the third problem, resulting from the single-minded focus on getting rid of Saddam. For nearly a year we have been too distracted to focus on a number of other serious problems. While we focused on Iraq, we neglected the very real nuclear threat that emerges in North Korea and Iran. For months we refused to see North Korea’s nuclear challenge as a crisis, and now it is a self-declared nuclear power. The Bush administration has not had talks with the North in over two months. It’s foolish to refuse to have bilateral discussions with the North Koreans. We are, after all, the most powerful nation on the face of the earth. There is not a matter of losing face here. The goal of our policy with North Korea must be to prevent continued nuclear proliferation on the Korean peninsula and to prevent the transfer of weapons or material to third parties or terrorists, and in fact to eliminate nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula.

In Iran, we must again use the full range of economic and diplomatic tools at our disposal. We must work with and pressure the Europeans and the Russians to stop their support of development of nuclear weapons—excuse me, stop their support of the Iranian development of nuclear power, which is evidently leading to the development of nuclear weapons—and to stop the support of Iranian-sponsored terror. We must do what we can to strengthen and encourage the voices among Iranian youth who are striving for true change and freedom.

Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden used our loss of focus to rebuild their terrorist networks, as recently deadly attacks in Saudi Arabia and Morocco have shown. While we focused on Iraq, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was neglected. The president, despite knowing how critical his personal involvement was, refused to engage for over two full years, squandering the momentum which he inherited from the Clinton administration.

I am one of the perhaps relatively small number of people who are truly optimistic about our chances for peace in the Middle East, although I do not believe we will achieve that under this administration. Our strongest asset is the majority of both peoples in this conflict to actually accept the two-state solution, guaranteeing both sides security, sovereignty and dignity. Most Israelis recognize that they will have to give back occupied land and give up settlements. Most Palestinians understand that there will never be a Palestinian state as long as terrorist attacks occur. And yet the Palestinians have assets that are often misunderstood. They have a high level of education. Palestinian women play a more significant role in government than in any other Arab society, and a large number of Palestinians have significant experience with democracy, having lived in Europe, the United States, and of course a million-strong Israeli Arab population having lived in democracy for over fifty years. Yasser Arafat is not the answer, but Abu Mazen and Salim Fayed, who I met with when I was in Jerusalem, may well be the answer.

Finally, the United States must reduce its dependence on Middle Eastern oil, and we must have a president who is willing to confront the Iranians, the Syrians, the Saudis and others who send money to Hamas and finance a worldwide network of fundamentalist schools which teach small children in the Islamic world to hate Americans, Christians and Jews.

Let us turn our attention to postwar Afghanistan. I supported the president’s invasion of Afghanistan. Al Qaeda was and continues to be an imminent threat to the United States. However, insufficient security assistance and economic investment are opening the door to civil strife and tribal warfare again—the very conditions that bred the Taliban in the first place. Our repeated assurances of aid and reconstruction have resulted in lost hope, empty promises for the Afghan people.

The United States must redouble its effort to garner aid from the donor community and to increase to thirty or forty thousand the number of military troops our friends and allies commit to help us rebuild Afghanistan. For the United States to rely on warlords to keep the peace in Afghanistan nearly two years after a successful conclusion to our military operations demonstrates both an extraordinary lack of thoughtful vision and a complete misunderstanding about the requirements of building a democracy in a developing country with no history of democracy.

Not only has the focus of this administration’s foreign policy been wrong, so has the manner in which it’s been conducted. Instead of the humility we were promised, this administration has acted with unparalleled arrogance and disregard for the concerns of others. It has rejected a long line of multilateral negotiated agreements. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the Kyoto Treaty, the Law of the Sea Treaty, the Biological Warfare Convention Protocol, the International Criminal Court, the Landmine Convention—the list goes on and on. These treaties are not without flaws, but surely some could be ratified and others could be renegotiated. The answer is to work to rewrite them, not to walk away from them dismissively.

The bedrock of our strength and security is provided by our economy, our military and our values. We cannot deny that our strength in large measure is derived as well from the extent to which others emulate and respect us abroad, and not by the extent to which they fear us and loathe us. America cannot shy away from its role as the remaining superpower in the world. As Madeleine Albright once put it, we are the indispensable power for so many challenges around the world. Inevitably some will resent us for what we have and some will hate us for what we believe. But there is much in the world that we cannot achieve on our own, so we must lead towards clearly articulated and shared goals and with the cooperation and the respect of our friends and allies.

As president, I will set four goals for American leadership. First, defeat the threat posed by terrorists, tyrants and the various technologies of mass destruction. Second, strengthen our alliances and ensure that Russia and China are fully integrated into a stable international order. Third, enlarge the circle of beneficiaries of the growing world economy. Fourth, to ensure in a serious way that the life on our fragile planet is sustainable.

Preemptive war against tyrannical dictators is not a comprehensive strategy for addressing the threat of terrorists, tyrants and technologies of mass destruction. In fact, misuse of this doctrine may have the opposite effect. In the profession of medicine, the first rule is to do no harm. To deal with the long-term terrorist threat, we must root out and destroy the terrorists, their networks and their support system, but in doing so we must not provide them with a rationale for new recruits. In this fight, it is essential that America lead by example and exercise power responsibly. Only in that way can we hope to eliminate the support for the next generation of extremists, who regard our culture and our actions not simply with envy or jealousy but with a hatred over the manner in which we conduct our affairs.

The Clinton administration was committed to military engagement with friends and allies around the world, helping to train and equip these countries so they were better prepared to work with the United States in shouldering this burden. As president, my administration will redouble these efforts.

At home, we need a real commitment to homeland security. As president, I will immediately devote significant new resources to preventing, managing and responding to potential and actual terrorist threats at home. If we can spend $400 billion to defend our nation from threats abroad, as we must, should we not spend more to defend our nation at home? We need to devote more resources to fully fund, equip and train first responders across the nation—policemen, firemen, emergency room personnel and hundreds of thousands of other Americans that are the first line in homeland security. We must provide significant new resources to state and local governments, as this president promised we would. With only 4 percent of the 5.7 million containers arriving at our 361 seaports annually which are inspected, this is one of the great points of vulnerability and that must be addressed not tomorrow, but now.

We need to allocate the funds necessary to address the threat of weapons of mass destruction or weapons-grade materials ending up in the hands of terrorists. The Cooperative Threat Reduction Program with Russia and other Soviet states is working, but it has not been properly funded by this administration to do the job right. We should make that the highest priority. I can assure you, if that material ends up in the hands of terrorists, we are far worse off than we ever were when Saddam Hussein was in power.

Success in confronting these threats hinges on the willingness of our friends and allies to work with us. We need the benefit of their intelligence, assistance of security and transportation agencies and the collaboration of their customs offices. We must strengthen nonproliferation treaties, limit access to nuclear and other dangerous materials, apply coercive diplomacy when we must and as a last resort take military action to remove weapons programs and facilities. All of these steps ought to be taken in concert with other countries, not by ourselves.

Our second priority is strengthening our bonds with other countries, especially historical allies. In a world growing ever more interdependent, conducting foreign policy by posse may be expedient but it is shortsighted and far less stable in a world built on enduring relationships and viable international institutions.

I will lead this country back to a strong commitment to international alliances and institutions that are the backbone of a stable international order. In an increasingly complex and dangerous world, the more that our destinies are intertwined, the greater the shared sense of purpose and the sense of power, and the more likely it is that we will work together successfully to address the difficult challenges ahead. We must not do this only with our traditional allies in Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa, but with such critical powers as Russia and China—both, as I have said, who must be fully integrated into the international community as partners.

Third, we have to recognize the importance of spreading the benefits of economic growth as widely as possible. The growth of multinational corporations and the globalization of our economy have helped create wealth and economic growth, but we must do a better job making certain that the people in the developing world are full and equal beneficiaries in this growth and are not marginalized by it. As long as half of the world’s population subsists on less than two dollars a day, the United States will not be secure. Poor states and failed states will provide breeding grounds for disease as well as recruits and safe havens for terrorists. A world populated by hostile have-nots is not one in which the United States’ leadership can be sustained without coercion. We want a trade and development policy that does not enrich the minority but will empower the majority.

In addition to supporting the growth of fair global trade, we must use our foreign assistance money strategically to support the rule of law, combat corruption, help the most needy and assist governments in creating democracies and developing infrastructure and human resources in their countries. We must have real energy invested in the cooperative battle against HIV/AIDS, which in too many countries is undermining security and tearing down economies, communities and entire generations.

Finally, the United States must step to the forefront and promote sustainable development. We cannot ignore climate change. We cannot ignore population growth, famine or the many other global problems that we face. To address them, we must break free of the special interests that constrain our ability to tackle these problems. How can we effectively address burgeoning population growth when this president has revived the Mexico City policy imposing a gag order on international family planning providers? How can we combat HIV/AIDS when right-wing ideology is allowed to stand in the way of the promotion of practices which are most effective at prevention of HIV/AIDS in different societies? How can we fight global climate change when our energy and environmental policy are created at the behest of contributors for the oil and gas industry, who prefer no meaningful action? When critical information on global warming is edited out of the EPA reports by the White House staff? I believe the failure to lead on an issue of this magnitude is immoral. As the world’s biggest polluter, we have a special responsibility to take action and lead the world in combating this gathering crisis.

Fifty-five years ago, President Harry Truman delivered what was known as the Four Points speech. In it, he challenged Democrats and Republicans alike to come together to build a strong and effective international organization to support arrangements that would spur global economic recovery, to join with free people everywhere in the defense of human liberty, and to join upon the genius of our people to help societies who needed help in the battle against hunger and illness, ignorance and despair. That was at the very beginning of the Cold War. America was threatened by a powerful and hostile empire that was backed by a massive military, bolstered by satellite states and in the process of developing the hydrogen bomb.

At that moment of maximum peril, President Truman went before the world to spell out not only what America was against but much more importantly, what America was for. He did so because he had faith that if America was true to her own principles and values, that we could in the long run defeat any foe, no matter how deadly. He believed that if America reached out to others in friendship and with respect, our strength would be multiplied and more and more countries would support our policies—not because we told them to, but because they wanted to. Harry Truman believed in a world in which even the poorest and most desperate had grounds for hope, and that would be a world in which our own children could grow up in security and peace—not because evil would then be absent from the globe, but because the forces of right would be united and strong.

Harry Truman had faith, as I have faith, and as I believe the American people have faith, that if we are wise enough and determined enough in our opposition to hate and our promotion of tolerance, in our opposition to aggression and our fidelity to law, we will have allies not only among the governments but among people everywhere. This kind of alliance cannot be beaten. This kind of alliance defeated world communism without firing a shot.

The creation of such an alliance is my goal, if I am entrusted with the presidency of the United States, because this is what will really keep America strong. Because this is what reflects the best among the American people. This is the core of the national security message that I’ll be carrying to America throughout this campaign, that I’m committed to working constructively with friends and allies around the globe, to help people in every corner of every continent to live in freedom and prosperity and peace. Thank you very much.

[applause]

Margaret Warner: As is the Council custom, we will now go to the Q & A session. I’m going to lead off, Governor. A few ground rules. The questions are to come only from the Council members, as I said earlier, and I’ve been asked to ask the reporters here to honor that. Also, this is my first time moderating a Council session. I have been told by several of you that sometimes the questions are longer than the answers. I would ask that everyone ask concise questions so that we can get to as many as possible. You can raise your hand, we have people with microphones. Once you get to ask your question, stand, give your name and affiliation and ask it.

Governor, let me begin by asking you to define, if you could, a little more your view about preemption or preventive war, setting aside perhaps the distinction between the two for the moment. In an interview with the L.A. Times, you said preventive war is illegal under international law. But you also said it shouldn’t be taken off the table in dealing with Iran and North Korea. Today you didn’t mention it as an option with Iran and North Korea. I wondered if you could give us a clearer explanation of under what circumstances you think preemption or preventive military action is called for and whether it would apply in these two cases.

Howard Dean: First of all, the reason I don’t use the term preventive war anymore is I talked to a lot of people about foreign affairs and one of the people I talked to was former President Carter. President Carter, as you may remember, wrote an extraordinary op-ed piece before the invasion of Iraq. So I called him about the issue of preventive war, which is illegal, which is a matter for international law. He felt that that was not a term that we ought to use in this context.

So let me talk about preemption. Here are the circumstances in which I think an attack on another country is justified—unilateral attack. One, if the country is an unstable rogue regime and has the capacity to directly attack the United States through the following means: A) they have a nuclear program that is about to develop nuclear weapons, or they in fact possess nuclear weapons, which is why I opposed the existence of nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula or in the possession of Iran; 2) if a country can be demonstrated that they are supplying weapons to terrorist organizations which threaten the United States, such as al Qaeda; and 3) in the event that the world organizations do not fulfill their duties, such as NATO or the UN or others, to prevent genocide. So I supported the president’s invasion in Kosovo and Bosnia for that reason. I supported President Bush’s invasion of Afghanistan because it is very clear that the Afghan government was providing the means for al Qaeda to attack us in terms of training bases and so forth.

I did not support the invasion of Iraq because there, I thought, was no evidence that they possessed nuclear weapons, no evidence that they had a credible nuclear program, and no evidence that they were in fact supplying weapons to al Qaeda or anybody else. As it turned out, the questions that have been raised postwar appear to indicate that I was correct in my suspicion. That’s why I did not support the preemptive attack on Iraq.

America has always used preemptive attacks, or has a long history of it. We have never before had a doctrine of preemptive war. I think there’s a distinction that’s an important one. We have a right to defend ourselves. We do not have a right to attack countries that don’t threaten us in some way. Countries like Iraq who clearly did threaten other regional powers—they had used chemical weapons not only on their own people but on the Iranians—were a threat to the region. That is why I took the position that I would support a United Nations action to remove Saddam Hussein but not a unilateral American action, because it’s the job of the United Nations to respond to regional threats that don’t have a direct effect on the United States.

Margaret Warner: So in other words, if there was evidence that either North Korea or Iran were supplying nuclear weapons to terrorists or nuclear material, that would be a red line that you would consider—

Howard Dean: That is a red line. My first option of course would not be a military attack. My first option would be the many other things that we have at our disposal. But if Iran or North Korea were supplying weapons to terrorists who threaten the United States, we would absolutely have every reason to stop that in any way that we had to.

Margaret Warner: And you put chemical and biological in the same category.

Howard Dean: Yes. If they are supplying terrorist groups who threaten the United States, that’s correct.

Margaret Warner: Questions? Are you a member of the Council? Yes.

Jim Landé: My name is Jim Landé, I’m a Department of State officer and I’m a Council term member. Thank you for speaking to us today. In every social setting where I encounter and talk with Europeans, including as recently as last night with a British Embassy officer, whether they’re official or private citizen Europeans, the conversation always turns to American capital punishment. It’s a preoccupation of theirs, very deeply felt. Many people here have probably been drawn into similar conversations by every European you come across. If you were president, what would you say to foreign leaders and citizens of foreign countries that are allied with us about American capital punishment? And do you see that there has been any effect on Americans’ relations with our allies as a result of the situation of American capital punishment today? Thank you.

Howard Dean: I think American capital punishment, the way it is applied with such glee by this particular attorney general and this administration, is a serious issue. My views on capital punishment are somewhat different. We have no capital punishment in Vermont. I oppose the death penalty except in three instances. One, for the murder of a child. Two is for someone who shoots a police officer. Three is a mass murderer, such as a terrorist. It was a very difficult decision for me to come to that, and it was one that I came to because of a series of cases, including the Polly Klaas case in California, which made it clear to me that our judicial system not only executes innocent people because they’ve been wrongly convicted, but is responsible for the death of small children by letting out people who should never have been let out. So I view the issue as a very difficult one.

The commitment that I would give to you on the issue of capital punishment is first of all that we will have an attorney general who has a judicial temperament, unlike our current attorney general. Secondly, that vengeance should never ever be a reason for incarcerating somebody or taking somebody’s life, because vengeance is an emotion that every one of us feels but it’s an emotion that ought not to be considered in ascertaining what proper public policy is. Thirdly, I would support Patrick Leahy’s Innocence Protection Act, which would make it much more difficult to execute people who in fact have not been properly convicted of the crimes they were accused of.

Under that protocol, since the death penalty is largely a state issue and not a federal issue, although certainly there are federal crimes which apply here, we would reduce the amount of capital punishment. We would take a more moderated, thoughtful approach to capital punishment. I think the issue will not go away in international terms but it certainly would be lessened with a less vindictive approach.

Margaret Warner: Yes, over here.

Jeff Shields: Jeff Shields, I’m a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Margaret Warner: I won’t ask anymore.

Jeff Shields: Governor Dean, could you tell us your views about the Senate’s responsibility in declaration of war? In particular give us some reference to the resolution that was passed by the Senate before the invasion of Iraq.

Howard Dean: I was deeply troubled, not only by the votes that took place but by the timing of the votes, shortly before an election yet five months before we actually needed to take action. I was deeply troubled by the inability of the Senate apparently and the House as well to ascertain what the facts were—partly because they were being told things that turned out not to be so by the administration. I think we need to find out why that was, whether it was a failure of intelligence, whether the president’s advisers were keeping information from the president or whether the president selectively gave information to the United States Congress and the United States people. I dare say that if President Clinton had done this, there would be a full-scale investigation going on in the Congress right now, and there ought to be a full-scale investigation—although of course the right-wing Congress is not the proper forum for that at this point.

My view is that the declaration of war, especially where there appears to be time, is like the responsibility of the Senate in any other matter, whether it’s confirmation of a Supreme Court justice who’s being appointed for life, or whether it is the support of a resolution, advise and consent of any of the president’s appointees. That has to be carefully considered, that the Senate has an obligation and Congress has an obligation to ascertain what the facts are. And have an obligation to ascertain what the intelligence really is. I thought it was incredibly telling that Bob Graham now says that the Senate Intelligence Committee was misled. It seems to me that those who seek the presidency of the United States have an obligation to make sure that the information that they are using to commit our troops, nearly 200 of whom have now died, and more than 200 if you include the British casualties—that that is a solemn responsibility of both the Senate and the House that needs to be exercised more carefully than it was exercised with the approval of this resolution.

Barbara Slavin: Barbara Slavin of USA Today, I am a member of the Council as well.

Howard Dean: A ringer.

[laughter]

Margaret Warner: We have a few here.

Barbara Slayton: Double danger. I wanted to probe a little bit more your views on the so-called rogue states. You said you’d be willing to use military action as a last resort in the event they were developing nukes or passing them on, weapons to terrorists. Would you also be willing to engage with these countries—

Howard Dean: Absolutely. That’s always the first choice. Did I cut you off—I’m sorry.

Barbara Slavin: Would you be willing to renegotiate agreements with North Korea? Would you be willing to negotiate an agreement with Iran, in return for which it would give up its nuclear program and perhaps get an end to American sanctions against the country?

Howard Dean: That is the very first choice. In fact, I actually spoke of that in my speech. Here’s what we should do in the case of North Korea. We ought to begin bilateral negotiations. They’ve demanded them. What do we have to lose by entering bilateral negotiations with North Korea? We have no need as a country to prove that we’re tougher or bigger or stronger than they are. It’s the only justification I can think of for avoiding bilateral negotiations....and future claims to developing or possessing nuclear weapons, to bring them into the family of nations. Constructive engagement, which is an unfortunate term that was initiated by Ronald Reagan in reference to his dealings with South Africa, in fact is something that was used by Bill Clinton very effectively. This president pooh-poohed the idea while he was running, but in fact is the biggest beneficiary, because when the Chinese jet fighter ran into our spy plane, killing the pilot and downing our crew and our plane, we had the plane on its way home and the crew on its way home, I think within ten days. Why? Because we had constructively engaged with the Chinese and they were unwilling to consider losing several hundred billion dollars worth of trade a year.

Constructive engagement works. You can always influence the behavior of difficult states, and North Korea will continue to be a difficult state—you can influence their behavior more when they’re inside the tent than when they’re outside the tent. So the deal to be had is, they will renounce verifiably, under inspection on the ground, present and future nuclear capability and we will resume fuel and food shipments—and we will begin the process of bringing them into the world.

It is amazing to me that the president of these United States stood next to Kim Dae Jung, former president of South Korea, shortly into his term of office and changed the policy, apparently perhaps without even informing the president of South Korea ahead of time, from a policy of engagement to a policy of isolationism. There is no reason for that. That kind of decision is ideologically driven by old-line anticommunist hawks that are apparently still in full feather in this administration.

We have got to start thinking and stop substituting ideological considerations for actual thoughtful analysis. Thoughtful analysis will never be entirely, 100 percent right. But ideology will be more often wrong than right, because it ignores the facts.

[scattered applause]

You may applaud, thank you.

[laughter]

Iran is a much more difficult case, and our options are more limited. I believe that the way to deal with Iran is through Russia and the other suppliers. I would call upon the Europeans and Russia, who so vigorously opposed our war in Iraq, and suggest very strongly to them that they are also bear some culpability for what I believe was a bad American decision. Because if the Europeans and the Russians are unwilling to stand up in peacetime and do the things that have to be done, for the sake whether it’s the economic relationships they have with Iran or some other consideration, then they will bear the responsibility as well for preventing us from getting to a resolution of that crisis short of military means.

So the problem with Iran, of course, is that there’s nobody to talk to. Talking to the hardliners makes no sense. Talking to President Khatami may or may not produce any results, but in any case it appears that he doesn’t seem to have the power to implement anything he might be interested in saying—in fact, he doesn’t really seem to have the power to even talk to us. He suggests it and the hardliners pull tightly on the leash. Talking to the young people who are now beginning to develop the stirrings of the desire for democratic change would probably endanger their movement. So there is no one we can really reliably talk to in Iran. Perhaps except behind closed doors and under the table, which I hope is going on now and it should be.

So the only way that we can deal with Iran right now is in fact to have the Russians and Europeans take a much harder line. That’s what’s going to have to happen. If they’re unwilling to cooperate, they will bear part of the responsibility for the ultimate end of that conflict.

Margaret Warner: I’m going to follow up on Barbara’s question just to nail this down. You had said to me that you thought even after they had transferred banned or outlawed weapons, you would still engage or at that point is that a trigger for military action? If they transferred weapons to terrorists?

Howard Dean: Who?

Margaret Warner: Either Iran or North Korea.

Howard Dean: The key—whether they have or have not, in some ways is not—

Margaret Warner: If they were to.

Howard Dean: If they were to? Under no circumstances can we permit them to transfer weapons to terrorists. Under no circumstances can we permit that. That has to be a very clear red line.

Margaret Warner: For military action.

Howard Dean: Well, as a candidate for president, I will take a president’s prerogative and say that no option is ever off the table. But it’s foolish to spell out exactly what the options are. I think those kinds of things—I think that’s another one of the faults that I imagine that our president and the Bush administration—and that is, it is much better to give a very, very clear unambiguous signal to countries privately what the real red line is, and then never bluff, ever. Because if you bluff, then you will never be able to send that signal again. So I hope that signal has already been sent, both to Iran and Korea, that under no circumstances are we going to permit the development and retention of nuclear weapons or giving weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.

Wayne Smith: Wayne Smith, Center for International Policy. I’m not trying to lead you into a full discussion of what your economic policy could be, Governor, but you have said that there are areas such as homeland defense which should be strengthened and which would require greater appropriations. But we’re already running staggering deficits and the Bush administration’s approach seems to be simply to cut more taxes and run up greater deficits. How would you approach the need for greater appropriations in these areas?

Howard Dean: This is the most fascinating thing. A self-described conservative Republican president now runs the largest deficits in the history of the United States of America and has signed more debt ceiling increases than I believe any president, in such a short time in his tenure.

The interesting thing about what’s going on in the administration is driven, I think, by neoconservatives who believe that the best way to get rid of the New Deal is to starve it financially—being ideologues, they’re not being thoughtful or fact-driven. They don’t understand that what they’re going to do is also deprive our nation of our ability to defend ourselves. Even all but the most far-right members of the House and Senate are not going to jeopardize their seats by having massive cuts in Medicare and Social Security. So ultimately, if the president continues to drive up the deficits, it’s going to affect homeland security and our ability to defend ourselves internationally.

So I would do, for the sake of balancing the budget, domestic programs and homeland security, what I’ve said I’d do—I would get rid of every dime of the president’s tax cut, because not only does it drive our country into deficit, I really have said frequently—I truly believe this president is using Argentina as his fiscal model.

[laughter, applause]

It is. It’s borrow and spend, borrow and spend, borrow and spend. This is the credit card presidency. I believe in balanced budgets. I balanced them while I was governor. We put money aside. We didn’t have huge tax cuts, we paid off a quarter of our debt, and today we’re not cutting the vital services that states need to cut.

We have a choice. We can have the president’s tax cut or we can have health insurance for everybody. We can have the president’s tax cut or we can have a balanced budget and an economy that may create some jobs again someday. We can have the president’s tax cut or we can have an adequate homeland security. What the president has done with his tax cuts is raise middle-class property taxes. Those homeland security mandates have to be paid for by somebody, and they’re not being paid for by the federal government. Never mind the huge array of domestic unfunded mandates under the leadership of this president.

So we need someone in the White House who understands fiscal policy. Other than Bob Graham, I’m the only person that’s ever balanced a budget that’s running for the presidency—and that includes the president, because in Texas the lieutenant governor actually runs the budget. It’s the weakest governorship in the United States. I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions.

Jim McDermott: Jim McDermott from the Congress. To win the presidency, you have to win Iowa, you have to win West Virginia. Farm subsidies, steel imports are trade issues. We can talk about military a lot but we also have to talk about the economic side of it. How do you envision your involvement with the trade representative in terms of protectionism versus the whole issue of international trade—open free trade?

Howard Dean: Here is the real goal of trade. Trade is a good thing, first. Secondly, the real goal of trade, I hope, is not just to make money. It’s to defend the United States. The best long-term defense policy we can have in this country is to build middle-class countries with democratic ideals where women fully participate in the economic and political decision-making of those countries. Those countries do not go to war with each other and they do not harbor groups like al Qaeda. So our trade policy needs to be understood in the context of a strong defense.

Now, what has happened in the last ten years with NAFTA? In my state, very good things. We’re up against the Canadian border and we have quadrupled our trade with Canada. In Iowa and Missouri and Illinois and a lot of the Midwestern states, the industrial base has been hollowed out and shipped offshore. What has happened in some of the other countries? They have a better industrial base, but they have the same ownership patterns that were existing in the United States around the turn of the last century. That is, all the wealth that we have spread elsewhere around the world is concentrated in a really small number of hands, either personal family hands or large multinational corporations.

So the key to developing other countries as strong middle-class democratic partners of ours is only half accomplished. They now have significant industrial wealth, but the wealth ownership patterns look like they did in this country around 1900. That has to change. In order for that to change, they have to have strong trade union movements that are independent and able to organize the middle class, the way the trade union movement did in our country. Because what has made America the most powerful country on the face of the earth? Among other things, and perhaps the most important factor, is we have the largest middle class in the world. People who believe that their children will have a better chance than they did in life. People who can work in factories and mines and live a middle-class existence. People who vote, people who are patriotic, people who serve in the military and they are proud to serve in the military. Other countries need to develop that sense of a middle class and that strong middle class, and most important that sense of hope. To do that we’re going to have to have labor standards attached to free trade agreements.

Jim Zogby: Jim Zogby from the Arab-American Institute. You spoke about our values and the need to export and project those values. I just returned from the Middle East and I’d like you to comment on the following. Real damage has been done by policies from the Department of Justice, using widespread profiling against Arabs and Muslims in this country, and secret evidence to hold them without really revealing either the charges or allowing them due process. Secondly, allies of this administration on the religious right have made comments about Islam and about the Arab world and culture that have been broadcast widely in the Middle East and have had a real toll. What would you do as president, first of all about the use of secret evidence and profiling, and secondly if allies of yours made comments that were antithetical to the values you wanted to project, how would you deal with that?

Howard Dean: Let me answer the second question first, Jim. Of course I would stand up against that. I think it’s wrong to categorize groups broadly and I certainly think that the violent extremists in the Muslim world represent a very small proportion of Muslims. But I also think that it should not have to be a white Christian president of the United States whose burden that is. We have got to ensure that moderate Muslims everywhere stand up to the extremists and terrorists in their rank. It’s the same as—I talk about race all the time, and I don’t talk about race just to black audiences, I talk about race to white audiences, because a white person needs to talk frankly about race to white Americans who need to understand what is going on in a way that they don’t understand. So again, a white Christian president of this country is not the most effective spokesman.

Of course I’ll do that. I don’t believe in bigotry, I don’t believe in hatred, and I believe in social justice and I believe everyone is equal under the law. But until moderate Muslims stand up and denounce the terrorism and radicalism that is being perpetrated by a very small minority of people, which is helping to stereotype the larger majority, then we are not going to get to the place where you’re going to be happy about what’s going on regarding stereotypes of Muslim behavior.

Secondly, profiling doesn’t work. There were extensive studies done by the police not only around the New Jersey case, and this is mostly around African American and Latino people who were driving across the country and up and down the New Jersey Turnpike. There was a racial profiling policy that was going on in some of these states. There were extensive studies about it and guess what? It doesn’t work. You don’t get more arrests by pulling over people because they’re Latino or African American—or convictions. You get more arrests and more stops, but you don’t get more convictions. So profiling simply does not work.

I think it’s reasonable to expect that we would be careful who we would let in the country. That’s a reasonable thing. I think it’s completely unreasonable to single out individuals because of the way they look or their religious practices and assume that a Muslim, for example, is more dangerous than a Christian or Jew coming into this country. That results, what I just said, has been borne out in fact by looking at times when people have used racial profiling in the past for other purposes. I oppose profiling for any reason.

Margaret Warner: That will have to be the last question because I promised to end this promptly at ten. Governor, thank you very much.

Howard Dean: Thank you.