Looking at a timeline for JRE and came across a debate with him and Cheney 2004

[lisainmilo]

Here is the link for the timeline: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2007/11/20/us/politics/20071120_EDWARDS_TIMELINE.html#


Here is the article with the debate from 2004. JRE has learned the truth about the Iraq war and challenges Cheney.

In a strikingly personal and bitter debate, Vice President Dick Cheney defended the Bush administration's record on Iraq on Tuesday night as ''exactly the right thing to do'' and asserted that Senators John Kerry and John Edwards bent with the political winds on national security.

Mr. Edwards fired back with a wide-ranging assault on the administration's honesty and competence in foreign and domestic policy. ''One thing that's very clear is that a long résumé does not equal good judgment,'' Mr. Edwards declared, in one of many sharp exchanges that spoke to the closeness of the race and the differences between the two tickets.

Mr. Cheney was defiantly unapologetic about the course of the conflict in Iraq, defending the Administration against the charge that it had failed to provide enough troops to stabilize Iraq, as the former top American official in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, said in a speech on Monday. Mr. Cheney said he would recommend the same course in Iraq if he had it to do over again, adding, ''The world is safer today because Saddam Hussein is in jail, his government's no longer in power, and we did exactly the right thing.''

Mr. Edwards immediately shot back, ''Mr. Vice President, you are still not being straight with the American people.'' He repeatedly charged that Mr. Cheney had conflated the threat from Mr. Hussein with Al Qaeda, and argued that the United States needed a ''fresh start'' and new leadership if it was to succeed in Iraq

Cheney then changes the subject so <snip>

With so much at stake, both men unleashed their sharpest attacks, each describing his opponent -- seated just inches away -- with withering contempt. Referring to Halliburton, Mr. Edwards said, ''The facts are, the vice president's company, that he was CEO of, that did business with sworn enemies of the United States, paid millions of dollars in fines for providing false financial information.'' That company, Mr. Edwards added, ended up with a $7.5 billion no-bid contract for work in Iraq.

<snip>

Mr. Edwards countered, ''What John Kerry said, and it's just as clear as day to anybody who was listening, He said, 'We will find terrorists where they are and kill them before they ever do harm to the American people.''

Mr. Edwards pointed out that Mr. Kerry had explicitly said he would never give any other nation a veto over American national security decisions. But he said the American people and the rest of the world deserved to know the full truth about why the United States was going to war.

''It is critical that we be credible,'' Mr. Edwards said. ''They need to know that the credibility of the United States is always good.''

<snip>

Mr. Cheney said that Iraq had been an appropriate target after the Sept. 11 attacks because of its ''established relationship with Al Qaeda'' and that Iraq had been the ''nexus'' that could provide terrorists with access to nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. But Mr. Edwards, in his first response, challenged Mr. Cheney's credibility, saying: ''Mr. Vice President, you are still not being straight with the American people.'' Senator Edwards charged that Mr. Cheney and President Bush "continue to tell people things are going well in Iraq,'' an assertion he said was obviously false to the American people who can see otherwise everyday on television.

Mr. Edwards also accused Mr. Cheney of falsely lining the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 and Iraq. ''There is no connection between attacks of 9/11 and Saddam Hussein. You said there is some connection; there is not.

<snip>

When Ms. Ifill asked if a Kerry-Edwards administration would have acted differently when confronted with the threat of Saddam Hussein, Mr. Edwards said that Saddam Hussein ''needed to be confronted'' but that .United Nations weapons inspectors should have been given more time. He said the American invasion of March 200 had distracted attention fom Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden, who were responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks.

''We had Osama bin Laden cornered at Tora Bora,'' he said. "We had the finest military in the world on the ground.' Mr. Edwards stumbled once, though, and began to refer to Osama Bin Laden as Saddam Hussein."Listen carefully to what the vice president is saying,'' said Mr. Edwards, "because there is no connection between Saddam Hussein and the attacks of September 11, period. The 9/11 commission has said it's true, Colin Powell has said it's true, but the Vice President has suggested there is. But there's not." Asked whether the administration moved to quickly to leave the fight in Afghanistan, Mr. Cheney said the administration has "never let up on Osama Bin Laden from Day One. We'll continue to aggressively pursue him and I'm confident we'll get him.

A reminder of the dark forces that are controlling the media, the politicians, the war, the corporations! 4 years after this debate still no Osama bin Laden! Must we keep him at large to continue the blood monies??? I wonder.

Link from NY times article: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D00E4DC163BF935A35753C1A9629C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1