http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/14/1410234Did Dennis Kucinich Sell Out Anti-War Democrats?
Democratic Party delegates supporting presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich struck a deal this weekend with representatives of John Kerry over the Party's stance on the Iraq war. The deal happened this weekend at the Democratic Party Platform convention in Miami. Kucinich's delegates withdrew their proposal for a quick withdrawal of US troops from Iraq.
The critical paragraph was worked out in negotiations led by Sandy Berger, who was President Bill Clinton's national security adviser.
It pledges to remove American troops "when appropriate so that the military support needed by a sovereign Iraqi government will no longer be seen as the direct continuation of an American military presence."
Ana Dias, the chief sponsor of the pullout proposal, said Kucinich had called off his forces. Dias is a delegate from Hawaii and she told The New York Times she was "terribly disappointed" not to get a vote on the issue, but added, "We do want to be unified."
Berger characterized those he was negotiating with as "a group of people who want to win." Berger added, "We didn't give up anything."
The platform retains a sentence that the antiwar delegates originally found objectionable stating that "people of good will disagree about whether America should have gone to war in Iraq."
Rep. Dennis Kucinich, U.S. Congressman from Ohio and a Democratic presidential candidate.
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RUSH TRANSCRIPT
AMY GOODMAN: We're joined right now by the democratic presidential candidate, Ohio Congressmember Dennis Kucinich. Welcome to Democracy Now!.
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