Positions and Views of Mark Dayton
on Afghanistan, Pakistan & Iraq
| Currently Elected Governor & Lt Governor, Minnesota |
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Mark Dayton's positions and views on the issues:
Links are only provided where we have information. The first link is a
report of all issues and questions made available to the candidates.
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List of Issues | Biographical | Reasons & Objectives
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| Afghanistan, Pakistan & Iraq |
Positions and Views |
| Iraq, a General Statement |
Last week, Senator Lieberman and I traveled to Iraq, to Baghdad. When I visited Iraq a year and a half ago, our Senate delegation in Baghdad and other cities, Basra and Tikrit, boarded armed Humvees and with military escort drove throughout those respective cities. Last week, we were confined for security reasons to the heavily fortified green zone, which is the command post of the United States military, our Government representatives, and the Iraqi government.
The necessity for those restrictions was made apparent because one of the opposition political leaders with whom we were supposed to meet and where we envisioned traveling for 5 minutes outside of the green zone was the target of an assassination attempt the previous day. He was not harmed, but a suicide bomber killed himself and nine other Iraqis outside the location where the meeting was to occur, which underscores the perilous nature of the environment and the impossibility of providing the necessary and complete security for our own forces who are performing heroically and continue to risk their lives, and in some cases give up their lives, tragically, to protect the Iraqi people from the insurgent forces which are brutal and sometimes lethally effective in what they are intending to do in that particular country.
Sunday, I had the occasion to meet with a few hundred Minnesotans, family members of loved ones who are presently serving in Iraq. They asked the same question over and over again: When are our husbands, wives, sons, fathers, mothers, coming home?
Although I opposed the Iraq war resolution in October of 2002 and continue to believe, unfortunately, we have on an overall basis weakened our national security, not strengthened it by our action, we are there, with 150,000 of our Armed Forces committed. It is imperative we succeed. It is also imperative that we start to devise--we should have already--a strategy to bring our troops home safely as soon as possible with the victory secure. [Response was truncated to maximum response length of 2000 characters.]
Source: Candidate Website (10/02/2004) |
| These are available issue topics for which there were no responses. |
| Afghanistan, a General Statement |
| Pakistan, a General Statement |
| Timetable for Withdrawal |
| US Military Presence in Afghanistan |
| President Hamid Karzai |
| Predator Drone Strikes |
| Taliban & Radical Islamic Jihadists |
| Iraq Policy |
| Iraq War |
| Iraq Reconstruction |
| Iraq Political Progress |
| Private Security like Blackwater |
| Cutting Off War Funding |
| Federalizing Iraq into Kurd, Shiite and Sunni States |
| Sunnis and Shiites |
| Humanitarian Situation in Iraq |
| Length of Deployments |
| Continued US Military Presence in Iraq |
| Deadline for US Pullout |
| Troop Surge |
| Iraq's Role in War on Terror |
| Loss of American Lives in Iraq |
| Staying in Iraq for "as long as it takes to do the job" |
| Iraq Role in Making Americans Safer |