Tuesday, September 21, 2004
Edwards discusses war on terrorism, economic change
Q. In a speech yesterday, you said: "When John Kerry is president of the United States, we will find al-Qaida where they are and crush them before they can do damage to the American people." What will a Kerry adminstration do to find al-Qaida's leaders that isn't already being tried? Can we really defeat terrorism just by taking out top terrorists?
Edwards: There are number of things we can be doing better than we are doing now to get at al-Qaida and its leaders - not just al-Qaida, but any of these terrorist organizations. One is to lead the sort of alliances throughout the world that would allow us to get more help from the countries in which these terrorists operate.
It's critical if we are going to find terriorist cells outside our borders and stop them, before they do damage to us, we have to have cooperation from the countires involved. Second, we have moved away from human intelligence assets. Over the last 20 years, more than two decades, we've become more dependent on eavesdropoping, on sattelite surveillance, on technical surveillance. And the result of that is we get very small pieces of information, which is very hard to piece together. We have to at least double our human intelligence operatives. The reality is if we are going to get inside these terrorist cells and stop them, we are going to have to get our hands dirty. The kind of people that can infiltrate these cells are often not model citizens, but we have to have human beings inside these terrorists cells - not just abroad, but but also here. We know that there are a number of terrorist organizations that have operations here in this country of some kind - Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah - they are here and we know they are here.
The war on terrorism is a long-term war. I think it matters that we capture and destroy the leadership. I think it matters that we capture or kill Osama bin Laden. I think it matters that the other leadership of al-Qaida be captured or killed. It clearly has a short-term disruptive influence on their ability to operate, but over long-term term we have to get at some of the root causes of terroism which, in this case, is Islamic extremism.
Q: What specific middle-class tax cut is the Kerry-Edwards ticket proposing and how would you pay for them?
Edwards: First we keep the (middle-class) tax cuts that we have. If you earn less than $200,000 per year and you've gotten a tax cut, you're gonna keep that tax cut. On top of that, we are proposing tax breaks for child care to save up to $1,000 per year for child care. Tax credits of up to $4,000 a year for college tuition. Tax credits for familes for the cost of health care, up to a thousand dollars. Also tax credits to employers to help them reduce the cost of their health care.
The way we pay for this: Rolling back tax cuts for people over make over $200,000 a year, closing a group of corporation tax loopholes for companies who are outsourcing jobs, which I think is insane. ... In the interest of complete candor, the primary source of paying for the additional tax cuts and the health care plan is rolling back the $200,000-plus tax cuts.
Q: How could a Kerry/Edwards administration build stronger cost-sharing alliances for the wars in Iraq andAfghanistan when most nations want no parte of the terror-plagued aftermath?
Edwards: We believe this mess is the creation of George Bush and Dick Cheney and they can't fix it.What needs to be done to bring other countries to the table. They (Bush/Cheney) have not done this in the past. I know that the president and the vice president like to talk about the coalition. The cold, hard facts are that 90 percent of the casualties are American casualties; 90 percent of the cost of war is being borne by American taxpayers.
What we believe is that this can be changed through a series of things, one of which is the reaching out of a new president. I was in Brussels a couple months ago and met with a group of NATO ambassadors, and my own feeling is that with a new president and a fresh start, that we have a significantly increased likelihood of being able to bring NATO and others into the effort in Iraq, particularly if we engage them. This means not just engaging them in troops and money, but , in the reconstruction process. There are a number of these counties interested in being involved in the reconstruction process that have not been involved. And if we really want the Iraqi economy to get off the ground, the Iraqi economy to have some success, Russia and Germany and France, hold significant debt in Iraq. We're never gonna get serious debt relief for Iraq and the Iraqi economy unless (the other countries) have something in return, and one of the things they can get in return is participation in the reconstruction effort. I don't think it will happen over night. I think it will take hard work and I think it will take time.
Q: What message do you need to get across in Ohio and Kentucky to do well among the voters here?
Edwards: It would make no sense for the people of Ohio - let me focus on Ohio if you don't' mind - to rehire a president who has cost them 237,000 jobs, who has promoted outsourcing of American jobs, who not only - if you listen to their policy - defend these tax breaks for American companies sending jobs overseas. They are just dead wrong about that. I don't know any other way to say it.
Health insurance premiums are up $3,700 here in Ohio and you know we've got all these people around the country who have lost their health care coverage. There has been no serious effort by this administration to address the health care problem.
Ohio has lost one out of every four to five jobs in the country. You are 4 percent of the country's population. And the people in Ohio are going to rehire this person to be president? It feels like in this state everybody knows somebody who has already lost their job or might lose their job; somebody who has lost their health care or might lose their health care soon; or somebody who is in Iraq, or is about to go, or who has just come back from Iraq. It's a powerful common thread through Ohio. Every one of those fronts - jobs health care and what's happening on the ground in Iraq - have been a disaster under this adminstration and the only way others can hold the adminstartion accountable for what they have done is to vote them out of office. And by the way, the men and women from here who have served in Iraq and are serving there now have been couragious in serving there country.
I would be the first person to say that we can't turn this around overnight. It's not going to happen in a day, it's not going to happen in a week, but I think that with the right decision and the right priorities we can make progress, we can do better than we are doing now. There's a lot of work to be done, and I think it takes a long-term sustained effort to accomplish that.
Q: Vice president Cheney said he felt the role of the government was to help the people weather the changes in the economy, and to learn to deal with the new advances and changes rather than trying to freeze the economy and prevent those changes. Is he wrong to think the government's role is to help people cope with changes in the economy?
Edwards: The role of government in the economy is to have a group of policies, of principles and ideals that allow every American who's willing to work hard and be responsible to have a chance to work hard and to do better. This is something that comes from inside me.
We live in a country under this adminstration where it does matter where you come from. It matters what kind of family wealth that you have. It matters in your chance to do well. This is a core value issues, it goes to the heart and soul of what you see in America and what you see as the role of the government.
I want people to do well. We're for rolling back tax cuts for people who make over $200,000 a year, I'm not for tax cuts for multimillionaires, but I would say for people who have done well in this country, "bless you." You know especially people who did it by working hard and being industrious and being creative - that's a good thing.
We have to make those opportunities open to more people than they are now. There are a lot of tools we are able to use to help them accomplsh that. Educational tools. Making sure that kids aren't pulled back because they don't have access to decent health care. Making sure we have policies that create good jobs.
The one thing I do believe is that it is critical for us to invest in the innovative jobs of the future. I think to accomplish that we have to be willing to invest in energy independence. We can't continue to be as dependent on oil from the Middle East as we are today. That means using our resources, our natural resources, better than we are: coal, oil, particularly deep water oil in the central and western Gulf of Mexico. We ought to be investing in things like bio-diesel, all of which can be used for job creation.
I think the roll of government is to make sure the people have the tools to do well, have the tools to compete in the global economy.
EDITORIAL PAGE HEADLINES
Kerry/Edwards offer plans for healing Iraq
Q&A: Edwards discusses war on terrorism, economic change
Letters to the editor
