Folks, Sarah Palin said she could see Russia from Alaska. Mitt Romney talks like he's only seen Russia by watching 'Rocky IV.'
We were sent to Vietnam to kill Communism. But we found instead that we were killing women and children.
The agreement is fundamentally that we want to try to resolve this. The agreement is that ISIL is a threat to everybody, and we need to come together to find a way to fight ISIL. The agreement is that we want to save Syria, keep it unified, keep it secular. So surely in those very fundamental principles on which we could agree.
I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force-- if necessary-- to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security.
Palestinians need to stop the incitement. They need to stop that kind of activity. But at the same time, there is a need to see the broader conflict here and understand that there has to be some kind of ultimately negotiated political track that's going to resolve the difference between Palestinians and Israelis.
Great physicians and nurses, skilled, caring and unparalleled in their training, intervened in my life and probably saved it. I was lucky but other Americans are not. It is time to speak again and stand again for the ideal that in the richest nation ever on this planet, it is wrong for 41 million Americans, most of them in working families, to worry at night and wake up in the morning without the basic protection of health insurance.
Values are not just words, values are what we live by. They're about the causes that we champion and the people we fight for.
I still believe Americas destiny is to become a living testament to what free human beings can accomplish by acting in unity.
I can't take my Catholic belief, my article of faith, and legislate it on a Protestant or a Jew or an Atheist. We have separation of church and state in the United States of America.
What Donald Trump is doing is serving the polluters and serving a narrow group of ideological interests. That's not leadership. That's abdication of responsibility, and this step does not make America first. It makes America last.
America now stands as the world's foremost power. We should be proud: Not since the age of the Romans have one people achieved such preeminence. But we are not Romans; we do not seek an empire. We are Americans, trustees of a vision and a heritage that commit us to the values of democracy and the universal cause of human rights.
Each and every child in this country is valuable because they are our future as a society. We cannot afford to lose a single child to ill-health, under-education, abuse, addiction, jail, or gun violence. America's highest goal should be for every child to grow up to be a successful young adult -- healthy, educated, free, secure, and a good citizen.
Ask Osama bin Laden is he is better off now than he was four years ago.
What we have to do is go on the offensive. [The science on climate change] has been maligned and misinterpreted, and we need to fight back... [P]eople [need to] stop being moved by these talk show [hosts] and start looking for the facts themselves.
I met with many of - a number of [Syrian] refugees in Berlin the other day, and I was struck by how educated, intelligent, and patriotic they are. They want to go back. They love their country. And there are so many of them still in Jordan and in refugee camps in Lebanon and in Turkey, that if you could create the climate within which they could begin to come back, I believe there is such a history of secularism within Syria, even tolerance within Syria, that if we can deal with ISIL, yes. That's the key. And with ISIL there, not a chance.
I've been having problems with the right wing lately.
America has everything most countries envy. A Constitution which is the treasure of mankind, a strong military, natural resources of every kind. Above all, as Tocqueville said, a good people, which is what makes us great.
And it is time for those who talk about family values to start valuing families.
Jesus did not help just the sick who could afford to pay for it.
I believe it is both unwise and even wrong to interfere in the affairs of other nations. Indeed, if we are honest, we will see that this is one of the reasons for 9-11.
We owe our troops the opportunity to serve in the best-planned, best-equipped, and best-led military force in the world, and we owe them the peace of mind that comes from knowing that they and their families will be taken care of if they sacrifice life, limb or the ability to sleep without war's nightmares. We owe them not just thanks and best wishes, but action, and action in our nation's capital.
There is no bigger judgment for a president of the United States than how you take a nation to war.
America that has done more to support Israel than any other country cannot be true to our own values if we allow a viable two-state solution to be destroyed before our own eyes.
I heard Katty Kay's name and I know Katty Kay said we didn't have a plan. Well, there is a plan, and the President [Barack Obama] is moving forward with any number of options and ways to augment our efforts on ISIL.
We should focus more on the things we've accomplished, but I mean, obviously Syria disturbs me greatly and I'm not happy with where Syria is.
That is what Americans do. We face a challenge - no matter how great - because we know that on the other side there is always hope.
I think that for many of us, the years of the Civil Rights movements - Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy running for president in 1968 to end the war and so forth - these were defining moment in terms of trying to hold government accountable and have a level of responsibility and truth-telling.
You can't have responsibility and you can't have us living up to our ideals unless it's based on a fairly common acceptance of truth, of what is true - what is the truth here?
Confronting climate change is, in the long run, one of the greatest challenges that we face, and you can see this duty or responsibility laid down in scriptures, clearly.
Those who deny the science or choose excuses over action are playing with fire.
We have staring us in the face here an enormous opportunity to actually find a way forward to have peace and stability in Syria, to reconstitute it. It'll take years to do that. This will not be an easy fight even with concerted coordination with respect to ISIL. But it is far more doable with that kind of approach than otherwise.
I do think that it's really important for leaders of countries to be very clear and careful in the statements they make because their words are weighed extremely carefully by other countries, and you have to create a continuity of seriousness and of credibility in order to be able to be taken seriously and get things done.
We need a new approach to national security - a bold, progressive internationalism that stands in stark contrast to the too often belligerent and myopic unilateralism of the Bush Administration.
How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?
Assassination, kidnappings and suicide attacks have become too much the standard operating procedure in the Islamic world. So much so that the name of Islam itself has been diminished in the eyes of many people. It is the responsibility of all of us, and particularly those in the Islamic world who care about their religion, to rescue it from its increased association with violence.
I will never cede the authority of our country or our security to any other nation. I'll never give a veto over American security to any other entity - not a nation, not a country, not an institution.
Remember the hours after Sept. 11 when we came together as one...It was the worst day we have ever seen, but it brought out the best in all of us.
We don't need a president who just says, "Gentlemen, start your engines." We need a president who says, America, let's start our economy and put people back to work.
And whatever our faith - whatever our faith, one belief should bind us all: The measure of our character is our willingness to give of ourselves for others and for our country.
For those of us who are fortunate to share an Irish ancestry, we take great pride in the contributions that Irish-Americans.
An old American patriot described today’s situation very well. As America fought for its independence, Benjamin Franklin said, “we must all hang together, or assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”
I saw courage both in the Vietnam War and in the struggle to stop it. I learned that patriotism includes protest, not just military service.
I don't believe we need a good conservative judge, and I don't believe we need a good liberal judge. I subscribe to the Justice Potter Stewart standard. He was a justice on the Supreme Court of the United States. And he said the mark of a good judge, good justice, is that when you're reading their decision, their opinion, you can't tell if it's written by a man or woman, a liberal or a conservative, a Muslim, a Jew or a Christian. You just know you're reading a good judicial decision.
You don't value families if you force them to take up a collection to buy body armor for a son or daughter in the service.
If you don't believe ... Saddam Hussein is a threat with nuclear weapons, then you shouldn't vote for me.
We need to guarantee equal rights and civil rights and say that, here in America, workers have the right to organize - women have the right to choose - and justice belongs to everyone regardless of race or gender or sexual orientation.
I saw how different life was on different sides of the same city. I saw the fear in the eyes of people who were not free. I saw the gratitude of people toward the United States for all that we had done. I felt goosebumps as I got off a military train and heard the Army band strike up 'Stars and Stripes Forever.'
Bush-McCain stategy in Iraq is policy to stay, not to win.
You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.
There's an agreement that Syria should be a unified country, united; that it needs to be secular; that ISIL needs to be taken on; and that there needs to be a managed transition, but there is a difference obviously in what that means and what that outcome may or may not be.
We should not allow a tiny minority of shoddy scientists and science and extreme ideologues to compete with scientific facts.
We can't change minds without knowing what's in them.
America is the most powerful economy in the world. We're an $18-trillion-dollar economy.
I'm not going to put my energy into focusing on things that are hypothetical that we don't know.
The Reagan Administration has no rational plan for our military. Instead, it acts on misinformed assumptions about the strength of the Soviet military and a presumed 'window of vulnerability,' which we now know not to exist.
The hope is there. The sun is rising. Our best days are yet to come.
Medicare is paid for by the American taxpayer. Medicare belongs to you. Medicare is for seniors, who many of them are on fixed income, to lift them out of poverty.
The fact is that in too many parts of our country, we still have discrimination. And affirmative action is not just something that applies to people of color. Some people have a mistaken view of it in America. It also is with respect to women, it's with respect to other efforts to try to reach out and be inclusive in our country.
We will fight anyone who wishes to impose a totalitarian system upon a free society, and we will always prevail. But we will not do so with a fear-stricken administration which seeks to deprive us of freedoms in the name of 'defending' us from the terrorists, who also seek to deprive us of our freedoms.
I'm a Catholic, raised a Catholic. I was an altar boy. Religion has been a huge part of my life. It helped lead me through a war, leads me today.
The future belongs to freedom, not to fear.
My dad was a member of the Greatest Generation that achieved victory in World War II. This was the generation that saved the world from fascism, came home and built the great American middle class, led the way in the civil rights movement, protected our environment, and created great programs like Medicare.
We must retool our nation to prepare for the challenge we already face to maintain our position in the global economy. And this much is certain: America will not have national security without economic security.
I'm John Kerry, and I'm reporting for duty.
Gender based violence anywhere is a threat to peace and security everywhere.
President Clinton was often known as the first black president. I wouldn't be upset if I could earn the right to be the second.
Politics has always been the art of the possible. Today it's too often the art of the probable - tinkering around the edges without any greater vision, without a sense of optimism and imagination.
Our purpose now is to reclaim democracy itself. We are here to affirm that when Americans stand up and speak their minds and say America can do better, that is not a challenge to patriotism; it is the heart and soul of patriotism.
Three-quarters of [Bashar Assad] country is displaced. It's in Jordan, it's in Lebanon, it's in Turkey, and in the desert. The threat is that those people in the desert and others could become the next acolytes of ISIL if we don't find a way to join together to go after ISIL.
Remember the hours after September 11th when we came together as one to answer the attack against our homeland. We drew strength when our firefighters ran upstairs and risked their lives so that others might live; when rescuers rushed into smoke and fire at the Pentagon; when the men and women of Flight 93 sacrificed themselves to save our nation's Capitol; when flags were hanging from front porches all across America, and strangers became friends. It was the worst day we have ever seen, but it brought out the best in all of us.
We do not need more division. We certainly do not need something as complex and emotional as Vietnam reduced to simple campaign rhetoric.
If you think I would have gone to war the way George Bush did, don't vote for me.
Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, others, knew how to lead. They knew how to ask the American people for the right things.
I'm motivated by my passion for our basic values, protecting our interests, and for protecting the future.
The military's job is to win the war. A president's job is to win the peace.
I think George Mitchell is a consummate professional. He is the ideal selection to handle the job of special envoy if you choose to have a special envoy.
What we Americans need to do is respect that incredible blessing that we have as a nation and make sure that we are leading in the best ways possible.
We still have a lot of work to do to protect our own democracy.
You can't play sports without losing sometimes and, in losing, you learn something about grace and how to act under pressure.
Real Democrats don't abandon the middle class.
If you want to be a Jewish state and you want to remain a democracy, you have to have a two-state solution.
We're in a battle for our lives for things that really matter to us. There's a shell game going on like I've never seen before.
Not to wax nostalgic about the 1970s, but back then people got upset when they saw injustice. They got tired of seeing our air, land and water polluted. They were shocked when the Cuyahoga River in Ohio was polluted so badly it caught fire. And on one great day 20 million Americans marched all across this land. Politicians had no choice but to take notice.
I actually did vote for the $87 billion, before I voted against it.
We are not interested in a proxy war. Our objective is to change Russia's behavior.
I am a veteran, I fought in a war. I've been a prosecutor. I've sent people to jail for the rest of their life.
We do have to take the long-term view. And long term, the question to ask ourselves is whether America should attack others pre-emptively, whether she should embroil herself in wars far away from our soil, and try to bring democracy by force to the rest of the world.
It's very hard to get other countries to give up their weapons when you're busy developing a new one.
What we do right now, today, matters.
As a public person, I've always tried to reflect what is embodied in our defining ideals as a nation about equality and fairness and justice and so forth.
George Bush's vision does not live up to the America I enlisted in the Navy to defend, the America I have fought for in the Senate, and the America that I hope to lead as president.
If Russia is there [in Syria] alone fighting them [ISIL], guess what? Russia becomes the target and Russia starts seeing - who knows - MANPADs will find their way in there, airplanes will fall out of the sky. They will become vilified. They'll become the new magnet, together with Assad, for the jihadis.
I'm an internationalist. I'd like to see our troops dispersed through the world only at the directive of the United Nations.
I am not a spokesperson for the church and the church is not a spokesperson for the United States of America.
We must recognize that there is no indication that Saddam Hussein has any intention of relenting. So we have an obligation of enormous consequence, an obligation to guarantee that Saddam Hussein cannot ignore the United Nations. He cannot be permitted to go unobserved and unimpeded toward his horrific objective of amassing a stockpile of weapons of mass destruction.
You just don't invade another country on phony pretext in order to assert your interests!
Unlike George Bush and his friends at the big oil companies, I'm going to work for a real energy policy for this country that decreases America's dependence on foreign oil and helps lower the costs to American families.
I don't want to claim that God is on our side. As Abraham Lincoln told us, I want to pray humbly that we are on God's side.
It's one thing to be certain, but you can be certain and you can be wrong.
Those localized efforts take a long time and they don't deal with the larger issue of ISIL and the question of what you're going to do to really have a solution here. We have to save Syria.
When the nations of the world look upon the United States, they see a country which has achieved what they would all like to become one day. Whether it is in the field of science, art, music, agriculture, politics, economics or war, the United States is the leader.
You just don't in the 21st century behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pre-text.
I supported Israel 100 percent as a senator for 28 years and I've supported it 100 percent as Secretary of State.
The problems of health care can be solved if we stop giving tax cuts to those who have the most, and start making health care affordable for those working harder and harder for too little.
A fundamental premise of politics is we can make this work if people just never figure it out.
There is no greater breach of the public trust than knowingly misleading the country into war. In a democracy, we simply cannot tolerate the abuse of this trust by the government.
The problem with the American health-care system that it is not working for the American family.
Think about this: terrorism, epidemics, poverty, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction-all challenges that know no borders-the reality is that climate change ranks right up there with every single one of them.
I commanded a naval gunboat patrolling the Mekong Delta. Then when I came home after two tours of duty, I decided that the same sense of service demanded something more of me.
America has not led but fled on the issue of global warming.
I'm going to be honest with you - I don't know a lot about Cuba's healthcare system. Is it a government-run system?
We need to put our faith and trust in the people on the frontlines -- and back it up with real resources. We need to make sure first defenders have the gear and support they need, and the benefits and protections they've earned. With new technology and ingenuity, by doing more to sustain our first defenders and calling on Americans to do more for their country, we can make our country stronger, safer, and more secure.
George Bush sold us on going to war with Iraq based on the threat of weapons of mass destruction. But we still haven't found them.
We will not be derailed by criminal anarchists who legitimately claim a religious cause.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.
My definition of patriotism is to defend your country with the truth, no matter the consequences.
And if [Vladimir Putin] does fight ISIL alone, how does it work out for Russia to have sided with Assad, sided with Iran, sided with Hizballah, when they're trying to reach out to the rest of the Sunni world in the region? That's not a good equation for Russia.
And now that the Greatest Generation is getting older, I think it is the responsibility of all Americans to make sure we do our part for America's seniors. You have earned the best of America -- and we need to make sure you get the protection and health care you deserve.
If the threat is jihadism - and it is - and the threat is the destruction of Syria so that all of these refugees are swamping into Europe and changing the whole character and politics of Europe, this is the time to unite to find a way out.
Values spoken without actions taken are merely slogans.
I believe America is safest and strongest when we are leading the world and we are leading strong alliances.
We do not need to divide America over who served and how. I have personally always believed that many served in many different ways.
America is the one that leads the effort to make sure the freedom of navigation in the South China Sea is protected.
We spent a fair amount of time on Ukraine. And I think there's a path that we discussed that we will follow up on in order to try to resolve some of the outstanding issues in order to fully implement Minsk.
Climate change is real. The science is compelling. And the longer we wait, the harder the problem will be to solve.
