Kucinich: Turn Iraq governance over to U.N.
Originally published in Newsday
Kucinich: Turn Iraq governance over to U.N.
By KAREN MATTHEWS
Associated Press Writer
December 7, 2003, 6:14 PM EST
NEW YORK -- Rep. Dennis Kucinich said Sunday that he is the only presidential candidate with a plan for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq and turning the administration of the country over to the United Nations.
"We are now mired in Iraq," the Ohio Democrat told about 50 supporters at a Manhattan fund-raiser. "I'm hopeful that George Bush will recognize the dead end of policy that he has arrived at. But if he doesn't recognize it, you're looking at the one candidate _ with your help _ who will be able to extricate the United States from this sordid chapter in our national experience, from this defaming of our national purpose, from this disconnection with the world community."
Kucinich said his campaign "is about a new America, which participates with the world community in the cause of international security."
"It's about a new America, which sets aside pre-emption and unilateralism," he said, "a new America, which reaches to the United Nations and involves the United Nations in Iraq so that we can get the U.N. in and the U.S. out of Iraq."
Kucinich is a long shot among the crowded field of Democrats hoping to unseat President Bush in 2004. One recent poll showed him trailing former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean by 40 percentage points in New Hampshire. The margin is smaller in recent polls in Iowa, but voter support for Kucinich is still in the low single digits while Dean and Missouri Rep. Dick Gephardt have polled in the 20s.
But the former mayor of Cleveland told his supporters he has "an awareness that this election can turn like that."
After the fund-raiser in an East Village restaurant, Kucinich spoke briefly at a union rally in front of a SoHo clothing store that labor activists claim has unfairly resisted efforts to organize workers at its New Jersey distribution center.
"The right to organize is a basic right in a democratic society," Kucinich told the workers in English and Spanish.
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