Senate Contenders on the Issues
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Excerpts from a transcript of yesterday's debate between Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) and Democratic challenger James Webb, moderated by NBC's Tim Russert:
On U.S. involvement in Iraq
Allen: I stand by my vote [to support the war]. The vote was based on the evidence and information before us.
Webb: What you've seen over the last six years is a war that is an incredible strategic blunder of historic proportions.
Allen: Staying the course means that we don't tuck tail and run, that we don't retreat, that we don't surrender. This is a central battlefront in the war on terror.
Webb: We didn't go into Iraq because of terrorism. We have terrorists in Iraq because we went in there.
On a plan offered by Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.) and other Senate Republicans to allow the CIA to use tough interrogation methods on suspected terrorists but adhering to international standards in the Geneva Conventions
Allen: I'm going to make a determination once I get some more facts. I don't want to stop these interrogations. I'm not for torture.
Webb: I'm with Senator Warner on this. If you abrogate the standards of the Geneva accords, you give other nations who have less fair standards than ours the moral justification to do that.
On Allen's use of the slur "macaca," in referring to a Webb campaign volunteer of Indian descent
Russert: Where did the word come from? It must have been in your consciousness.
Allen: Oh, it's just made up.
Russert: Made-up word?
Allen: Just made up. Made-up word.
Russert: You'd never heard it before?
Allen: Never heard it before.
On a 1979 magazine article by Webb saying women should not serve in combat
Russert: Was it wrong?
Webb: I don't think it was wrong to participate in the debate at that time. It's been 27 years. . . . I am fully comfortable with the roles of women in the military today.
