Fundraiser Crowd to Kucinich: "Can we really negotiate with extremist Muslims?"

By Brook Williams - San Diego Union Tribune | Kucinich

Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich said the future of the world is at stake with "global warring and global warming," and described what he intends to do about both at a fundraiser yesterday in Encinitas.

"It's time that we reject war as an instrument of policy," he said, drawing cheers and applause from the diverse crowd.

In the lush backyard of University of California San Diego biology professor Milton Saier Jr.'s home, Kucinich talked about ending "the occupation in Iraq," at one point pulling a pocket-size U.S. Constitution from his beige microfiber coat and saying it "is being torn apart page by page by the Bush administration."

Kucinich said that if elected, he will seek to prosecute those "who took us to war based on lies." The country needs a leader who can "talk with people who might want to harm us," he said.

The first question from the crowd was, "Can we really negotiate with extremist Muslims?"

Kucinich said it's not easy, but "you have to engage in a dialogue, and not make it a test of will among nations."

Another person asked about Kucinich's plan on global warming, and the candidate said he would "make the White House a kind of a green house" by bringing environmental consciousness to federal departments, among other things.

Kucinich's wife, Elizabeth, and her mother, Julia Massey, also were there. Elizabeth Kucinich said that in her husband's decades of public service, he has "never been for sale" and "never for rent."

There have been premature questions about his ability to win, she said, but if three groups – peace, trade and labor – turn out to vote, "Dennis gets in."

Posted on Sunday, October 21, 2007 at 09:06:42 AM
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