Yet MORE Democratic quotes, after Dec. 2002.
It is the duty of any president, in the final analysis, to defend this nation and dispel the security threat. Saddam Hussein has brought military action upon himself by refusing for 12 years to comply with the mandates of the United Nations. The brave and capable men and women of our armed forces and those who are with us will quickly, I know, remove him once and for all as a threat to his neighbors, to the world, and to his own people, and I support their doing so." John Kerry, March 2003
He does have weapons of mass destruction (when asked if he can say that categorically)Absolutely. There's a lot of stuff hidden in a lot of different places, Miles (O'Brien, from CNN), and I'm not sure that we know where it all is. People in Iraq do. The scientists know some of it. Some of the military, the low ranking military; some of Saddam Hussein's security organizations. There's a big organization in place to cover and deceive and prevent anyone from knowing about this. - Wesley Clark, January 2003
"I think it was the right decision to disarm Saddam Hussein. And when the president made the decision, I supported him, and I support the fact that we did disarm him." - John Kerry, December 2003
I asked very direct questions of the top people in the CIA and people who'd served in the Clinton administration. And they said they believed that Saddam Hussein either had weapons or had the components of weapons or the ability to quickly make weapons of mass destruction. What we're worried about is an A-bomb in a Ryder truck in New York, in Washington and St. Louis. It cannot happen. We have to prevent it from happening. And it was on that basis that I voted to do this. - Richard Gephardt, November 2003