SNOW: I want to ask you about the quote we played for Secretary of State Colin Powell, or actually put up on the screen. I want to read it again and I want to try to parse it, because you were harshly critical the other day at the Bush administration's foreign policy. Once again you said, "I don't know if we've ever seen a more precipitous drop in international stature and public opinion with regard to this country as we have in the last two years."
Typically, people cite several things with regard to this. One was the Kyoto protocol, correct?
DASCHLE: Correct.
SNOW: You voted against that.
DASCHLE: I did.
SNOW: OK. The International Criminal Court, you voted against that.
DASCHLE: That's correct.
SNOW: And Iraq, where you voted with the president. So on all these key issues, the ones that the Europeans are constantly citing, you're on the same side as the White House. So if you were president, would the same thing be the case?
DASCHLE: Well, it's not necessarily the position in that legislative approach that I think is the concern. It's the attitude. It's the way that we have gone about foreign policy, especially, Tony, this unilateral approach to foreign policy, dictating on a unilateral basis what the United States' position is going to be and expecting, really, all these countries in a very autocratic or very authoritarian way to comply.
I don't think we can do that. I think, as I said in the same interview, I think that we've learned that this unilateral, dictatorial approach isn't going to work. And so we've moved away from that. We're more engaged now in the United Nations, we're more engaged, as Secretary Powell noted, in the Korean matter. And so I think they've learned the hard way. But clearly they have learned the unilateral, dictatorial approach utilized for the first 18 months did not work, and I think they've accepted it.
SNOW: How can you say the United States has been dictatorial? We've made our position known. We haven't forced anybody along, have we?
DASCHLE: Well, I think by the very nature of who the United States is, by the very nature of our approach in these negotiations — I mean, basically in the Kyoto accords it was, "Look, you do it our way or we're not going to do it at all." There was no negotiation. This was, "This is the way it's going to be." That's the way we did it in the Middle East. That's the way we've done it in virtually every one of these instances.
And I think that, as you travel, and I know you have internationally, the feedback you get is, and the editorial comment, go through Europe, go through the Middle East, go through Africa, go through Southern Asia, go through most of Latin America today, it is almost universally negative.
DASCHLE: And what I'm saying is that, sooner or later, Tony, that's going to catch up with us.
These comments are the bottom of the barrel. I hope some media picked up his comments. He just called our government a dictatorship.
My husband just said this word (dictatorial) *HAS* to have been focus grouped, especially as many times as he repeated it.
Dadchle is a dangerous megalomaniac, a little man with a little man complex. He's also a liar and has no grounding in truth ... but he's a typical democrat so spinning the truth to fit the agenda is very much in character.
Someone needs to remove Patricia Vanden Houvalls voice box ... she's made her rise to current status over the bodies of aborted little ones as she's championed serial killing of the unborn. A more disgusting socialist pig could not be found for an ABC roundtable. Poor George Will, surrounded by the socialist pigs embraced by George Steponallofus and his ABC socialist handlers. Yes, the degeneracy of eight clinton years continues to fester and stink.
Oh man, that comment must have really hit the fan. One of those weasles who works for the DNC as a political hack, just got on and said that Daschle went too far with that comment. Also said they should have made the comment on some small town station and not national television.