Wesley Clark

"If the American people like what's going on in Washington, then they should vote for people who have been there and been part of the Washington scene."

"We're going to have to form and international organization to take the burden off the United States. The president is playing politics with national security when he says that we'll be out of Iraq by the 30th of June. That's an arbitrary date set because of the presidential election. It's not related to what's going on on the ground."

"There should never have been a congressional authorization for the president to have a blank-check to take this country to war. It was a politically motivated timetable."

"This administration did not have its priorities right and the president, not the intelligence community and not the previous administration, President George W. Bush must be held accountable for that. That's the job of the president of the United States to focus attention, to set the priorities to take the actions to keep America safe. He didn't do all that he could have done and in that case, he was wrong."

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Howard Dean

"Everybody on this stage has now embraced my message. They all talk about change. They all talk about bringing people into the party. The truth is, I stood up for that message when no one else would. I stood up against the president and the war in Iraq when no one else would, except Dennis (Kucinich)."

(On pre-Iraq War intelligence) "What we do know is this: The president was not candid with the American people when we went to war. That's why I did not support going to war, even though I did support the first Gulf War and I did support the Afghanistan war."

"Vice President Dick Cheney went to the CIA and sat with middle-level CIA operatives and berated them because he didn't like their intelligence reports. It seems to me that the vice president influenced the very reports that the president used to decide to go to war."

"The president and the secretary of state have recently admitted that there was no connection between Saddam Hussein and 9/11, that there was no connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaida. In that case, why are we in Iraq and why are many people from South Carolina in Iraq when they should be home concentrating on homeland security."

(On the renewal of the Patriot Act) "In some ways, the terrorists have already won. We have an act that allows American citizens to be held without knowing what they're charged with and without seeing a lawyer. That hasn't happened since 1798 with the Alien and Sedition Acts. We can't do that. None of us minds being searched in the airlines and all that. But if we start giving up our fundamental liberties as Americans because terrorists attacked us, then we have a big problem. … I'm not going to let the right wing of the Republican party take away the basic liberties of the American people."

"We ought to change NAFTA. We've only done half the job with globalization. We've globalized the rights of international corporations to do business anywhere in the country. Now, we now need to globalize the rights of workers, labor unions and environmentalists and human rights. If you do that, you raise the standards of living in other countries. What happens is that our jobs stop going away because the cost of production goes up (in other countries). You also reduce illegal immigration because now you don't have to come to the United States to make a living, you can make one in your own country."

"We've got to balance the budget. Not one Republican president has balanced the budget in 34 years in this country. You cannot trust the right wing with your money."

John Edwards

"(South Carolina) is a place where I can and should win. … I think it's an enormous mistake for us to ignore the South."

"The Republicans take the South for granted and too many times the Democrats ignore the South. We can't do that. No Democrat has ever been elected president without winning at least five Southern states. There's a huge block of electoral votes in the South. It's wrong electorally. More important, it's wrong because we as Democrats are about expanding the party, bringing people into the party. We reach out to everyone. ... That goes for people who live in different parts of the county."

"The president actually has to be able to do two things at once. This president thinks that his presidency is only about the war in terrorism, only about national security. Those things are critical for a commander in chief, but there's a lot that the president is not doing about jobs lost and about a health-care crisis in this country. The president has to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time."

John Kerry

"I've always said that I will compete in the South. I've always said that I think I can win in the South. I don't believe that Sen. Fritz Hollings and Congressman Jim Clyburn have endorsed me because I don't believe we can win the South. I think we can. I think that the person who has to worry about coming down South campaigning is George W. Bush."

"People in the South care about their jobs; they care about health care; they care about safety; they care about cops on the street; they care about their children. I'm going to talk about mainstream American values and I intend to campaign in the South and all across America."

"The president gave guarantees, not just to Congress and the American people, but to the world about how he would conduct himself as president. He said that he would build a legitimate global coalition. He said that he would respect the United Nations inspections process and work through it. And he said to the American people that he would go to war only as a last resort. … This president broke every one of those promises with the American people."

"(The Bush administration is) misleading all of America in a profound way. The war on terror is occasionally military and it will be for a long time … but it is primarily an intelligence and law-enforcement operation that requires cooperation around the world -- the very thing this administration is worst at. I will renew our alliances, I will rejoin the community of nations, I will build the kind of cooperative effort that we need in order to be able to win. … I think that this administration's arrogant and ideological policy is taking this nation down a more dangerous path."

"We need a president whose going to fight for trade that is fair and who is going to close the loopholes for these corporations that have a reward to take those jobs overseas. I'm going to go through the tax code which has gone from 14 to 17,000 pages and we're going to take out any reward or any incentive for any "Benedict Arnold" company to take jobs overseas and stick taxpayers with the bill."

Dennis Kucinich

"The problem with the administration today is that the doctrine is wrong. The doctrine of unilateralism was ideologically driven. … We have 130,000 troops in Iraq. It was wrong to go in and it is wrong to stay in. They are staying in there on the basis of lies that were told to the American people and lies should never be the basis for international policy. We need to re-engage with the the world community and work with the world community through the United Nations. That's the only way we're going to be safe."

"By and large the American people are not aware about how trade has changed dramatically. It's no longer about protectionism vs. free trade. It's about global corporations who are accelerating a race to the bottom, trying to get cheap labor wherever they can get it. That's why we've lost hundreds of textile plants in this country and our steel, aerospace, automotive, aircraft and textile industries are in such real trouble."

Joe Lieberman

"Candidates who run for president are very optimistic people. I intend to win some of the (primaries). ... I'm the one experienced moderate in this field and in states like this it is only moderates who win elections."

"We live in a dangerous world. … In a dangerous world, sometimes you have to use that power against dangerous people. The statements that this administration made before the war, the questions we now have about intelligence about the weapons of mass destruction, the failure of the Bush administration to be prepared for what to do after we overthrew Saddam have all unfortunately given a bad name to a just war. The fact is that Saddam Hussein himself was a weapon of mass destruction. … I will never waver in my conclusion that the world is a safer with Saddam Hussein in prison and not in power."

"NAFTA has netted out 900,000 new jobs. The jobs that are leaving South Carolina, very few of them are going to Mexico and Canada -- they're going to Asia. There, the Bush administration hasn't had the guts to stand up to China and other countries who are ripping off patents and copyrights of ours and are fixing their currency in a way that gives them a price advantage and causes jobs here to be bled out of the country."

Al Sharpton

"This is about the direction of the party. I fully expect to win primaries in the coming weeks, but I'm going to win because I'm speaking the issues and interests of people that have been ignored. … There are people who I can bring into the process who won't come in if someone like me is not involved. … I've been inspired in this campaign hearing John Edwards talk about how he's the son of a millworker. Well, I'm the son of someone who couldn't be a millworker because of the color of his skin, but his son could be the president of the United States."

"I think that we cannot go quickly past the president giving the wrong premise to the American people to get support ... Had (Bush) said 'We're going to war because Saddam Hussein is a bad guy,' the public would not have rallied around that effort. We were told that in the wake of 9/11 we were in imminent danger from weapons of mass destruction. We cannot allow him to change this now and say that we were just after Hussein because he was a bad guy. Everybody knows Hussein was a bad guy. ... We should find a way to get rid of bad guys, but lying to the American people is not the way to go about it."

"Mr. Bush and some of his crowd have said that they represent the Christian view against the Islamic view. I don't think that Christ could join most of their churches. Supporters of the Bush administration talk about how they represent Christianity. I don't think that they represent Christianity any more than some of these murderers represent Islam. Let's not blame the religion. Let's blame those that use the religion to do some ruthless, deadly, wicked acts."

"We should build relationships with these (Islamic) nations around the world. … They would become our partners if we engaged in partnership. I don't think that the way we do that is attacking their religion and trying to make like our religion is better."

"The flag represents a thought, a philosophy and a political movement built on racism, slavery and rape. You can't redo the flag and what it stands for. I think that we can't rest until the flag is down everywhere across the nation."