Bill Richardson Continues to Distinguish Himself

Jerome Armstrong from MyDD at the Take Back America Conference:

Bill Richardson was introduced by 4 brothers who were from the only family to have 4 soldiers in Vietnam. Richardson draws out the analogy to Vietnam and Iraq, and says, when you listen to some that are running for President, he doesn't hear a position like his on Iraq. The Democrats are aligned with the people, and Democrats need to address the two biggest mistakes of Bush: failing to address climate change and the disasterous policies in Iraq.

Richardson says he has the most ambitious plan of anyone running for President in the area of climate change and lays out a few points and benchmarks, and talks about how he did it in New Mexico, then he's onto his "New Realism" in foreign policy.

Here are some loose quotes from Richardson: There is a fundamental difference, and that's how many troops each of us would leave behind. Other than those at the embassy, I would leave zero troops. No Airbases, no embedded troops, no one doing training. "It's not worthy of one more loss of human life." Clinton, Biden, Dodd and Obama, they all voted for allowing troops in Iraq for an indefinite time for "training" and "protecting" in Iraq. My opponents have voted to leave troops behind. Clinton, and Obama, "leave troops behind" and even Edwards, with the bill he says he wants to pass "again and again" would be in favor of more troops if that bill were to pass (it included maintaining troops). Over 70% of Iraqi's want us out; over 60% have said its ok to kill Americans. For those who think we should leave a residual force, for how long? There's not a single sign that it's improving... how many Americans must die... we need to bring them all home... NoTroopsLeftBehind.com Bring them home within six months, and then begin the diplomatic work... a national reconciliation for Iraq... none of the other countries in the middle east want a civil war in Iraq, and they will solve the problem once the Americans leave... bring back diplomacy, make peace with your enemies... my worldview is different than my collegues.

Overall, a well received speech, with a lot of claps toward the end; very focused and delivered well. I heard that the Richardson team was going to put segments of the video online. This is a Richardson that is drawing out distinctions, and it's pretty compelling.