Moore School of Business

Print

Event News

Presidential candidate Chris Dodd visits Moore School March 2

• About Moore
• Administrators
• Business Services
• Career Services
• Executive Education
• Giving to Moore
• Research
• News
• Technology Resources
• Work @ Moore
• A-Z Index

Sen. Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut said Friday he would challenge the American people to be free of dependence on Middle Eastern oil within ten years if he is elected president in 2008.

"We must move aggressively away from non-renewable sources of energy" as one means of combating climate change and also of lessening our exposure in the Middle East, said Dodd, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, during an appearance at the Moore School of Business.

Dodd promised to come back to South Carolina "over and over" during the next 11 months to "make my case for why I should be president of the United States." The state's Democratic primary, one of the first in the nation, will be held Jan. 29, and so South Carolina has become a favorite venue of presidential candidates.

In a wide-ranging speech and question-and-answer session that lasted nearly 90 minutes, Dodd discussed education, fiscal and trade issues, as well as Iraq, global warming, tax cuts, the U.S. auto industry, health care, and torture of prisoners.

He accused the Bush Administration of being "basically disengaged" from Iraq and Middle East issue for the past six years, and of "treating diplomacy as a sign of weakness, which... is a huge mistake." The United States has "done about what it can do in Iraq militarily in urban areas," he said, adding that the president's latest "surge" of 21,500 troops is also a "huge mistake."

Dodd said he has introduced legislation that would definitively bar the use of evidence obtained by torture or coercion, reinstate full U.S. adherence to the Geneva Conventions, and restore rights of habeas corpus for certain terror suspects that were stripped away by the federal government last year. (Habeas corpus is a legal proceeding that allows suspects to challenge their detention in court.)

 Dodd called for a "universal health care system" for Americans, and said he thinks "we're getting very close to acceptance of this." He also said that improving education in America is the "single most important issue" this country faces today.

Dodd, who has served in the U.S. Congress since 1975, is chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, and served as the general chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 1995 to 1997.