Al Franken

What he's said:

When George W. Bush took the wheel of the U.S. economy, he turned it sharply to the right and drove us right into a ditch, and Norm Coleman has been riding shotgun all the way."
Campaigning at a St. Louis Park coffee shop, Star Tribune, July 22, 2008

Here in Minnesota, we didn’t need to watch the news this week to know that the Bush-Coleman economy simply isn’t working. Household income is down, the price of everything from gas to college tuition is skyrocketing, and Minnesotans are feeling less secure than ever. The dream of middle-class prosperity seems to be slipping away for too many families. That we’re now using taxpayer money to bail out Wall Street corporations is an unfortunate necessity. But as we rush to the aid of Wall Street, we cannot ignore the real pain being felt on Main Street."
Statement issued Sept. 18, 2008

On his website: http://www.alfranken.com/content/issues_EaseTheSqueeze/

What he's said:

I think these 11 million or 12 million undocumented people who are here, I think it's impractical to expect that we're going to deport them. Many of them have children who are citizens, and brothers and sisters who are. I think what we have to do is tighten up the border. I think we have to figure out a guest-worker program that limits the number of people who come in and that treats them well and...is fair to American-born workers."
On MSNBC's "Scarborough Country," April 3, 2006

The best way to deal with illegal immigration is to enforce -- actually enforce -- the law at the worksite. No wall is high enough to keep people from coming over it -- or under it -- if there are jobs waiting on the other side... I don't believe it's practical to deport the 10-12 million illegal immigrants currently residing in the United States. And I don't believe in breaking up families. Instead, we should look to bring them out of the shadows and put them on a path to citizenship, providing that they have been working; have paid taxes; have not committed any crimes since coming to this country; speak, or are learning to speak, English; pay a nominal fine. And they should go to the back of the line. Under no circumstances should someone who entered the country illegally be placed ahead of someone who has followed the legal channels for obtaining citizenship."
From his website

On his website: http://www.alfranken.com/pages/immigration/

What he's said:

I don't know if they can [get out of Iraq]. You see, that's where I think we're at. I think we are at a point where, we have painted ourselves into a corner. But I know that pulling out now would be like sort of the perfect bad ending to a perfectly badly done war."
Associated Press, Jan. 4, 2006

I'm not for pulling out of Iraq right now. I don't know if I'm right on that. The stakes are so high because of the tremendous carnage, not just to our soldiers and Marines but also to the people of Iraq. I believed Colin Powell's U.N. speech. Bush told us that Saddam Hussein had nuclear holy warriors who would pass a bomb to Al Qaeda, and you'd think Al Qaeda would have no qualms about using a nuclear weapon... I was fooled. But we were in Baghdad by that time."
Playboy, February 2006

We need to put a lot of thought and planning into how we get out. We need to put more thought into how we get out than they [the Bush administration] put into how we went in...The first thing we need to do is make a commitment to leaving."
Star Tribune, July 11, 2007

I really didn't believe that an administration would mislead us into the war. When that became clear, I became a very vocal critic against it."
DFL candidates debate on TPT's Almanac, Aug. 24, 2007

Syria and Jordan both have over a million Iraqi refugees. Neither of those countries wants Iraq to fall apart. Neither does Turkey, neither does Saudi Arabia, nor Egypt. And I don't believe Iran does, either...And I think there can be two parallel [peace] conferences going on -- regional conference and international. And unfortunately, we have lost our standing there as an honest broker. So we can't lead any kind of conference in that way...The critical thing is that we protect our vital national interests. We have to be concerned about terrorism. We have to have counterterrorism activities. Not just an international peace conference, but an international peace conference with our adversaries, as well. Syria should be brought to the table, Iran should be brought to the table, Turkey, others."
DFL candidates debate on TPT's "Almanac," Aug. 24, 2007

On his website: http://www.alfranken.com/pages/iraq/

What he's said:

Terrorism, to me, is the use of terror for political purpose, and terror is indiscriminate murder of civilians to make a political point. A perfect example is Hezbollah firing missiles into Israel. Is Israel bombing villages in southern Lebanon "terrorism"? I don't think it is, but I think the way they handled it was very ill-advised. I think it should have been up to the Israeli military to avoid civilian casualties as much as possible. "Another example of terrorism is the Golden Mosque in Samarra in Iraq. It was blown up to stoke violence, and its purpose was to have Shiites go after Sunnis, and it succeeded. We responded to Iraqi insurgency in a way that made enemies. It was the fault of the president and the Pentagon, and we didn't adapt fast enough, which was the most difficult part."
www.forbes.com, Sept. 2006

Treating terrorism as a police action and basing it on intelligence so underlines the importance of our acting in concert with our allies around the world. One of the tragedies of 9/11 was that we had the whole world behind us at 9/12. This president had the chance to lead the world and he didn't. He divided us. He used it to go into Iraq. We have to work with our allies. We have to work with our allies on terrorism, we have to work on controling disease and we have to work on preventing failed states. That's what terrorism comes from. We have to support the millenium goals of the U.N. to eradicate extreme poverty. We could have used this money we've wasted in Iraq to make sure that every child in the world gets an elementary school education. Imagine how much more secure that would make us. Yes, we have to pay attention to Israel and Palestine. I think this president has been the worst enemy of Israel because he did a foreign policy which was anything but Clinton. Clinton was hands on and Israel and Palestine needs the president of the United States to be involved. The neocons said that the road to Jerusalem was through Bahgdad. Well, they got it totally wrong. They got it totally wrong. This war in Iraq has just exasperated everything that's going on in the Middle East."
DFL candidates debate hosted by Golden Valley Progressives, Sept. 5, 2007

On his website: Issue not addressed.