Reverend Al Sharpton

Background
Civil rights activist, minister; U.S. Senate candidate, 1992 and 1994; candidate for mayor of New York City, 1997

www.sharpton2004.org/

Al Sharpton has been sharply critical of President George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq, stating that the Bush administration’s doctrine of pre-emption is “dangerous and traditionally un-American.” During an interview with MoveOn.org, the reverend asked, “If we can pre-emptively attack Iraq using shaky intelligence…what’s to stop Russia from attacking Chechnya, China from attacking Taiwan, North Korea from attacking South Korea, Israel from attacking Iran or Syria, or Pakistan and India from attacking one another?”

In an appearance last July on CBS, Sharpton questioned how, without evidence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, the United States could justify invading one country and not another. “No one in their right mind condones [Saddam] Hussein.…The question is moral consistency. I’ve traveled all over world, Sudan, Rwanda. There are many places that we have people that are despicable that I would like to see out of power.”