Excerpt from Gov. Dean's speech today

For those that didn’t catch Governor Dean today in Iowa (or on C-Span’s broadcast of the event), here is the key new segment in the stump speech. As I said earlier today, I think this represents a powerful new element of the Dean strategy.

Today this country is facing a serious crisis. I’m talking about the credibility of the president of the united states. Because today, we are concerned — that our people are dying in Iraq at a rate of 9 per week, and the American people may not have had full info about why we went there.

I never thought in my lifetime I would hear this question again, but the American people are now faced with this question that we heard almost 30 years ago: “What did the president know, and when did he know it?”

I believe that never again can the Congress of the United States give the President a blank check six months ahead of time for a preemptive attack without the evidence being known to the American people or to Congress itself.

People inside the beltway have said that because I told the truth early, that I’m unelectable. It may be that because I told the truth early, that I may be the only one that’s electable.