end state fiscal crises by giving states increased fiscal aid. Runner up John Edwards ran a position of support for the middle class as well as budget caps and enforcement. Strongly opposing Social Security privatization, and interested in middle class tax cuts, Edwards's main economic theme was support for the middle class touting his own struggle, growing up the son of a poor mill worker in South Carolina. Another major component of Edwards's message was to be able to reinstate fiscal responsibility. Howard Dean, despite taking many of the same positions of his rivals including Edwards and Kerry, had a starkly different approach on the issue of Social Security and tax cuts. On taxes, Dean favored repealing the Bush Tax cuts not only for the wealthiest of Americans as Senator Edwards and Senator Kerry proposed, but for all, including middle and lower classes. Iraq War After the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration argued that the need to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq had now become urgent. Over the course of several months, Bush presented several premises for war, but the turning point was the allegation that Saddam's regime had tried to acquire nuclear material and had not properly accounted for biological and chemical material it was known to have possessed, potential weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in violation of U.N. sanctions. This situation escalated to the point that the United States assembled a group of about forty nations, including the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, and Poland, which Bush called the "coalition of the willing", to invade Iraq without UN authorization. The coalition invaded Iraq on March 20, 2003. Most contenders for the nomination were supportive of the effort. Only Dean and Kucinich firmly questioned the aims and tactics of the administration, setting themselves apart in the eyes of war protesters. John Kerry, who had voted in favor of coalition invasion, said Bush had “failed miserably” in building that coalition and that "We need a regime change not just in Iraq. We need a regime change here in the United States." Republicans criticized Kerry for speaking out against a wartime president. The invasion was swift, with the collapse of the Iraq government and the military of Iraq in about three weeks. The oil infrastructure of Iraq was rapidly secured with limited damage in that time. On May 1, George W. Bush landed on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln