CBS’ Lara Logan reports from Afghanistan. She interviews an Afghan warlord who has been killing American soldiers and evading American capture. Once again, this report shows us that Afghanistan isn’t fixed. We have a lot of work to do in Afghanistan. We need to build roads. We need to stop the exporting of poppy. We must extend the reach of the government beyond Kandahar.
Straight and to the point, Senator Barack Obama directly responded to President Bush’s appeasement comment and then turned to Senator John McCain. Obama correctly stated that McCain has offered to differentiate between himself and George Bush on foreign policy.
Below are Obama’s remarks in South Dakota.
From the Washington Post: “If George Bush and John McCain want to have a debate about protecting America, that is a debate I will have anytime, any place,” he said to a cheering crowd. “George Bush and John McCain have a lot to answer for.”
Obama then launched into list of grievances, including a war fought on the premise of uprooting weapons of mass destruction that were never found, the failure to catch Osama Bin Laden and turning Iran into the “greatest beneficiary” of the Iraq war.
“That’s the Bush-McCain record on protecting this country,” Obama said. “Those are the failed policies that John McCain wants to double down on.”
The senator’s comments came in response to President Bush’s speech before the Israeli Knesset yesterday, in which he likened a willingness to meet with “terrorists and radicals” to appeasement of the Nazis.
“That’s exactly the kind of appalling attack that’s divided our country and alienates us from the world,” Obama said. “And that’s exactly why we need change.”
Finally, there are a group of Democrats who believe that Obama hasn’t shown enough passion on the campaign trail. Well, I thought he showed plenty of passion in this speech.
President George W. Bush was addressing the Knesset (Israel’s Parliament) today. Bush said: “Some seem to believe we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”
Somebody please help me. Who said anything about appeasement? Pat Buchanan pointed out that the Bush administration negotiated with Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi. He gave up his nuclear ambitions. We tried the hard line with North Korea and they made more nuclear weapons during the Bush administration than in their history. We tried the hard line against Iran and they are clearly stronger now than since the late 1970’s.
Barack Obama had a thoughtful statement: “It is time to turn the page on eight years of policies that have strengthened Iran and failed to secure America or our ally Israel. Instead of tough talk and no action, we need to do what Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan did and use all elements of American power — including tough, principled and direct diplomacy — to pressure countries like Iran and Syria.”
It appears to me that Bush is trying to go out of his way to prove how bad his administration truly is. I’m not sure that he did Senator John McCain any favors.
I don’t want to be overly critical but Senator Hillary Clinton seems to be faking her little laugh. Some of her laughing just doesn’t seem appropriate, like when you don’t know what to say and so you laugh to buy time. For instance, when Countdown host Keith Olbermann asked her a question on sexism, she laughed.
More substantially, however, I don’t understand her position on Iran. We going to threaten a nuclear strike if Iran attacks Israel? Or if if any of Iran’s neighbors gets a nuclear weapon? What? If I become a Supreme Being and monkeys fly out of my … What is she talking about?
Despite this, I thought that her Osama Bin Laden answer was pretty good.
Did you see the initial reports on this incident? 5 gunboats approached one of our Navy groups. Gunboats? What is that? Is that a destroyer? Is that a PT boat like McHale’s Navy? I suspect that everyone remembers the damage that even a small boat can do to one of our large boats like the USS Cole. 17 US Sailors were killed. So, I think that most Americans were aware of the dangers when one of our boats gets approached on the open water.
Code words were being throw around. “Provocative.” by the Americans while the Iranians were using phrases like “ordinary encounter.” Well, which is it? A quote from one US official stated that the Destroyer was very close to firing. This can’t be good. We can’t be ordinary on one hand and very close to firing on the other hand. Then the video comes out. On the video you can hear a voice clearly say, “I am coming to you. … You will explode after … minutes.” Officials were telling us that this was an Iranian voice. Okay. If you say so, but it sounds weird. It sounds not right. It sounds like a college prank like some dubbed in the voice and did a rather bad job of it.
Now, we have to add to the mix a story that really didn’t get much play but was very important. 2 F-18 Hornet fighter jets crashed in the area on the same day. 2 pilots and one crew member were recovered in good condition. The planes were lost in the sea. Were these incidents related? The Pentagon didn’t think so.
Let’s turn up the heat on this. We have the Republican debates where each candidate tried to out Clint Eastwood the other. Huckabee, with his preacher background had the winner of the night, they (the Iranians) would be introduced to the gates of Hell (not an exact quote but close). (An honorable Eastwood should go to Fred Thompson who delivered the “they will be introduced to those 40 virgins” line.) President Bush, not one to let an opportunity to get by him without bashing the Iranians, stated, “We viewed it as a provocative act.” He went on to say, “It is a dangerous situation, and they should not have done it, pure and simple.”
The Iranians put out their own version of events. It sounds nothing like the American version. Now, finally, we have an opportunity to look at everything that transpired. The Iranian boats were nothing more than modified fishing boats. I have seen the same type of boat out at many area lakes. The Iranians did have weapons but they were clearly no match for a Destroyer, a Cruiser and a Frigate. It is not clear where the voice came from. This is key. We have no idea if the voice came from one of those gunboats or the shore or from a sailor on one of our ships. We have no idea. I would like to commend the Commander of this group and their crew for not firing. A huge and ugly international scene could have been started right there. (this is very much like that Tom Clancy movie with Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman, Crimson Tide, but this was for real.)
Questioner gets a little mixed up.
OMG. I haven’t seen a White House press secretary have this much trouble since Scott McClellan. White House Press Secretary, Dana Perino was in hot water from the moment she began until the moment her press conference ended. This is much like the West Wing episode where CJ gets in hot water. Perino knew that today would be a bad day. There was so much contradictory information out there. Seymour Hersh has reported extensively on this subject. He has been proven right time and time again. He reported in November of last year that the intelligence community didn’t have the goods on Iran. Nothing that Ms. Perino said today illuminated Bush’s comments from the past 2 days.
BTW, I found this while searching the internet -
The Administration’s most persistent spin of the new Iran NIE is that it vindicates their position because it shows that Iran did in fact have an active nuclear weapons program in 2003. That’s quite some vindication.
What it really means is that faced with two neighbors in the spring of 2003 who both harbored nuclear ambitions, we invaded the country without an active WMD program while ignoring the one that did. I’m not suggesting we should have invaded Iran instead, but by the Administration’s own reckoning, we should have.
It puts an exclamation point on the colossal folly of our Iraq adventure.
Barack Obama has really said some great things on the campaign trail. He is not a “sound bite” kind of guy. He is a “sit back and listen to his paragraphs” kind of guy. None of the “flaps” that the Republicans have pointed to were anything but solid policy decisions in my book.
Here he discusses the problem with the Iranian vote which Hillary Clinton strongly supported.
Look we have known about the Iranian Revolutionary Guard for years. For over 10 years, we have known that they supported terrorism. Bush and the neocons (put Romney in that category) have opening written about their plans. They wanted to start a transformation in the Middle East. Iraq was just the start. Now, on to Iran.
David Shuster is sitting in for Keith Olbermann. He interviews PJ Crowley from the Center for American Progress (PJ has been on my radio show. He is extremely knowledgeable and sensible.)
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From CNN.com:
The United States imposed stiff sanctions against Iran on Thursday, targeting two Iranian military groups and a number of Iranian banks and people it accuses of backing nuclear proliferation and terror-related activities.
“What this means is that no U.S. citizen or private organization will be allowed to engage in financial transactions with these persons and entities,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said. “In addition, any assets that these designees have under U.S. jurisdiction will be immediately frozen.”
Rice and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson made the announcement in a brief appearance before reporters on Thursday morning. (more…)
Whenever the Bush Administration was losing an argument, they sent out the Hammer. Vice President Dick Cheney would got to some conservative area and deliver “the speech.” Well, I’m guessing that the Bush Administration didn’t think that the American people were buying into the Iran is the ultimate evil. So, here’s the hammer, right on schedule.
Just remember this - “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us. And there is no doubt that his aggressive regional ambitions will lead him into future confrontations with his neighbors — confrontations that will involve both the weapons he has today, and the ones he will continue to develop with his oil wealth.” Vice President Dick Cheney at the Veterans of Foreign Wars, August 26, 2002.
Dana Perino. I’m not sure that someone who speaks as haltingly (is that a word??) as she does should be a press secretary but then again she is better than Scott McClellan. No, she didn’t say that the president’s comments were over the top but I wish she did because they were.
Remember that President Bush is more engaged than ever. To quote Charlie Brown, “Oh brother.” Keith Olbermann has a rundown and several of the important questions and Bush’s answers or non-answers. (see previous post about WWIII)
From Matthew Yglesias: Our President: “So I’ve told people that if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.”
Two points. One: This is inane. World War III? Against Iran? Really? Because Iran seems a lot like a medium-sized middle income country with few military capabilities rather than a near peer-competitor of the sort against which you might fight a world war.
Two: Note where Bush has placed the goalposts here. Not preventing Iran from having a nuclear weapon. Preventing Iran from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon. I’m not sure what the significance of that switch is, but it seems significant.
I’m not sure what Mahmoud Ahmandinejad thought was going to happen when he went to Columbia University. If I were President of that University, my introduction remarks would have been kinder and my language more diplomatic but the meaning would have been the same. I applaud President Bollinger for inviting and then questioning this clown of a President.
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From MSNBC.com:
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad questioned the official version of the Sept. 11 attacks and defended the right to cast doubt on the Holocaust in a tense appearance Monday at Columbia University, whose president accused the hard-line leader of behaving like “a petty and cruel dictator.”
Columbia President Lee Bollinger and audience members took Ahmadinejad to task over Iran’s human-rights record and foreign policy, as well as Ahmadinejad’s statements denying the Holocaust and calling for the disappearance of Israel. (more…)
The drumbeat of war is loud and clear. The Bush Administration has kept it going for the last 12 months. Now, France has dialed up the rhetoric.
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From CNN.com:
Iran’s foreign ministry criticized France on Monday for a blunt warning over the weekend that Europe must prepare for war if Tehran continues to flout international demands to stop producing nuclear fuel.
“We hope that such statements are superficial and do not reflect France’s realistic and strategic points of view,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad-Ali Hosseini said Monday, according to the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency. (more…)
In his mini-report, The Carpet Bagger mentions that General Pace may be out because he opposed a confrontation with Iran.
I posted more on this - here.
Thoughtful. Sane answer.
Out of all the questions that could be asked to a candidate, did you see the Republican candidates answer the question about what to do with Iraq? OMG!!! I will talk more about this later when I have the video for this but, Mitt Romney, former Governor of New York, needs to learn how to work Google. You can wax eloquently about policy all day but if you don’t know the facts, I’m sorry, you need to sit down. Mitt Romney proved that he did not know the facts. He stated their weapons inspectors were not allowed into Iraq in 2002. This, of course, is wrong. Not only will the weapons inspectors allowed into Iraq but they had unfettered access to any location that they wanted. There was no obstruction that we saw in the late 90s. All of this information is available on the web. Hans Blix, wrote a book called Disarming Iraq. All the information is in there. Unfortunately Governor Romney did not choose to enlighten himself with enlighten advisers or by reading any number of sources. Incredible.
What a concept? Talking with your enemy. Man, I wish someone would have suggested this earlier.
From WaPo:
The United States intends to lay out a comprehensive account of Iran’s growing military role in Iraq — including the array of arms provided to both Shiite and Sunni militias — during critical talks between U.S. and Iranian diplomats scheduled for tomorrow in Baghdad, according to senior U.S. officials.
Ryan C. Crocker, the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad, will also outline steps Iran could take to help stabilize war-ravaged Iraq, both politically and militarily. Any subsequent meeting will depend on the quality of the dialogue and Iran’s cooperation in the coming weeks, the sources added. (more…)
New IAEA report. Sobering.
Interesting. No major station carried Cheney’s speech on an aircraft carrier except Fox. I was looking for the sound bites from Cheney’s speech. He is always good for something. “We’ll kick ‘em in the teeth or something.” Cheney chose this time to warn Iran that we are going to keep the sea lines open. So, what’s up? It looked like the Bush administration had stopped the tough talk with Iran. I guess they were just taking a breath.
Very interest. Iran initial motives aren’t clear but their PR campaign has failed.
Errington C. Thompson, MD, is a surgeon, scholar, fulltime sports fan and part-time political activist. He is active in a number of community projects and initiatives. Through medicine, he strives to improve the physical health of all he treats...
