Hillary’s Iran Comments
There’s a lot of outrage over Hillary’s comments on nukes and Iran yesterday (some of which will be broadcast today on the Today show). Some of that is not surprising, given the way the comments make her sound like Dick Cheney without his meds.
But there’s a kernel of sense in her comments that is being missed–and we’d be much better off pointing out that kernel and understanding it and its limits–than magnifying the sound bites that make her look so bad.
Here’s the transcript that Ab2kgj put together.
Well what we were talking about was the potential for a nuclear attack by Iran, if Iran does achieve what appears to be it’s continuing goal of obtaining nuclear weapons, and I think deterrence has not been effectively used in recent times, we used it very well during the Cold War when we had a bipolar world, and what I think the president should do and what our policy should be is to make it very clear to the Iranians that they would be risking massive retaliation were they to launch a nuclear attack on Israel.
In addition, if Iran were to become a nuclear power, it could set off an arms race that would be incredibly dangerous and destabilizing because the countries in the region are not going to want Iran to be the only nuclear power. So I can imagine that they would be rushing to obtain nuclear weapons themselves. In order to forestall that, creating some kind of a security agreement where we said, ‘No, you do not need to acquire nuclear weapons if you were the subject of an unprovoked nuclear attack by Iran the United States and hopefully our NATO allies would respond to that as well.’ It is a theory that some people have been looking at because there is a fear that if Iran, which I hope we can prevent, becoming a nuclear power, but if they were to become one, some people worry that they are not deterrable, that they somehow have a different mindset and a worldview that might very well lead the leadership to be willing to become martyrs. I don’t buy that, but I think we have to test it.
And one of the ways of testing it is to make it very clear that we are not going to permit them, if we can prevent it, from becoming a nuclear power, but were they to become so, their use of nuclear weapons against Israel would provoke a nuclear response from the United States, which personally I believe would prevent it from happening, and that we would try to help the other countries that might be intimidated and bullied into submission by Iran because they were a nuclear power, avoid that fate by creating this new security umbrella.
What got people’s attention were the words "massive retaliation." But what got missed were the two concepts that have guided our nuclear policy since World War II: a security umbrella and deterrence.
What Hillary is addressing (which got missed by many people going nuts about this statement) is that within fairly short order–certainly before Iran gets nukes–other countries in the Middle East are going to start pursuing them. Can Saudi Arabia, for example, allow its rival for hegemony among Islamic states acquire nukes without itself acquiring them? And considering that Saudi Arabia provided significant funds to Pakistan for their nuke program, presumably the Saudis could acquire nukes (though perhaps not build them) reasonably easily.
So Hillary is trying to address both the problem of Iran’s pursuit of nukes but also the inevitable arms race that will (has?) started in response to Iran’s attempts. So Hillary’s seemingly sane response to this challenge is to do what we did after World War II: to provide the countries that wanted nukes with a security guarantee, to persuade them not to develop their own programs (this happened particularly well with Japan and Germany). And, to assert something Bush’s cronies refuse to believe–which is that the Iranians, like all leaders of nation-states, can be persuaded not to use nukes by the threat of assured destruction. (In her support for deterrence, at least, Hillary is less belligerent than the nuts currently in the White House.)
The reason Hillary sounds like such a raving lunatic about bombing Iran is because she is–as we speak–laying the groundwork for that kind of deterrence program, proving she can sound sufficiently belligerent to scare the mullahs running Iran.
So for those who think Hillary is a raving lunatic, it’d be well to 1) address whether or not deterrence paired with a security umbrella would work and 2) if not, then how we’re going to prevent Iran’s demonstrated interest in acquiring nuclear technology from destabilizing the Middle East.
You’re all going to address the NIE that shows that Iran does not now have an active program, and it’s an important point. While Iran, of late, has accelerated its enrichment program, we don’t have reason to believe Iran is also, for example, developing the missiles that can carry nukes. Which ought to provide one hint how to respond to this without all the belligerence–to start, first of all, by saying "we should implement a strategy that works for all countries in the Middle East now, while we still have time." I’ll come back to this point. But it doesn’t change the fact that–particularly with the increasingly tense fight for hegemony among Islamic states–there is and will continue to be a burgeoning arms race in the Middle East. That should be–and Hillary and Obama ought to have rephrased it (though by the time it came up in the ABC debate, they were probably just desperate to get that terrible thing over)–how do we prevent a nuclear arms race from breaking out across the Middle East?
So would Hillary’s strategy work? Is a security umbrella and deterrence a real plan in the Middle East, as it was in Europe and Asia?
This is the area where people ought to be challenging Hillary’s statements.
And, in my non-expert opinion, the answer is no. There is no way we–with our close relationship with Israel–can convincingly offer a security umbrella for the entire Middle East. To establish a convincing security umbrella after all, we’d have to persuade every country that might potentially acquire nukes that we would protect them in case of an Israeli strike. Hillary seems to deliberately leave the countries that might want a security guarantee vague—surely, she’s thinking of Saudi Arabia, but she may also be thinking of Iran, though no Presidential candidate is going to state that we might offer to defend Iran. But there is no way we could convince Iran, our mortal enemy since 1979 (or, if you’re Iranian, since 1953), that we would protect them in case of an attack by Israel. FWIW, I think France could credibly establish such an umbrella, possibly even China. But not only is France unilaterally cutting its own nuclear weapons, I can assure you the US is not going to want France or especially China providing security guarantees (and presumably obtaining preferential oil deals in exchange) in the Middle East.
Any effort to prevent further nuclear proliferation in the Middle East (Hillary conveniently neglects to mention Israel’s nuclear arsenal, and doesn’t consider that Pakistan and India are integrated enough into the Middle East such that it is naive to assume an arms race isn’t already fully engaged) needs to start with the acknowledgment that 1) Israel has nukes and that 2) the US is not now a credible entity to offer a security umbrella.
If Hillary or anyone else is serious about using a security umbrella to foster peace in the Middle East, they’re going to have to convince the US to cede at least part of its hegemonic position in the Middle East to a credible security guarantor, France or China. Which, of course, means the US is going to have to free itself from its dependence on oil. So long as we are utterly dependent on oil, nukes will continue to be a going concern in the Middle East.
Okay, I’ve tried, best as I can, to take Hillary’s comment as the rational statement I think she intended it as, steeped as it is in the existing–but increasingly unworkable–paradigm of US foreign policy that has existed since World War II.
That said, WTF is she thinking??? She has already been fighting to spin her vote on Kyl-Lieberman as a sane vote for engagement and not what it really was, a vote to give Bush more keys to war. Even though this statement–as most of her statements on Olbermann–was painfully scripted, she seems unaware that she was spouting belligerent sound bite after belligerent sound bite. Sure, this might help her among PA’s most conservative voters. "Hurrah! Let’s vote for the woman who wants to obliterate the brown people!!" It’s still not going to help her with the majority of Democratic voters who want out of Iraq and definitely don’t want to start war with Iran.
I honestly think it was intended to be a rational argument in favor of an established foreign policy paradigm. But boy did she miscalculate.
It is a theory that some people have been looking at because there is a fear that if Iran, which I hope we can prevent, becoming a nuclear power, but if they were to become one, some people worry that they are not deterrable, that they somehow have a different mindset and a worldview that might very well lead the leadership to be willing to become martyrs.
This is not rational.
The purpose of any nation acquiring nuclear weapons is to instill in the mind of a perceived enemy a fear to attack out of fear of retaliation.
MAD
Or: Don’t fuck with us.
It was both an attempt to send a message, and an attempt to shore up her base — her financial base.
She tried to send a message in October of 2002, as well, telling Saddam that he should not for a second believe that the U.S. would not use hegemonic power to thwart him if he were to resist inspection. We all know now how flawed that message was.
I think she should resist the attempt to send such messages; she doesn’t have the touch for them.
Agree, to some degree. But shoring up her financial base isn’t going to help, now that they’re maxed out for the primary. She simply has just about run out of those big donors who can give to get her through the next month.
Moreover, it’s not going to do her much good, because the Democrats actually VOTING in Indiana and North Carolina and even West Virginia–two of three of these, notably, states with large numbers of military families, aren’t exactly interested in starting a third war in the Middle East. To some degree Obama can’t harp on this–or he’ll lose a part of the funding base he’ll want for the general. But damn, these statements are going to be all over the InterToobz (as if Olbermann and the Today SHow aren’t already enough).
There’s something else going on here, though; she’s playing deliberately to the same neo-con base that Lieberman played to.
Is she trying to amass cash from them through pandering to use in some fashion to poach superdelegates? Or is she working on amassing a fund of some sort, not unlike Joementum’s slush fund? I suspect many of the donors of that last minute cash to Lieberman might well be names we’ll see again in Clinton’s donor records…
This whole mess made me cry when I read about HRC’s comments last night; crystallized for me how very inappropriate for office she would be. She absolutely lacks vision; she is mired in the past, really a conservative at heart who as described by Buckley really cries out for history to stop. She seems to be stuck in a stale worldview, unable to see that once oil is removed from the national security equation, everything we know about the middle east changes.
I think that Clinton is cash strapped and her Iran comments seem tailor made to shake some money loose from conservative Jewish supporters in the mold of those who signed the letter of complaint to Nancy Pelosi.
She may get some more money from the right wing radicals. But Clinton and others are underestimating the growing disgust with US foreign policy when it comes to supporting Israel no matter how many UN resolutions they are in violation of, how many illegal settlements they build and their continued refusal to sign the Non Proliferation Treaty. The last President to demand inspections in Israel was President Kennedy!
She seems to mood swing and emote strangely when discussing serious
matters… I think she lobbed this “fear bomb” into the campaign to
generate buzz and impress the Lieberman, Dershowitz crowd with her
Golda Mier type “toughness”… time warp she lives in is long gone
but hoping toughguy voters will buy this bluster as gravitas.
It’s more than a pander, it’s a green light for them to try and blackmail and threaten the party. This was always her “superdelegate strategy”. Reliability on Israel is an essential test of whether you’ve passed the Commander-in-Chief “threshold”.
Dogwhistle. That’s what it is — although I still think there’s a money component to this.
Of course. I was just suggesting it wasn’t merely “transactional” politics, where the candidate proposes an item of policy in exchange for support. Everyone already knew Clinton was the reliable one on this. It’s a “dogwhistle” to let them know it’s time to go further, as you suggest (quite convincingly).
Yes, how utterly shocking, a candidate is – gasp – trying to get elected. The intra-party debate in this election has been so thoroughly unhinged since the field was winnowed down to Obama and Clinton that it is sickening. I am really at a loss to understand the constant need to pitch this absolute junk.
Hillary Clinton’s talking about massive nuclear retaliation in the context of a primary. By now I’m not shocked, but I do still find it repellent to get votes, or money, or whatever, this way. And isn’t there some evidence for this absolute junk?
Quite frankly, I agreed with the premise in that letter 100%. Now, i am truly done with this subject. If you wish to keep flogging this horse, have at it; personally, my attention is on McCain.
It’s not so much the premise of the letter as the signatories. It’s intuitive and maybe reductive, but anything with Haim Saban’s name on it has the same ultimate purpose as his funding of the Brooking Institution’s foreign policy wing. It didn’t take a primary battle for me to form my perceptions of what Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy opinions and actions represent any more than I’ll need a general election tutorial to understand what McCain is, so easy on gratuitous insults like “unhinged”; it’s exactly the way they talk about “Bush haters”.
I did not, by any stretch of my imagination, mean to infer that what you said here was unhinged; not in the least. I do think that the greater discourse, and especially in the progressive blogosphere, has been though (and i have said that many times before). If you read the comment threads, even at a well chaperoned site like the mothership FDL, they have often drifted to the the bat shit crazy end of the spectrum left to their own devices; and many popular sites have flat out become unreadable for this very reason in my eyes. I just don’t understand that. I think both Clinton and Obama have their respective strengths and weaknesses, and both have plenty of each. Both are also extremely good and viable candidates that would be light years superior to anything the GOP has, or is, offering up. As to the instant discussion in this thread, I was on record early last night saying that I think the discussion of the Clinton Iran comment was overwrought (and that is not to imply that it is not worth having, just that it is not of earth shattering importance). I still think that, although Marcy’s discussion at least made me go back and rethink before I came to the same conclusion today.
Amen! It’s not only commenters, but some otherwise sane bloggers who have bet so heavily on one candidate or another that they’ve become unhinged. Maybe it’s because I lean toward Obama mainly for electability reasons (I started out thinking either would be acceptable but Hilary’s recent tangents have me wondering), but it seems that more of them are in the Hilary camp than in Obama’s. Two that come to mind are Larry Johnson’s No Quarter and Jeralyn’s Talk Left. I’ve taken both off my RSS feed until after the nomination is settled.
I wish I could remember where I read — just yesterday — a long and rational dissection of Hillary’s plan, based on her debate remarks and not those on Countdown last night, which expanded on the earlier ones. If I can find it again today, I will post a link.
Democracy ARsenal, maybe? I haven’t checked yet, but I’m sure they’ll weigh in.
Here it is — diary on DKos:
“Meet the Press” Crowd Aghast at Clinton’s “Nuclear Umbrella”
Iran is surrounded by nuclear armed neighbors, all of whom covet or seek
to control Iran’s oil resources, and they have seen what happened to a
weak, resource rich neighbor/rival in Iraq. Iran is not any more suicidal
than any of their critics, the description of them as such is fatuous.
The origin of the Clinton proposal is muddled, I did hear Rachel Maddow
mention that it could have come from Krauthammer, and seems just that
crazy. Clinton is in the same boat as Condi on this one, another whiz
kid out of their depth, talking scary stuff trying to win an election.
I had thought her capable of better but have found her to be another
pedestrian office seeker… be afraid, be very afraid, I will save you.
I kind of agree and disagree. Her execution of this statement was ham-handed–it made her sound like a nut.
That said, this statement really COULDN’T have come from Krauthammer–he is one of the people who believes Iranians can’t be deterred.
It’s a testament to how crazy our foreign policy debates are that it is considered a legitimate question whether or not Iran, a country that has existed for millenia, could be deterred with assured destruction.
BUt it is a testament to our own blindness that we believe Iran doesn’t have good reason to worry about being attacked by a neighbor.
Look at a map and plot the nukes, Iran is surrounded by hostile/rival
nations. They have as much right to self defense as Israel. This plan
for a nuclear umbrella just legitimates nukes in the area and who can
guess who wants that recognition by a ME NATO club.
Great post, EW.
The mini-nuclear arms race that keeps running through my head is India and Pakistan. Take their history, and imagine it playing out across not two but fourteen states in the Middle East:
Jordan
Syria
Iraq
Iran
Israel
Lebanon
Egypt
Saudi Arabia
Yemen
Oman
United Arab Emirates
Qatar
Kuwait
Bahrain
I do *not* want to see a fourteen-way nuclear arms race. Israel’s got its nukes already, which certainly makes its neighbors nervous (to say the least). Imagine, though, what it would look like if some of the oil wealth went looking to pry loose some old USSR nukes or obtain some new Chinese nukes . . .
EW, you pointed out the obvious problem — will the US be trusted to guarantee the safety of the Arab world against an attack by Israel? I think it might be possible, but it would take a lot of hard work and not just a statement by a future President Clinton or President Obama to get it done.
Carter’s trip to chat with Hamas might have helped improve matters, for instance, by reminding the Arab world that Bush is not the only way that American presidents look at the Middle East. That’s a first step. Lots of others would have to follow.
Would it be a hard case to make? Absolutely — a very hard case. But in the absence of something better, it might be a case to start working on, because it isn’t going to get any easier by waiting.
Why do we need to assure Iran that we will destroy it if it attacks Israel with nukes? Israel has its own nukes, hundreds of them. Why do we pretend that Israel can’t defend itself. This is madness.
This was Jacques Chirac’s point last year when he admitted the obvious (supposedly unintentionally): that Israel would raser Iran if it attacked them with a nuclear weapon.
It could have been her pal Madeline Allbright, just a guess, but fits
her style.
I just think deep policy issues get missed by “most” of the american people. In that sense, Obama has been smart not to get too deep. I just think there are way too many Americans willing to listen to sound bites, and unwilling to study the responses for anything more than an all or nothing paradigm.
Thanks for laying that out, I agree, that Hillary is trying to do something smart by laying out the complexities of our middle eastern ties. However, (and I used to feel the same about Bill) she falls short of impressing. At the same time, I don’t know of many politicians who take on this “type” of discussion. I was not a Bill Clinton fan before he was elected president,(chose him to Bush) because I felt his foreign policy was very “formula” instead of flexible or inspired.
Both Clintons remind me of Oprah. (and perhaps I am dissing Oprah here). They are smart, successful, rich and famous. Probably both have the desire to do “good”. However, neither Oprah or the Clintons ever leave me thinking, “now that might work”!
I have been impressed with Jimmy Carter’s courage in meeting with Hamas. We have got to be willing to look for truth on both sides of any polarity and this language doesn’t seem to come from any public figure outside of Bill Moyer. I have yet to hear it from Obama although, he comes closer than most. I still have a “Oprah” feel about him as well. I keep waiting for someone to take our foreign policy outside the box that has our future nailed shut.
Foreign policy discussion in this country is controlled by “experts”,
vetted by the foundations and lobby groups, they do not want broad
public discussion, we might want something they do not approve of, we
might not get it “right”. I took that route in graduate studies, and the
pressure for certain lines of thinking is unrelenting, no outside the
box is permitted.
What surprises me the most about this statement is that it falls so short, even though Keith basically let her go on as long as she wanted and it was obviously VERY rehearsed.
If her words so fully fail to convey the rational basis for her thoughts in such controlled environment, that is a problem. Maybe she was nervous being with Keith, who was so obviously critical of many of her statements. But it was a pretty forgiving environment.
A hard right type told me this morning that he was “very impressed” with Carter’s meeting with Hamas. I was, to say the least, surprised. He also offered; “good on him for telling the W/H to f*&#k off.
That brief conversation about the need for a new direction in M/E diplomacy lead to his long explaination of why he will vote for Obama if he is the Dem candidate. Truly an amazing conversation.
DAmn straight.
I guess the point I was trying to make here is that Hillary was TRYING to communicate thoughts that good, honest diplomats have believed for the last 50 years. But it takes only a few logical steps to realize that CANNOT work anymore, at least not unless we’re willing to give up the hegemonic position on which our entire economy and way of life have been based since at least 1972.
So we need to either follow Carter–where no one said we could go. Or we need to dramatically alter our way of life, quickly. I imagine it’ll take a little of both of those things.
So we need to either follow Carter–where no one said we could go.
That was the guy’s point exactly. The current administration has made it impossible to engage anyone. Imho, Carter’s move signals his understanding that the world can not wait for us to have an election. Things are spiraling too quickly. Meaningful work MUST be done before 1-’09.
Great post EW. I just want to echo your thoughts here:
The two things that struck me about her comments were 1) at least she is proposing to respond to an attack rather than to preemptively strike, which one can only view as an improvement over our current bunch of sandlot bullies, and 2) what a backward-looking approach this is to the problem. We find ourselves in an era where we are in desperate need of new solutions to a multitude of problems (environmental, agricultural, economic, etc.) and here we have a Presidential candidate grasping at mid-twentieth century straws. We need a much smarter, a much more creative approach to the mess we are in than that.
Interesting; I’ve had several of those mind-boggling kinds of conversations as well. From people that I never expected to rethink long held views and opinions, which makes it all the more fascinating.
I just hope Clinton keeps talking, because the more she talks, the more
of this type dissonance, the inappropiate laughing and temper flares,
the more her real persona emerges, and it is not fit for the office
sought… the Clintons belong to their own nostalgia, which is sleepwalking toward the Styx.
I’m fond of Hillary, I admire her and respect her, but she’s sadly lacking in political talent, and this isn’t going to change.
I have a little theory about this predicament: Bill Clinton is by far the most talented politician I’ve ever seen (starting with Stevenson, Truman, Kefauver, Eisenhower and Nixon). If there’s a negative side to his talent, it might take the following form: he brings out the best in the people who work with him, fostering whatever political skills they may have so that they can build on their own particular gifts. The danger lies in the success of the operation–and in the very human tendency of those who prospered under Bill to suppose that they, too, are among the politically talented, or have acquired from him such skills as they’d need to make their own way in the world. Then comes the rude awakening: Rubin and Summers, Reich, Stephanopoulos….maybe they haven’t done badly, but they certainly haven’t done as well as they thought they would. Talent, real talent, is a tricky thing to assess, and trickiest of all in ourselves (Machiavelli addresses the problem in his discussions of virtù), and it’s not a “transferable skill”.
Bill Clinton was/is a salesman of the first order, bright but shallow.
He believes whatever will sell, he has no core conviction, not a pragmatist but a serious pitch man. Hillary is his codependent enabler
as were most of those clever ones that have turned out to be not quite as
bright as before… it was a bullshit decade, and led to W, the ultimate
con job deviant… hocus pocus maladjusted.
i don’t think that iran is responsible for starting the nuke arms race in the ME. that would be another ME country that already has nukes…. or us – by attacking iraq we’ve shown that the only deterrent that works against us is nukes.
Ding! Neocon projection of the “problem” onto the “enemy”. Freud was such
a cokehead.
Fair enough. I should have said the arms race BETWEEN Islamic states. Sunni and Shia worked together to faciliate Pakistan’s program when it was a question of Islam against Israel. But now that the fight for hegemony within Islam has intensified, it has breathed new life into the arms race and made proliferation somewhat easier.
agree – there are mulitiple layers to the arms race. and if we want to act wisely, we’d better have an understanding of them (or at least as many of them as we can identify).
Well, now I am going to say something “really” controversial. I never thought Bill was this great “orator”. I just never thought his public speaking style was spectacular. It was effective in some ways but weak in others. I didn’t think he was particularly adept at explaining his positions or that he was particularly persuasive. I always felt like he was instead “tricking” the american people into aggreement. Martin Luther King was persuasive. He changed a paradigm, he presented a different position and he was able to do it so effectively that “most” Americans could see the “validity” of his position and could not disagree without appearing to lack reasoning skills.
I agree that the messages are tightly controlled and maybe that is what I am reacting to, but I fear that if Whorf was right about language and culture. If so, our culture is becoming an all or nothing, black and white thinking, symbol, object confused country. The language that our politicians use reinforces this dichotomous paradigm.
Our fore-fathers were so intentionally in opposition to this paradigm. They had a multilinear approach to the language in our constitution. They understood multiple meanings and were adept at dealing with complexity and big picture problems. We are missing a “visionary”. Maybe Obama has that “vision”, I pray he does.
It may be that he is “boxed” in by our current social structure as a black man running in a “white male-corporate dominated world”. It may be that Obama understands his audience, but it scares me in terms of what is means for the USA. His background would suggest that he would possess the ability to understand different cultural pespectives. Are our brains prepared to deal with the global market, multicultural approaches, and the problems in the middle east. I don’t hear language that tells me that we are. We cannot continue down this dichotomous lane of Israel good, terrorists bad. USA good, Iran bad. It is too far from reality to allow for effective solutions.
That is why Obama has said it would be difficult to do what must be done,
especially the change of the mindset that sees war as the answer to all
problems, back to JFK’s American University speech June 1963… we have
walked away from that idea for 45 years, overcoming that momentum will
be a huge task of persuasion, but, thanks to the genius of W, people may
be receptive to something other than the politics of fear itself, nameless unjustified terror…
phew. got to the end – EW, you had me worried for a bit there.
if her perception of reality (as you described it – “rational argument in favor of an established foreign policy paradigm”) had any relationship with reality as i see it – then maybe i’d think she wasn’t bat shit crazy. but i don’t think the paradigm fits – i think she’s doing exactly what the neocons do: attempting to shoehorn the real world into their ideological framework.
She IS doing what the Neocons do–shoehorning, as you say. But she IS NOT advocating the Neocons’ policy–she is advocating a realist stance characteristic of our policies of the last 50 years.
I guess I’m trying to maintain that distinction, because it provides a nice opportunity to point out why we have to change the most fundamental paradigms that have guided our policies over the last half century.
One of the most interesting pieces on foreign policy I’ve seen is a comparison of where the Cliton foreign policy wonks went–half to Hillary and half to Obama. I think it was the ones that have the ability to see the world as it is that went to Obama.
agree and agree. that stance is no longer, imo, a realist stance when applied to today’s world.
now that you’ve pointed out the difference, i think this is why she is sometimes called a neocon – or at least neocon-like and why that label doesn’t really fit. thanks for using the 2 by 4 to get me to see the distinction you were making – it’s really quite helpful.
i’d like to read it, do you have a link?
Not handy–but I think it was by Spencer Ackerman. I’ve got an email into him asking if it was him.
thanks.
Seems to me the essence of what she said (promising wholesale and complete retaliation) is about what most Americans would expect her to say and do. It is a stark thing to think about in isolation and that makes it shocking outside of the Cold War context many of us grew up accepting (”mutual assured destruction”). If her base is “older” and remembers the bad old days, they probably react like me: what’s all the fuss?
But I do understand we are in a different environment and the Mid-east is especially volatile today, and, as noted above, there is some question whether we America has any intention of using its might on behalf of an Arab state with the same willingness as it would on behalf of Israel. As long as that perception remains strong among Arab states, the arms race will continue unabated and so we return to whether America would be willing to use its entire range of might to try to contain the unthinkable—and I think we would.
I am not saying this is “smart” policy by design, but it seems to me to be de facto policy and Clinton just said the obvious. It may not be so obvious to a younger electorate and maybe they are smarter indeed. But all I have heard anybody else say (Obama, Dodd, Biden, Edwards, Kucinich) is that you also must do what Jimmy Carter is trying to do: engage and discuss, not just broadcast a hardline and make threatening gestures at every turn.
My karate instructor told me that you never back anyone into a corner when you are trying to diffuse tension–you are only asking for a fight. If you don’t leave some room for the opponent to see an alternative to a fight, you are making a mistake. It’s only after the fight is assured that you do what you have to do to “win”. I don’t think Sen. Clinton is saying we are necessarily going to be belligerent under her leadership, but we are going to fight all out of a fight comes.
Thanks EW! I am so glad to see someone poking about under the hood of this one.
When I first heard of Senator Clinton’s remarks, I immediately thought of when George Bush, fresh in office, explicitly extended the nuclear umbrella over Taiwan in what was just an obvious mistake of not knowing there had ever been “strategic ambiguity” over precisely the question. And the differences are a little illuminating, at least to me.
In Taiwan, there was strategic ambiguity for a reason. Namely, that it was important not to say we wouldn’t–which would invite Chinese aggression, but also important not to say we would–because that would not be entirely credible, and depending on the circumstances one might not want to be held to it.
Israel is different. An American guarantee of Israeli nuclear security is credible. It’s more than credible–it has been announced before, in the leadup to the first Gulf War! (I can’t find the quote now, but Baker travelled to Baghdad to warn of “grave consequences” should Saddam attack Israel with chemical weapons.)
More than that, an Iranian attack on Israel would rapidly spread worldwide much faster than a Chinese attack on Taiwan. So the incentive to shut it down before it starts is even much greater. In that sense, to my mind it’s actually strategically correct to announce to Iran what the consequences will be.
So from a purely strategic calculation, I don’t have such a big problem with what Hillary was up to.
Here’s my political problem, which is pretty severe. In the case of NATO, or ASEAN, the umbrella was extended as part of a treaty which the Senate had a chance to review. In this case, there has been no national political discussion of whether we want to extend this umbrella over Israel. That entails real, severe risks. Perhaps they are the right risks to take on. But we should have a national discussion of that. If this is how Senator Clinton feels, she should lead a national discussion towards the consensus that she is right–not simply announce these things on TV one night.
I agree with you on the question of the deterrence, generally.
But what about hte umbrella? Hillary is talking about extending it to Saudi Arabia, which itself has problems, since they seem to be an increasingly less reliable partner. If, for example, they accede to an OPEC demand to switch to the Euro, do we still spend billions protecting them? (I know, the answer remains yes, but it’d be nice to turn it into a question.) How successful could an umbrella be without real honesty/fairness from us?
To be honest, I just assumed that everything not about Israel was guff, never to be enacted nor believed.
I second this. How do you ask this unspecified “Middle Eastern” countries to climb under an umbrella with the U.S., attacker of Iran, and Israel, attacker of Lebanon and occupier of the Palestinians? We only know how to use that pointy end of the umbrella.
There’s no underestimating the pandering to the Israelis — the only thing I need to remember about our foreign policy is the 410-8 vote against a cease fire in Lebanon at the same times bombs were falling on Americans in Beirut and Haifa. Of course we can discard the “rational argument in favor of an established foreign policy paradigm” as chaff, especially in the context of a primary.
The idea that the United States can use nuclear weapons on anyone and not be retaliated against is not rational. The days of nuclear blackmail
exist only in the “Scoop” Jackson/ Ronnie “Raygun” prolongation of the
Cold War, the intellectual homeland of the neoconservative mindset that
seeks a way to project itself into the future by their traditional means
of controlling the discussion of nuclear weapons and foreign policy. We
live on an island, out of touch with the world we deliberately misunderstand.
Israel has her own nuclear arsenal, why do we need to get into it?
Actually, you touch on one of the practical consequences of the lost standing of the last decade of American foreign policy.
Before 2000, it was considered more acceptable for the US to retaliate than Israel. For instance, during the first Gulf War, the calculation was that if the US retaliated for an attack on Israel, then friendly Arab governments would be much more likely to survive popular convulsions, than if Israel responded on its own–in which case it was widely assumed they would all simply fall.
I suspect that after our actions the past eight years, this is one of many places where the old calculations are no longer accurate.
Agree. I was thinking that the Iraq attack provides a second reason (and a primary one for a country like Syria) not to believe that we’d offer a safe umbrella guarantee.
To prevent Saudi Arabia from getting one too–which, depending on who dies when in the Saudi family, might be tantamount to OBL getting nukes as well.
So we nuke our oil supply, Pakistan/Osama already have nukes but rockets
of range too short to reach Israel. I don’t think threatening Saudi will
deter acquisition, it is inevitable, and a nuclear armed ME will come
at some point… better to positively influence the situation than revert
to neocon sabre rattling… Do something positive for the arabs for once
or if you insist on control of the nukes in the area, disarm Pakistan
and Israel as part of the package.
I don’t think Hillary Clinton is a raving lunatic, just that she plays one on TV, but I’ll answer this:
So for those who think Hillary is a raving lunatic, it’d be well to 1) address whether or not deterrence paired with a security umbrella would work and 2) if not, then how we’re going to prevent Iran’s demonstrated interest in acquiring nuclear technology from destabilizing the Middle East.
The short answer to 1 to is look at how well it worked out in Europe in 1914. One nut job set off an unnecessary world-wide conflagration.
The short answer to 2 is stop eliding the difference between nuclear power and nuclear weapons. The best thing we can do to calm down the Iranians is to stop invading countries on their borders while threatening them with total destruction.
Juan Cole writes about our “new alliance” with Iran and found I his report interesting in light of the Clinton question/answer…
http://www.juancole.com/
http://www.iht.com/articles/20…..shiite.php
preview is my friend…
“…and found THIS report interesting in light of Clint Q & A…”
From IHT:
Ok some quick thoughts:
1. She appears to discount Israel’s present nuclear club status, as in, it is not mentioned at all.
2. She dismisses Russia and its potential ties to Iran’s protection against a nuclear strike. Think renewal of the cold war.
3. SHe is trying to bait Obama into an argument that he will be soft against Terroranians.
4. Tin foil hat time = Bill Clinton still gets his Presidntial CIA briefings and she is in the know about Bush and Cheney plans re Iran prior to the GE. She is positioning herself to appear tough against McCain after Cheny starts the ball rolling.
Clinton’s statement is batshit crazy. If this is her idea of “experience” or being able to answer that phone at 3 AM, we really need to be thinking of breaking out the strait jackets.
We have been providing Saudi Arabia a security “umbrella” or whatever else you want to call it tacitly since the 1950s and overtly since the 1980s.
Nuclear weapons are not things you can get at your local Seven-Eleven. It takes a huge infrastructure and industrial base to come up with the components for one, then you need a design, test it, be able to put it on a launch vehicle. All this takes years and is virtually impossible to hide. As for buying one from Pakistan, I will believe it when I see it. There is an enormous difference between selling some nuclear technology a la AQ Khan and sending the finished product.
Do you notice how many “ifs” are involved in this garbage? This is not the basis for policy. Rather it is campaign posturing posing as policy.
I will in deference to EW not comment on the idea of a Chinese or French nuclear umbrella.
pakistan don’t have oil, iran has lots and the price is… over $115/barrel? that looks like a deal waiting to happen.
i think iran getting the bomb is a real risk – not one i want to adopt a “wait and see” approach on. iran also has a missile program. which adds to the problem. in fact, my best guess is that with our current foreign policy, they are very likely going to get one – either via their own infrastructure or by buying one.
imo, we’ve been giving iran far too many reasons to think they have to get nukes in order to insure their own survival – the more bellicose our approach, the more we’ve feed this view. so i think we’ve provided strong motivation to a well educated country and the price of oil gives them resources needed. but so long as iran is only working on a civilian program (and we haven’t attacked them) the window is still open to avoid some of the most destructive outcomes. that is what i would like to see us work towards… because while i think there is reason for worry about iran – i also think the neocons’ (or clinton’s) approach is a recipe to make things far, far worse.
I keep hammering away on this point because it seems to get lost. Nuclear weapons are sui generis. They are geopolitical in nature. Countries do not trade them among themselves like baseball cards. Pakistan would never “give” or sell a nuclear weapon to Iran. First, such a sell would be a clear indication that it was being loose with its nukes. There could well be major economic and diplomatic downsides to this. But more than this, it is not the message you want to send to a nuclear armed India sitting on your doorstep. If India ever thought that Pakistan could not control its nukes, then this would provide a very strong incentive to them to strike pre-emptively before nukes started getting loose in their direction. Second, Pakistan is majority Sunni and has its own problems with Sunni-Shia violence in places like Karachi. It is hard to imagine that Pakistan’s Sunni leadership would ever give a nuclear weapon to a Shi’ite state. Third, Iran is a neighbor of Pakistan. Pakistan already has one nuclear weapon armed neighbor and potential adversary. There is no way it would create another to deal with.
We need to move away from these Risk like assessments of states. They are not just pieces of real estate but complicated political and economic entities. We need to be aware of their histories and relationships. We should also pay attention to strategic realities. Countries do not and will not risk their survival or well being on a whim, that whim being the defense of some country that they may have even very profitable relations with. It just doesn’t happen in the rest of the world. We have been able to do something like this but it has been to the great destruction of others as often as it has been constructive. The rest of the world isn’t even tempted for the very simple reason that no other country on the planet has the means to project power on a global basis.
Right, but you’re ignoring the history of Pakistan’s engagemnet with Saudi Arabia and Saudi Arabia’s own role in developing Pakistan’s nuclear program.
The Saudis ALREADY have some expectation that, if they asked, the Pakistanis would have to play ball–that was part of the agreement years ago when Saudi Arabia provided the funds to develop Pakistan’s nukes.
And Saudi Arabia has a great deal of economic and political influence over Pakistan (remember how it played in Pakistan’s election, including getting fed up and sending Sharif back?)
So while I agree with you, that Pakistan isn’t going to give Iran too much, I think you’re ignoring important aspects that ALREADY commit Pakistan to sharing with Saudi Arabia.
hugh at 79 and emptywheel at 81 – pakistan under it’s current leadership isn’t likely to give much to iran – that i can agree with. but countries don’t make decisions, people do. and pakistan has a history of corrupt leaders who get what they can and then leave.
i’m just not willing to dismiss that concern – yet.
however, i’m hoping the two of you will eventually convince me. will be back later to read comments with some care, trying to listen to the fcc hearing on net neutrality and think about this at the same time is too much for me.
Pakistan’s nukes reside with the military not the politicians. Musharraf is President but for almost all of that time he kept his general’s uniform.
Hillary sounding tough for the catholic guy vote.
Don’t pin the blame on the public, least of all Catholics, whose pope is at least nominally against this war.
I pin the blame on the candidate, Juan Cole sees the same segment of
the electorate I mentioned, and if I have a beef with Ratzenberger I
will call him by name, Brendanx.
Another important point is that Hillary is back tracking on previous statements: “
Well, I do not believe people running for president should engage in hypotheticals,” she said. “And it may well be that the strategy we have to pursue on the basis of actionable intelligence — but remember, we’ve had some real difficult experiences with actionable intelligence — might lead to a certain action.”
or This:
Brian Williams asked Clinton what her “red line” would be “concerning when to, if to attack Iran? What would make it crystal-clear in your mind that the United States should attack Iran?”
Clinton at the time wouldn’t answer the question, even when pressed by Williams, who had to come back at her after she gave a lengthy non-responsive answer.
“Respectfully, Senator,” Williams said, “same question though: Do you have a threshold…?
Clinton would only say, “I want to start diplomacy….I am not going to speculate about when or if they get nuclear weapons.”
Once again, I believe this is a case of Hillary willing to say or do anything to get elected.
Focus group generated for this primary, pure calculation, dangerous as
yelling fire in a crowded theater.
Hypotheticals are simply used to spin. If she gives a definitive of threshold, she’ll be labeled trigger-happy. If she states diplomacy first…she’ll be called a wimp (if she was a man of course McPain would state girly-man).
So now? She’s played both cards. Strike and diplomacy language in hopes of appearing to be able to decide which to use when.
I did not like her response. A stronger focus on deterrence would have helped. Perhaps she needs to read this history:
http://www.thebulletin.org/web…..raid-syria
The mideast has exactly nuclear power, a power with an apartheid problem, that is sending settlers into occupied territory (a crime against humanity), that has attacked its neighbors on all sides, that because of territorial ambitions refuses to publish its borders, and that desperately wants to maintain its nuclear monopoly in that region. Hillary is proposing that the U.S. cover that power with its “nuclear umbrella.” I can see how such a proposal might help Hillary solve her campaign funding problem, but I can’t see how the implementation of such a proposal would solve any problem for the U.S.
Be careful, you have just spoken truth to real power!
Maybe she was implying Israel should give up its nuclear weapons in exchange for an invite under the umbrella!
Which would perpetuate the status quo of an unrestrained Israeli land
and water “acquisition” policy, in the name of security, of course.
Maybe a little history would also be in order. The Iranian Prime Minister Mossadegh was overthrown in a CIA coup in 1953. For the next 26 years Iran was run by a dictator the Shah who was kept in power by generous US arms purchases. It was also at this time in the 60s and 70s that Iran began its nuclear program, a program which we helped supply them with. In January 1979 the Shah fled, the anti-American Islamic Revolution took over. The next year in 1980, Saddam Hussein invaded Iran and began a costly war that lasted 8 years.
Against this backdrop, we have the ongoing Israeli occupation and its various wars and military incursions against its neighbors. We also have Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and the First Gulf War of 1990-1991. We have the invasion of Afghanistan and the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001 and the Second Gulf War of 2003 to the present.
Now the one thing that may get lost in all this but it is an important fact is that in the last 55 years Iran invaded no one, started a war with no one. So of course this can only be interpreted in one way: they are an undeterrable menace to all their neighbors.
i have a hard time thinking anyone can believe this – yeah, i know the evidence is that the neocons do – but as EW has pointed out (i think) that’s not senator clinton’s position. her bellicose warnings are evidence that she thinks they can be deterred.
outside the neocons, i think this is just code for: if iran gets a nuke, they will have an effective deterrent against us – and that is what our Very Serious People will not tolerate.
but what, i think, EW is saying is that we need to look beyond both deterrence and hegemony.
the neocons are wrong, clinton is wrong and the vasts majority of VSP are wrong. we need some different ideas.
About five years ago I asked Joseph Cirincione, formerly director for non-proliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, whether he thought Israel could give up its nuclear weapons without losing its security and whether he thought a nuclear-free zone would be possible in the Middle East.
To my surprise he answered both questions with a yes.
These ideas may seem utopian. But consider the alternatives. Hillary Clinton’s comments about massive retaliation should give new life to efforts to achieve a Nuclear Free Zone. Though of course, to our peril, they won’t.
Now you are talking. That’s outside the box. The baseline reason that Israel was given nukes was for our advantage and “control” over the middle east. The need for control of the middle east has to do with resources and money, unfortunately, not a concern for life and limb.
Yes, it could happen but only if we change our priorities and only if we expose our current priorities.
This sounds like the dated, doctrinaire leftist interpretation, as if the Israelis didn’t have their own interests and the wherewithal to pursue them.
I realize that Israel has it’s own reason, and it’s own motives seperate from that of the U.S. I meant to be exposing what I believe was a linear strategy in which some corporatists saw Israel as a pawn to “control”. It’s painfully obvious that Israel has no intention of being a pawn for the U.S. The whole strategy looks so superficial and inept but it is the one that Bushco seems to put forth. The map is not the territory.
Hmmm.
Wonder what he’d say now after 5 more years of Bu’ushist mayhem.
FunnyDiva
Countries in the region have been pursuing nuclear weapons for sometime. Iran’s alleged attempts are not anything new.
Libya and Iraq both had nuclear programs and they were liked prompted into those programs by Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons.
It is even rumored that the Saudis have a Sampson Option to destroy their oil assets with nuclear weapons if attacked.(This is one of the more ‘out there’ theories)
That said, people attribute a fundamental irrationalism to the Iranians that is simply not evidenced by the behavior of the Islamic Republic.
They do not behave like a nation bent on their own self destruction, they seem bent on their own continued presence in the region and the world.
-GSD
“Samson”.
One might describe our current foreign policy, on the other hand, as a “Simpson” option, as in O.J.
Noticed that our local L.A. news gave short shrift to HRC’s comments amid the all-out coverage of the PA primary, yet managed on two channels to forget she was talking about a nuclear attack on Israel by Iran. To the morning anchors it was any old attack on Israel by Iran would provoke a nuclear response from the U.S.
Regrettable, but somehow forseeable, newspeak shorthand.
Yes, but check out Scott Horton’s op-ed regarding John Yoo: http://www.latimes.com/news/op…..2568.story
You know, I missed reading that yesterday- thanx for the link.
A policy of deterrence is implemented via a security “umbrella”, a euphemism for a threat to wage massive war against an isolated aggressor for their its threat to the collective peace. That warfare can come via air strikes, mechanized troops or high-tech, utterly destructive weaponry.
To be effective, the threat of war has to be credible and a consequence not desired by the aggressor. The latter has no value to extremist groups, who view self-immolation as a holy act, which are supposed to be the greatest threat we face.
As for credibility, American forces are exhausted and currently bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan. The American people and their treasury are equally exhausted. Definitions of the “enemy” have been abused and deeply corrupted. Like Bush, we’ve been encouraged to fear ideas and images, not specific, reachable opponents against whom a rational “victory” is achievable through rational means.
That seriously undermines the credibility of any American deterrent, as do the holes in the theory itself. Prominent among them, what acts justify massive retaliation and what’s the proper response to aggression below that level?
Bush has also exhausted our allies, who will be less likely for some time to cooperate in any American-led or inspired enterprise, even assuming we could persuade them that someone other than the United States is the principal aggressor most dangerous to their interests, indeed to the framework, including the rule of law, built to sustain collective peace.
The aims of deterrence must also be worthy in order to gain the support of others. Everyone but this White House regards US aims in the Middle East as an unrequited attempt to build a new empire. Our most likely allies have had their empires and lost them; few would devote their treasure and the lives of their people to build them again.
I don’t think the prerequisites for effective deterrence yet exist. They won’t until the next administration and the one after that rebuild the foundations to which Mr. Bush has taken his Texas jackhammer.
Also, the US has launched full scale wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, has launched missile strikes into Libya, Pakistan, The Sudan, Yemen, and Somalia and shelled Iranian oil platforms.
We have threatened Iran and Syria repeatedly.
We have unconditionally supported Israel and their occupation of Palestine and continued land grabs of Palestine, as well as frequent invasions of Lebanon and their bombing raids on Iraq and Syria.
Clearly the US is the impartial arbiter of the safety of the regions Arab and Muslim peoples.
Why won’t these people trust us?
-GSD
The NIE, the Iaea and others repeat that there is no substantiated evidence to back up that Iran is pursuing Nuclear weapons. But if I lived in Iran and just watched what the U.S. has done in Iraq and Israel has done in Lebanon. I would sure be wanting nukes.
Yeah why don’t the Iranians trust us? Could it be the overthrow of a democratically elected President in Iran in the 1950’s? Nah
Empty –
read it twice now and need someone to define ‘deterrence’
are we talking about cold war/soviet deterrence ?
am not normally this dense but mr cbl made the coffee instead of me and . . .
The idea is to say “we will wipe Iran off the face of the earth if it attacks Israel” (which is what Hillary is, in fact, saying) to convince the Iranians that if they were to USE nukes then their country would be wiped out.
It’s different in that it’s not MAD. No one seriously believes that Iran could threaten us with nuclear destruction anytime in the near future (which means our threat is also destabilizing as much as stabilizing).
Add in the fact that the threat is not bipolar–as the Soviet deterrence was–and it makes it less credible. Until we can be expected to wipe out Israel if it launches an unprovoked attack on Iran, the threat is just going to destabilize the ME.
Which is the real problem. It’s not that Iran, as an Islamic country, cannot be deterred. It’s that we’re implementing a deterrence policy in a way that does more harm than good.
I assume you mean an “unprovoked nuclear attack on Iran”, but, alas, others don’t.
This is a reminder that every major candidate has said “everything is on the table”, which meant nuclear weapons in the context in which they were questioned.
Chirac, for example, was trying to reestablish the traditional, sane MAD notion of “deterrence” with his comment.
We have redefined it already.
I think Marcy’s point is that our Middle East policy is far from being even-handed, and that it is destabilizing to threaten Iran with nuclear destruction while giving Israel free reign.
The prospect of an attack on Iran before Bush leaves office is not negligible, and Clinton’s inflammatory comments are no help.
But they might make friends who could, e.g., per BBC:
Then we could find ourselves locked into a pre-WWI situation, where the smallest incident, e.g., a Hezbollah attack on Israel with conventional Iran-supplied weapons, could automatically escalate to MAD.
Even in Europe during the Cold War, when nuclear deterrence was an obligation of the NATO treaty, there was always an undercurrent of doubt among the Alliance’s European members as to whether the USA would really let the missiles and bombers fly Warsaw Pact armored columns came charging through the Fulda Gap. That’s basically why France went their own way and Britain retained their own nuke deterrent. In any blanket security umbrella in the Middle East covering Israel and Islamic countries alike, I don’t see how such doubt could not be so serious as to make any such arrangement unworkable.
Would really like someone in the MSM to have Prof Juan Cole to go over what Iranian President Ahmadenejad really said about Israel, instead of the often repeated neocon misinterpretation of what he said about Israel.
Diane Rehms had him on once but not about interpreting what the Iranian President said.
I hear Olberman and many more MSM’ers repeat the neocons interpretation of what Ahamadenijad said ….endlessly
http://www.juancole.com/2006/0…..chens.html
“The precise reason for Hitchens’ theft and publication of my private mail is that I object to the characterization of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as having “threatened to wipe Israel off the map.” I object to this translation of what he said on two grounds. First, it gives the impression that he wants to play Hitler to Israel’s Poland, mobilizing an armored corps to move in and kill people.
But the actual quote, which comes from an old speech of Khomeini, does not imply military action, or killing anyone at all. The second reason is that it is just an inexact translation. The phrase is almost metaphysical. He quoted Khomeini that “the occupation regime over Jerusalem should vanish from the page of time.” It is in fact probably a reference to some phrase in a medieval Persian poem. It is not about tanks.”
The Israelis don’t have to believe the Iranians are crazy to not want them to have nuclear weapons. They don’t want their deterrent diminished against a country that supports Hezbollah, a more proximate adversary.
Anyone interested in the idea of a Nuclear Free Zone in the Middle East might wish to consult this article. The author, who is no doctrinaire leftist, served in the State Department under the first President Bush.
DEFUSING NUCLEAR MIDDLE EAST
by Bennett Ramberg
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Volume 60, Number 3, pp. 45-51
May/June 2004
http://thebulletin.metapress.c…..lltext.pdf
It would take some doing, including the imposition of an effective enforcement mechanism, but a nuclear-free zone could be the best answer to proliferation in the Middle East.
If the world had a UN that could be trusted then the UN could keep the nuclear weapons and allow their use for whatever benefits humankind. We, and i mean the people of the world, don’t know who to trust because “they” have kept us in the dark and controlled us for so long. They have abused our trust to further their selfish goals. They had to lie to us in order to get what they wanted, and justified lying by assuming that if we could not figure it out then we deserved it. They saw themselves as foxes and us as sheep rather than them as perverts manipulating a trusting child with candy. What they do not know, or understand, is that they are massively wounded souls who have lost their humanity and need to rediscover it, to become deprogrammed.
I think the problem here is that the “kernel” has been confused with the chaff. The idea of an “umbrella”, a “rational argument in favor of an established foreign policy paradigm” is not the kernel that will be consumed by the public, be they the good people of Pennsylvania or superdelegates. The kernel was, rather, the phrase “massive retaliation” — that’s the phrase the media will feed viewers, and it’s probably what Clinton wanted them fed with.
EW not only Clinton’s comments about Iran. Not sure if you missed Chris Matthews interview with McCain and then George’s interview with McCain? Both George and Chris allowed McCain to almost get away with Iranian murders.
I was stunned when Chris Matthews did not even bring up McCains connections to lobbyist during his interview with McCain at Villa Nova. Not only did Chris Matthews not ask any questions about this issue he allowed Senator McCain to get away with repeating unsubstantiated claims about Iran once again. Did not question him when he said that there is “overwhelming evidence” that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program. Come on Matthews do your fucking job! Ask where is the evidence. How about asking why McCain and so many others are denying the NIE National INtelligence Estimate, and Mr. El Baradei of the Iaea’s statments about Iran.
Listen to the whole one hour with McCain you will hear for yourselves Matthews willingness to allow McCain to beat on the war drums and repeat unsubstantiated claims about Iran.
Hardball yeah right! It looked like Matthews wanted to hung McCain or he wants to go to McCains next barbecue for the MSM. (obviously Matthews has all ready been smoked by McCain.
Can’t wait to watch an interview of Matthews with Clinton!
http://hardblogger.msnbc.msn.c…..96574.aspx
Then this past Sunday George Stephanapolous provided another stage for McCain to repeat these unsubstantiated claims about Iran. In fact Stephonapolous threw some of his own false claims about Iran. Hey why didn’t George ask McCain why he did not have a flag pin on. George did not ask McCain any questions about his relationship with a particular lobbyist. I mean if you are going to ask Obama endlessly repeated horseshit why not ask McCain. It was as if McCain was running the interview. At one point McCain said to George “go ahead” Giving him permission to speak
Watch and listen for yourselves. Some of the more critical statements in these interviews seemed to slip through the cracks.
Watch George interview John..or watch McCain lead an interview
http://abcnews.go.com/thisweek
Lots of “bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran” inferences in both of these interviews with McCain and no mention of lobbyist.
Last night Olberman allowed Clinton to get away with inferring if Iran were to get away with developing nuclear weapons (Scott Ritter, El Baradei, the NIE all say not happenning) that they would be the only country in the middle east to have Nukes. Can anyone say Israel!
Certainly not Olberman, Matthews or Stephanapoulous!
hug or hung? Not much difference these days.
Scott Ritter the man on Iran
http://www.democracynow.org/20…..t_iran_the
Read everything Flynt Leverett has to say about Iran. Flynt quit the Bush administration just before the invasion of Iraq
http://www.newamerica.net/pres…..n_and_iraq
Hug and hug some more!
thank you Empty – so appreciate your post on this
Whose a threat to peace in the middle east?
http://64.233.169.104/search?q…..#038;gl=us
And so how much have they shared? Pakistan certainly did not take the lead in the first Gulf War when Saudi oil fields were threatened. Pakistan has given the KSA no nuclear security guarantees. The KSA has not guaranteed Pakistan cheap oil. Gee, I wonder why that is. Pakistan and the KSA have cooperated as during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and later with the Taliban but neither of these efforts represented anything existential in nature. When you move to the level of nuclear weapons, you are talking about realities that are existential in nature. Pakistan and the KSA are lightyears away from any kind of dealing like that.
evidence is that this never happened – was a lie told by dick cheney (surprise) to convince americans (especially congress) that we needed to attack iraq and to convince the people of saudi arabia that they needed to allow american bases on their territory without trying to overthrow their leaders for permitting it (OBL was not convinced).
i’ll look for links, if needed, after the hearing.
From the Douglas Frantz’ Nuclear Jihadist (349-350):
Yes, I know about AQ Khan’s travels.
So lets see the Saudis gave the Pakistanis some bucks early on. The Saudis have given lots of money to lots of people for lots of reasons. And the Saudi Defense Minister got a guided tour. These are pretty slim reeds to base the idea that the Pakistanis would ever seriously contemplate sharing nuclear weapons with the Saudis.
We’ll have to agree to disagree. The point is that before AQ Khan was arrested, there were already reports such a deal was in the making. Did it happen? Dunno. But the Pakistanis are sure as heck going to deal to Saudi Arabia before they’re going to give their most advanced technology to Iran.
Boy howdy I agree with that last part. As to Khan personally though, it appeared he would sell to anybody, he was just into spreading his seed and getting cash.
HE would, but he was selective about WHAT he’d sell. The Libyan program was designed to be a program in a box, since they Libyans didn’t have the expertise of the Iranians and since they, like the Saudis, invested early in the Muslim bomb.
He kept dealing stuff to Iran that was a generation out of date.
AQKhan leveled the Nuclear arsenal killing field. Lots of money made by many! (Sibel knows)
If you can’t believe a “ranking Pakistani insider” who can you believe?
Damn. Where did my wink emoticon go?
That’s a 2003 story you linked to and where is all the cheap oil the Saudis promised?
Also I should point out that it was written by Arnaud de Borchgrave whose connected to conservative outlets like the Washington Times and NewsMax.
Sorry tryggth, missed the snark.
Sorry. Not suggesting it actually happened. But there was a lot of print around that time about the possibility. Most of the articles go on to say that Bush and Armitage scuttled the possibility.
Believe if there were ever a strategic deal like that one in the works it would take a lot more than a few words from either Bush or Armitage to squelch it.
Man, I’ve been up for well over an hour now. Spent the entire time looking for my galoshes/fishing waders for a little bit of insulation before stepping into this peat bog. It’s still stinky and mucky…..
I’m still missing the point, I suppose. The U.S. was a principal instigator of the Cold War as a way to burn through the Treasury in behalf of the MIC Eisenhower alluded to. The way Hillary is talking, she’s aiming to return to those times of nuclear sabre rattling and brinksmanship. Those, I can assure you were not happy times.
What she should be advising if she gave a damn about people beyond who they might vote for in an political contest involving her, is the complete dismantling of the U.S. cold war apparatus that burdens us to this very day. Far less shit would happen, I am quite confident.
Thanks
Iran has a population of about 70 million people.
Except of course that Iraqi forces did move into Saudi territory.
Hugh: Except of course that Iraqi forces did move into Saudi territory.
They did no such thing.
Pentagon officials told the U.S. media that there were satellite images of them massing on the Saudi border, but neither AP nor the St. Petersburg Times, which in December 1990 purchased commercial satellite images from the period of the invasion of Kuwait, were able to find any evidence of troops near the border. Or, for that matter, in all of Kuwait in the numbers claimed by the Pentagon.
An In These Times article in February 1991 recounts in detail the two media outlets’ efforts to confirm the Pentagon accounts. The Pentagon refused to show the images they claimed to anyone.
After the war, Colin Powell acknowledged that the numbers of Iraqi troops in Kuwait might have been overestimated.
The purpose of the story of massed Iraqi troops threatening the Saudi oil fields was twofold: to get the Saudis to allow U.S. troops to be based on Saudi territory, and to lay the groundwork for public and elite support for U.S. military intervention against Iraq.
The Iraqis did launch some missiles toward/into Saudi territory. If you can find any sources documenting Iraqi incursions into Saudi Arabia, please post them here.
It should be a matter between the principal parties the resolution of conflict. Unless the U.S. is invited by both parties to mediate, the U.S. should bug off.
this is a very thoughtful post, ew.
some of what seems to fuel your thought on the “iran problem” is a sort of nuclear dominoes theory.
that may in fact be what happens in the middle east. but the “inevitability” at the heart of dominoes theory has failed before.
it is certainly possible the saudis might decide to but together their own nuclear weapons program. but they might have good reason not too.
among other things, their oil is precious to a lot of the rest of the world. a nation that turned saudi oil fields into a nuclear desert would not be much appreciated by the saudi’s customers.
another point-
the middle east is a small geographic area. using nuclear weapons on one nation might have unintended and unhappy consequences for the aggressor, or for other nations supporting the aggressor.
i suspect that for for israel, who has nuclear weapons, and for iran, nuclear weapons are a defensive threat of this sort – “if you come for me, i will see that you die, too.”
we can assume crazy mullahs, just as we could dream of crazy russian generals and politicians. but the folks with their hands on the switches that energize nuclear weapons may be far more cautious, skeptical, and unwilling to use them that you are i would assume them to be.
not every rational official is an american official.
when the u.s and russia developed the nuclear bomb, great britain, france and china followed suit. others did not. later india and pakistan developed those weapons, pretty clearly as mutual deterrents.
my own guess is that the nuclear possibilities in the middle east are just one more reason why a united nations presence or a nato presence or some such international presence in the region will be needed.
but i think maximum security for all the nations there lies in their learning to police themselves using trade and diplomacy, with occasional appeals for international policing.
and remember, its mid east oil the world craves. folks in other countries in the world may not give a damn whether the arabs, their israeli brethren, the persians, or the turks blow each other up nuclearly. but they sure care about that oil.
so
nuclear dominos may happen or not.
using nuclear weapons in a small geographic area is very risky .
oil may be as much a deterrent as any weapons system could be.
regional diplomacy is essential to peace.
finally, i really cannot understand why such intense concern is currently being devoted to the iranian nuclear effort. it seems to me like it is the flea that is wagging the tail that wags the dog.
there is no nuclear weapon in iran. there is no delivery system for those weapons in iran.
the u.n. inspections in iraq proved rather successful in retrospect, though they may have been unnecessary. they could probably allay fears of iran also.
i’d rather we put our worry time toward pakistan’ nuclear weaponry and its political instability.
Would that be the rational Israeli military who left thousands of cluster bombs all over southern Lebanon?
Israel started the arms race in the middle east and that’s a fact!
…And get to work getting it’s own house in order.
Were we discussing views on rational policy or only the optics of selling a policy? I agree that the cowboyish idea of “massive retaliation” is a strong sell, though perhaps not to those who associate it with Buck Turgedson. The coinage will gain some support at home. I don’t think it will persuade a foreign state or non-state actors unless the threat is credible and the action unwanted. That we might credibly first use nuclear weapons in the heart of the Middle East is not likely to gain us supporters; it’s likely to make the world regard us as the enemy.
Where do we go after the Biblical promise to wipe our Sodom-like opponent off the face of the earth? Do we look for Gomorrah? Do we hide from those who opposed our action or wipe them, too? How do we pick up the pieces? And who would continue to support us rather than band together against us because they fear we may change our priorities and target them next?
The point of deterrence or any other foreign policy is not to rid the world of those with whom we are in conflict. If that were the goal, we’d just start shooting. It’s to persuade our competitors to interact with us peacefully, if not benignly. What “weapons” have we left with which to do that?
Why is the US and the west still exibiting PTSD? It should have ended when the We-Won-WWII-for-you generation died off.
We hate Cuba basically because over half a century ago they threw oout our hand picked dictator. We went to war in VN because they wanted to get rid of our hand picked dictator. We hate Iran because they threw out our hand picked dictator.
Is there a pattern here?
I guess @ this point it bears reposting somewhere:
Our Home, Iran Video
Not sure what you mean, Marcy, by miscalculate. Unless you mean HRC miscalculated that her “opponents” would take her words out of context and use them against her. Not sure what words would have been better. (And I’m one who winced when I read Matt Stoller and other reports of what she said–so I’m grateful to you for explaining and filling in the full context.)
Meaning, I’m not sure how it helps her win a Democratic primary in which the vast majority oppose war with Iran. It may win her some of the working class white vote (even while it turns off a great deal of it). It may help her win support among some Jews (not a big demographic in WV, NC, KY, or OR, though). But it’s going to alienate the bulk of people who are considering her in the next few weeks.
They are a “big demographic” in terms of her longer strategy of superdelegates, media, electability, etc.
Somewhat O/T, but the “reliable” Adam Nagourney has a front-page Times article entitled, “What Would Victory [in Pennsylvania] Look Like?” The brackets are mine. The article is ostensibly about today’s Democratic primary in PA.
The brackets underscore that Nagourney’s title is an unacknowledged riff on Democratic criticism of Bush’s chaotic, ever-changing rationales for what he calls an Iraq policy. Who says the new Times limits OpEd pieces to the OpEd page? To be fair, the snark may be his editors, but it would also be like him.
I was all ticked off at her yesterday, but after hearing her full comments…not so much, because reality is that the world is in a heap of trouble, and whoever becomes president is going to have to face it head on. What we need is true diplomacy, diplomacy, diplomacy with everyone on this earth …and start renegotiating to lower the nuclear threat worldwide. Bush has done everything wrong…everything.
Pakistan and India are the biggest nuke problem and they should both be disarmed.
I seriously doubt that Iran would nuke Israel.
First, they’d have to get nukes from somewhere.
Then, they’d need a way to keep the US from nuking them in retaliation.
Then, they’d have to have some way to keep the fallout – literal, not figurative – from poisoning their own country.
I don’t think they’re insane.
But I can’t say as much for our government.
(And if I were running a small, or even a medium-sized, country, I’d want nukes too. It seems to be the only way to keep the neocons from attacking other countries.)
Good morning/afternoon, Marcy, Hugh, Selise and all the WheelPups!
Thanks for this thread. I feel full to bursting with food for thought (burrrp). All y’all are just Teh Awesome–especially when it comes to this sort of in-depth analysis and exchange of well-informed views. I wish I had tons of money. One of the things I’d do is endow a Pullitzer Prize equivalent for this kind of journalism.
FunnyDiva
Sen Clinton is totally absurd! Israel has its own nuclear arsenal to use as it sees fit; I have no doubt that Israel can & would turn the entire region into glass if they had too.
The Middle East does not border the US. Oil? Energy? The PR China hasn’t fired 1 bullet; lost one drop of blood or lost one of its soldiers in her quest to supply their nation with energy.
[My emph., and returning to silence.]
OT – but speaking of sickening …
Jeff Stein has a piece up on Lady, the ex-CIA operative who has been hung out to dry on the on Italian job, while his frat-boy-run-amok boss who made the calls and pulled the strings is being promoted.
http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmsp…..38;cpage=1
When Stein adds his appeal at the end of his piece for someone to do the right thing and at least give Stein legal support, it’s sad that his appeal has to be directed to someone as worthless as Hayden.
I hope I am not being redundant here, but is she really trying to say that the Saud do not have nuclear weapons? For anyone to deny this after their reign as the richest oil power in the world for as long as they have, is really rather odd. The talk is shameful as it is. Iran knows they will be obliterated long before they have the capability of bombing anyone, and so does Clinton.
rip the sentences apart for the root. neocon philosophy 101. disguised by obfuscation 401, folksy charm, 202
Iran has to be oil dry for us to not want to invade.
HRC is talking about nuking Iran. The more she brings ‘massive retaliation’ out of the lunatic fringe where it belongs, into mainstream political discourse — she moves us all closer to acceptance of the “kill the dictator with the bunker buster” rhetoric the neocons use to promote the use of nukes.
This is crazy.
But HRC took it a step further: she wants to bind the US to treaty obligations to respond to attacks on other countries for using nukes (no mention whether Israel would also be subject to annihilation by us if THEY use their nukes first — I didn’t think so).
She is promoting precisely the sort of tangle of treaties that pulled all of Europe into war in 1914.
This is worse than crazy.
All to win a few more votes in Pa? Can’t she just come out stronger against gun control?
Honestly, I have the same sinking feeling I did the day that Nancy Pelosi took impeachment off the table. It’s the same feeling I felt when I have tried to reconcile the old McCain with the “I’d do anything to be pres” McCain. It’s the same feeling I felt when Lieberman sold his entire soul (instead of the half that was already gone) to the most conservative neo cons. WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?? I just have a hard time believing it’s all about wanting to win. Are we missing a peice of the puzzle?? I just feel like there is something we don’t know. I don’t know what it is, but my gut (and I have nothing better to offer since I am admittedly detail impaired) is ringing off the wall.
There is nothing to reconcile; and I mean nothing. He is the exact same McCain now as he was the day he set his self serving carpetbag down here in Arizona almost thirty years ago. He has always been willing to say or do anything to get and stay elected; and it has always been the case that the only thing in the world that he cares about is John McCain. You are giving him a ton of credit he does not deserve in the least to think and say that there has been some change; there has no, it is the same McCain. Always.
Bmaz,
I want to make it clear that “no respect was intended” in my reference to McCain. And you make a good point about a larger pattern of pandering to voters. I guess for a short while I really thought he had a genuine heartfelt opinion about torture. I know he threw it away in the end. But I guess that was focus of my “change theory”. It just looks to me like an awful lot of people have “caved” and not only added their support but gave up their lives for the cause. It just seems out of whack to me.
Thanks ew, thanks all for an exceptionally illuminating post + comments. I agree that my comment yesterday about HC having gone all neocon was a fundamental misreading of the defense position. I understand the context much better now.
Having said that, the premise of the HC position seems thoroughly nonsensical (so maybe folks here can help me see why it’s not): Why would a nuclear Iran represent a destabilization in the region, rather than a stabilization? A pre-nuclear, pre-regional-MAD Iran is a much more attractive target for a pre-emptive strike than a nuclear Iran would be, and any war on Iran would be highly destabilizing. In fact, this premise seems particularly blind-spotted since this “umbrella” doctrine itself is based on assured destruction in the first place. Is it just that some stable statii are more equal than others?
I do remain very worried by the possibility that a US strike on Iran may have already been greenlighted, and that HC recently learned that, and this HC initiative may be an attempt to line her up with that, in preparation. If such an attack happens, it seems HC would likely ride the popular fear-surge whereas Obama would likely suffer by comparison. That would explain the “Why now?” of HC’s very visible and sudden push on this point.
Though on the tone-deafness and inept delivery that undercut whatever gains she’s going for, I have to agree with merkwurdiglieber @ 5: “Clinton is in the same boat as Condi on this one, another whiz kid out of their depth, talking scary stuff trying to win an election.” A smart geek playing at dumb-tough, and just not making the sale.
Speaking of Rice, from the NYT article on her statements on Carter, something (else) I did not know:
I just thought the laments about not exchanging diplomats were ironic in the context.
My POV hinges on living through the Cuban Missile Crisis with the reality
of being turned into crispy skins because a bunch of whiz kids wanted to
prove themselves with nuclear weapons. The only sane person in the room,
luckily, was Kennedy, who flat refused unanimous demands from his cabinet
and the JCS to “go for it”. We would all be dead if he had not the self
control to stay out of group think descision making. For Clinton to
pitch this talk out in a debate indicates, to me, illness making her
unfit for any responsibility for nuclear weapons and their use. This is
not a partisan position, she simply disqualified herself.
Curtis LeMay was a “whiz kid”? I would have thought “grizzled veteran” would be the more apt cliche
He wasn’t all that old then, but he was already a bit of a nut on bombing with nukes.
(I remember that period too. There’s nothing like having your teacher tell you that your town is high on the hit-list for making you feel ‘good’. Mine considered community fallout shelters, but never went beyond talking about it; they’d never have worked in reality, because too many people would have wanted their own family inside without letting others in at all.)
Curtis LeMay was likely certifiable. Howeer, he came untarnished from the war and did great damage in the cold war era as chief procurer. His paranoia could arguably be one of the things Eisenhower was addressing directly.
I have a real problem with all of this talk of deterence from the US when we ignored that Pakistan and India were getting nukes surreptitiously and then were admitted to the “Big kids’ club”. Our own lack of adherance to the NPT (and others) is exactly where all this crap came from.
There is no current evidence that Iran is building an nuclear weapons program. And the current NIE says that they stopped any attempt years ago. Period, without caveats. There is every evidence that they are building a nuclear energy program to which they have a right as a signer of the NPT, as guaranteed by the NPT they signed. Does anybody not get this?
The whole argument is crap, and Hillary has just shown that she’s gullible enough to believe Bush when he lies, again. Consider it an intelligence test that she keeps flunking, over and over.
Totally OT:
Christine Whitman not liable for ground zero air quality statements.
Does beg the question why it was deemed reasonable for the head of the scientific agency, the EPA, to rely on air quality evaluations made by presumably non-scientifically qualified politicos in the White House.
The context suggests the court concluded it could not create a private right of action, absent legislation, to sue the government over these patently false assurances – opening the proverbial can of worms for breakfast – rather than an exoneration of Whitman.
The problem we’ve wrestled with throughout the Bush administration is that Congress has chosen party solidarity over the safety and well-being of its constituents. Hence, there has been no counter-pressure when the White House offers “whoppers” as policy or statements of fact. Well, it’s nearly time to vote the buggers out; we should.
I did some net research and found that the Unites States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is populated by Judges Dennis Jacobs, Robert D. Sack and Reena Raggi.
Robert Sack worked at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher (of Florida recount fame). Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher has produced GW appointees Solicitor General Theodore Olson and Solicitor of Department of Labor Eugene Scalia.
My research did not show anything perverse about Sack himself. He was a Clinton appointee.
Maybe someone made the point so I apologize in advance, but the US is not to be trusted. What good are any international understandings we participate in when we can cast them aside without debate or popular reaction as this administration has done over and over? If I were a citizen of any ME country, I would look to other means to insure national security and certainly would not ever rely on US word for deterence or retaliation.
OK, I read the top post, and I don’t have time to read through all the comments before replying. But I want to add my two cents to the debate.
First, it is important to note that Hillary’s statement was in response to a statement by an ABC reporter asking her about how she would respond to an Iranian attack on Israel. So we must not lose sight of the fact that Hillary was not the one who brought the subject up.
Second, as others have noted, she could have chosen to deflect the question by citing the NIE and claiming that Iran did not pose this kind of threat in the immediate future, so that it was too soon to deal with this distant future hypothetical. But she chose not to deflect the question.
I think she may have wanted the question. Remember, she’s the first ever female candidate for president who has a significant chance of winning. So one of the dragons she has to do battle with is the dragon that “Women are too soft on defense.” (BTW, I think this is hogwash, but that’s another story.) So when issues like this come up, she almost has to come out swinging. She cannot afford to look soft and “reasonable” (read: soft). So, whether she wanted the question or not, I think that she seized on it as an opportunity to convey the message that “I’m strong on defense, don’t mess with me.” After all, if she wins the nomination, she has to campaign against Mr. Military himself, Sen. McCain, who is descended from Admirals and other men of rank going back several generations.
However, I wish she had chosen to deflect the question.
FWIW, I’m supporting Obama, and he will have a similar challenge– to persuade voters that he is strong enough on defense, in a dangerous world, against Mr. Military.
Bob in HI
Per Senator Clinton:
So, Senator Clinton, what would you do if Israel used nuclear weapons against Iran, a much more likely scenario? Would you obliterate them as well?
Good question!
Which brings up another thing Sen. Clinton should have discussed but didn’t: It is widely known that the only nuclear power in the Middle East is ISRAEL, and to most of the world Israel looks like a colonial implant by England and the US in the Middle East that is hostile to the world of Islam, so, DUH, why do you suppose that Iran and other Middle Eastern powers want nuclear weapons??? Israel has already conducted hostile air strikes at neighboring Arab countries (Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq, for starters). So if Sen. Clinton really wants to diffuse nuclear tensions in the Middle East, the place to start is a Middle Eastern peace initiative. Funny how only Israel is allowed to defend itself, and how “defending” itself includes hostile air strikes at neighboring states.
Bob in HI
Let’s not neglect a Pearl Harbor style first strike against Egypt in 1967.
Well, quite. The Fundamentals That Dare Not Speak Their Names are: It’s all about power. The US says Iraq and Iran can’t have any. Any questions?
This has been another episode of…
By the way, did you see that yet another Israeli spy was arrested today in the US? For being our bestest, most sacred untouchable friend, they sure act like belligerents a lot…..
Per the Wikipedia:
Pollack is Reseach Director of the Saban Center for Mideast Policy at the Brookings Insttution. His boss, Martin Indyk, is a foreign policy advisor to Clinton. His buddy Michael O’Hanlon is a Saban Center affiliate and a foreign-policy advisor to Clinton. And the Saban Center’s founding contributor, Israeli Billionaire, Haim Saban is a major contributor and fund raisser for Clinton. Per Saban: “I’m a one-issue guy and my issue is Israel.” Also, “On the issues of security and terrorism I am a total hawk.” BTW, Saban was one of the 20 fat cats who wrote that letter to Pelosi rebuking her for commenting that the superdelegates should bow to the will of the voters.
Visibly, the neocons would prefer McCain to Cinton, and IMHO they are the reason that Hillary will stay in all the way to the convention.
My point is that
I refuse to get dragged back into that never ending swamp. If you wish to flog on, be my guest, but leave me out of it. The arrest of an alleged spy has nothing to do with Clinton’s comment.
Pollack is allegedly USGO1 in the upcoming Aipac espionage trial. You know the trial that dare not speak its name in the MSM or the “progressive” blogosphere. That trial
http://www.globalsecurity.org/…..ug2005.htm
OT – Could somebody please go tell good ol’ Stenny to STFU before his Stockholm Syndrome kicks in again? Thanks in advance.
that not the worst of of it –
the senate intelligence committee has a hearing scheduled for next week (may 1):
the issue is the “Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008″ – check out section 4 (the intelligence committee has helpfully posted the entire thing on their website) it’s all about fisa. apparently this administration hasn’t given up on getting what they want.
i’m hoping that marcy, christy and glenn are all over this. but now that i think about it, i should probably send off an email just to make sure.
I wouldn’t worry about Marcy, I am pretty sure she, like I, was never under the illusion that this was over. Only the retarded American press would have lent any credence whatsoever to the Boehner crying resignation of defeat and moving on BS. They will push this with every ounce of their human ability to the day they die and I think Harry Reid agreed to assist long ago. There is still a long way to battle on this.
oh, that doesn’t worry me. but it might help to have a heads up (if this is news) since the administration’s bill is posted on the committee’s website – and it’s can’t hurt to have extra time to read and digest it.
True.
But I did just go to Hoekstra’s district out mouth off mightily about the stretchers he has told on FISA. Maybe Crazy Pete got wind of it and went back to teh drawing board.
FWIW, one of MI’s crotchety old judges was there, and was rather impressed with my understanding of FISA.
Heh. Excellent! Was this a Fed or State judge? What kind of gig was this?
A talk at a local Dem party–but MI’s judges are elected in non-partisan elections.
Hi Selise, please do send email to Jane, Christy, and Glenn.
just sent it to marcy, glenn and christy. hopefully it will get where ever else it might need to go from there.
Yes. Exactly how does this position benefit the U.S., as opposed to benefitting candidates for office in the U.S. government?
I imagine the reply of the Serious People would be along the lines of “Don’t you trouble your cute little plebeian head over that stuff. We patricians will take care of all that, and of you too, as long as you stay in line. After all, we always have and we always will.”
(via tpm, robert coughlin’s plea deal. hmm, wonder how much of that 16 million for jail construction actually made it to the mississippi choctaws?)
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.c…..agreement/
Yeah, I dunno, but I get the distinct impression that this is being slid through all nice and quiet like and that a whole lot of other malefactors and related questions are being swept under the rug in the process.
Let’s stop talking nonsense here. I mean, for the U.S. to somehow be trusted in the region to midwife a hegemonic “deterrence”? Simply leapfrog milennia of regional divide. All from those trusted folks who want your oil and have shown such respect for the culture, the religion, and the history of the region.
With a side order of [igored] Israeli nuclear dominance on the side. Or is Israel somehow to be a valued member of the deterrent alliance?
Maybe Ahmed Chalabi could be the CEO.
Apply Occams razor. We are not all fools, Hillary.
Perhaps participation in this umbrella is a way of legitimizing Israel’s nuclear arsenal, allowing it to be brought out of the closet.
Wigwam, Israel does not want/need its nuclear armory “legitimized” or brought out of the closet; that is part of their perceived “edge”. And Hillary would do nothing to hinder that edge because the more hawkish elements in Israel, and certainly in the AIPAC surrogates which she kowtows to, wouldn’t allow it.
The possible “benefits” of an “umbrella” being a second order speculation, the first and obvious fact is that the “umbrella” is a non starter even in theory, IMO.
Fact is, has the US not invaded Iraq and destroyed the delicate balance, there would be no need to be screaming so loudly about Iran’s nuclear ambition just now. Fact is, Hillary helped kick start this policy and strategic disaster by voting for the war.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole “policy” proposal wasn’t ginned up purposely to allow Hillary to scream “Bomb, bomb” Iran to the roof tops for all those good northern rednecks in Penna.
That seems to be a incredibly silly statement since you penned it after Clinton had left Pennsylvania.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole “policy” proposal wasn’t ginned up purposely to allow Hillary to scream “Bomb, bomb” Iran to the roof tops for all those good northern rednecks in Penna.
“That seems to be a incredibly silly statement since you penned it after Clinton had left Pennsylvania.
Sorry you think its silly. I think the Pennsylvania audience remains salient whether one is “in” the state or simply communicating via some media. I can understand you thinking its “silly” on other grounds. Am I missing something here.
Marcie, your WORST ever positioning of your self for an issue.
ANY ONE who comes out railing to DO IRAN WITH NUKES if THEY let loose, is nutz.
Iran will never be in a position to nuke at Isreal. Never.
This is kindergarten level knowledge.
And to inflame the Jewish/Arab candles of hate any further, by CONDONING what Shilary said, instead of shouting her down, is to give fuel to the fire.
I’m greatly disappointed in you, and your post.
And I’m disappointed in FDL, again, for enabling it.
You folks are NOT progressives, in any measure I look at it.
Could you issue a memo and some editorials to major MSM’s and declare the obvious?
Thanks.
Harumph.
Actually Larue, my point here is you’re misreading the basic grammar of Hillary’s speech. By ignoring Hillary’s statements on deterrence, you’ve completely misread her speech. I’m not defending the soundness of her policy. But I am reading what she said.
Does she really need to go that far? Using inflammatory and unsubstantiated claims about Iran? No she does not!