Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: CYBERKEN who wrote (748060)	8/20/2006 9:44:11 PM
From: Jamey	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

They hate your buddy Bush and your dancing partner, Olmert, not me. I didn't murder 100 thousand Iraquis or kill and maim 10,000 American kids. Your buddy did. Santi

To: CYBERKEN who wrote (748060)	8/20/2006 9:54:26 PM
From: Jamey	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

I'll listen to these 21 experts, not an AWOL National Guard CIC. A group of former diplomats and retired generals called on President George W. Bush to open negotiations with Iran, warning that the use of military force would have catastrophic consequences for the region. The open letter signed by 21 former senior officials comes amid growing criticism of US refusal to deal directly with Iran and Syria despite crises in Iraq and Lebanon. "As former military leaders and foreign policy officials, we call on the Bush administration to engage immediately in direct talks with the government of Iran without preconditions to help resolve the current crisis in the Middle East and settle differences over the Iranian nuclear program," the letter said. "We strongly caution against any consideration of the use of military force against Iran. The current crises must be resolved through diplomacy, not military action," it said. It warned that an attack on Iran would have disastrous consequences for the region and for US forces in Iraq, further inflaming Muslim hatred and violence. Among the signers were retired general Joseph Hoar, a former commander of US forces in the Middle East, and Morton Halperin, a former State Department director of policy planning. Halperin accused the Bush administration of stifling debate on Middle East policy "by accusing anybody that disagrees with it of being disloyal or somehow helping the terrorists." "This administration by refusing to talk to the Syrians, to the Iranians, to the North Koreans has in my view jeopardized our national security," he said in a teleconference with reporters. The letter comes on top of a chorus of recent criticism by other former officials, Democrats and Republicans, of the administration's Middle East strategy. Last week, former US ambassador to the United Nations Richard Holbrooke called for more active Middle East diplomacy and talks with Iran and Syria in a opinion piece published by the Washington Post. Warning of merging crises in Lebanon and Iraq, he emphasized the need to prevent "a chain reaction (that) could spread quickly almost anywhere between Cairo and Mumbai." "The only beneficiaries of this chaos are Iran, Hezbollah, Al-Qaeda and the Iraqi Shiite leader Moqtada al-Sadr, who last week held the largest anti-American, anti- Israel demonstration in the world in the very heart of Baghdad, even as 6,000 additional U.S. troops were rushing into the city to 'prevent' a civil war that has already begun," he said. "This combination of combustible elements poses the greatest threat to global stability since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, history's only nuclear superpower confrontation," he said. news.yahoo.com