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Politics : The Obama - Clinton Disaster -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: PROLIFE who wrote (14055)	6/22/2009 12:42:17 PM
From: pompsander	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 103300

Of course, you offer no rebuttal. As so often in the past, you just claim the other person is "stupid" and stand on your high horse. How predicatable you are! O.K., Pro....If Obama had started screaming from the rooftops a week ago in support of the people of Iran and the same marches, crackdown and bloodshed had occured, wouldn't you neocons be claiming he encouraged the people to walk into their own deaths? That he should have been more statesmanlike? Sure you would! Nothing Obama could have said or did say would have changed the last week's events. They were formed within Iran, by Iranians. The work being done behind the scenes (as hinted by the Swiss) is far more important at this point. Belligernce can come later.....in response to an ever-increasing crackdown...if it happens. This is the course most Iranian experts promote...and Lugar promotes. And Breszinski.... If you disagree, and you think Obama caling the Mullahs a new Axis of Evil or some such would have helped matters, please explain how things would be different today from a week ago. I'm ready to debate you...and I won't even call you 'stupid'. Let's go....

To: PROLIFE who wrote (14055)	6/22/2009 12:57:49 PM
From: pompsander	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 103300

Republicans Tone Down Criticism of Obama Over Iran Mark Drajem And Hans Nichols – Mon Jun 22, 4:44 am ET June 22 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama won a respite from domestic criticism of his response to the crisis in Iran, as Republican lawmakers welcomed his call on the regime to “stop all violent and unjust actions” against anti-government protesters. Senator John McCain of Arizona told CBS’s “Face the Nation” program yesterday that Obama’s June 20 remarks were “far stronger” than previous statements. “We will need to continue to send that message,” McCain said. Obama is “certainly moving in the right direction,” Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said on ABC’s “This Week” program. “I hope that we’ll hear more of this, because the young men and women taking to the streets in Tehran need our support.” Obama faces a dilemma as he formulates his response to the violence in Iran: showing support for anti-government protesters risks provoking an even harsher crackdown by the regime, while remaining silent exposes him to domestic political criticism. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad blamed the U.S., which hasn’t had diplomatic relations with Iran since 1980, and the U.K. for inciting the protests. The two countries have led international efforts to urge Iran to halt its nuclear program. “By making hasty comments, you will not have a place in the circle of the Iranian nation’s friends,” Ahmadinejad said, according to Agence France-Presse. “Therefore, I recommend you correct your interfering positions.” Protesters Killed Hundreds of thousands of Iranians have opposed the re- election of Ahmadinejad as president, engaging in the largest demonstrations since the Islamic Revolution that ousted the shah in 1979. At least 10 protesters were killed during clashes with Iranian police two days ago. The government says at least 17 people have died during demonstrations lasting more than a week. “The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching,” Obama said in his statement. “We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost. We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people.” Asked about Obama’s handling of the situation, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said yesterday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he wouldn’t “second-guess the president of the United States.” Netanyahu praised the “incredible courage” of the Iranian protesters. Khamenei’s Warning The House of Representatives and the Senate voted on June 19 for a resolution condemning violence directed at supporters of former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, who the protesters say was the rightful winner of the June 12 election. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned that the demonstrations must end. Ahmadinejad’s warnings against U.S. interference have some lawmakers worried. “The question is: Should the United States take ownership of this revolution?” Connecticut Democrat Christopher Dodd said on ABC. “I think we do great damage to the effort if it appears this is a U.S.-led effort.” Both McCain and Graham say Obama should be speaking out about Iran. “Now, I’m not for sending arms, I’m not for fomenting violence,” McCain said on CBS. “But we are saying we’re on their side as they seek freedom.” Other lawmakers are seeking more tangible actions. House Republican leader John Boehner called on the administration to block Iran’s imports of refined oil products. ‘Strong Action’ Obama needs “to take real, strong action, make it clear he’s not going to sit down with the Iranians until they begin to treat their people respectfully and that they’re willing to stop their nuclear programs,” Boehner said last week in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital With Al Hunt.” Sanctions are something the administration has been looking at, though not necessarily in reaction to recent political events, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said last week. While Iran is the second largest oil producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries after Saudi Arabia, its refineries currently are unable to keep up with demand for gasoline, according the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The congressional resolution condemning the crackdown on Iranian protesters passed the House 405-1, with Texas Republican Ron Paul casting the sole opposing vote, and later was approved by the Senate unanimously. Gibbs said the administration welcomed the resolution, which he said was “very consistent” with the president’s statements. ‘Political Foils’ Some leaders in Iran “would love” to draw the U.S. into the country’s internal politics as a way to increase their own support, Gibbs said last week. “The president has said we’re not going to be used as political foils and political footballs.” Democratic Representative Howard Berman of California, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the U.S. has an obligation to promote “human freedom around the world, and it is in that context that I know that this House and this administration are pursuing this mission.” Obama and his aides have repeatedly said the political upheaval in Iran won’t halt U.S. attempts to engage the Persian Gulf nation of 73 million people on the most pressing strategic issues: halting Iranian efforts to enrich uranium, which could be used in a nuclear weapon, and its support for terrorist groups. “Those are core interests not just to the United States, but, I think, to a peaceful world in general,” Obama said June 15. “We will continue to pursue a tough, direct dialogue between our two countries, and we’ll see where it takes us.”

To: PROLIFE who wrote (14055)	6/22/2009 1:27:18 PM
From: pompsander	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 103300

Want to debate? I agree with this guy... ______________________________ The neocon mind June 22, 2009, 12:23 pm Filed under: Conservatism, Iran Andrew Sullivan has a good letter from a reader explaining why it’s so infuriating to watch neocons, as stupid as ever, imagine that the events in Iran somehow vindicate their position, when in fact the opposite is true. Of course, the opposite is always true: everything is always constantly refuting neoconservatism, much as everything is always constantly refuting Aristotelian mechanics, Maoist economics, and various other completely wrong doctrines. I just wanted to note that for me, the kernel of untruth that replicates into a totality of error in neoconservative thought is the…well, actually, there are two kernels. I was about to write that the kernel was the identification of “America” with “freedom”, such that anyone who loves freedom, which is everyone, must ipso facto love America. Hence everyone loves America, and anyone who doesn’t love America is some kind of abomination inimical to the universe, and must be destroyed. But in fact there’s a deeper kernel to the neocon mind, and that is an inability to cope with the ambiguity of information; or, to say the same thing, the ambiguity of reality; or, to say the same thing, the multiplicity of human subjectivity. The neocon mind is binary: Saddam either does or does not have WMD. If he has WMD, we must invade. The Iranian people either do or do not support their government. If they do not, then they will welcome American efforts to overthrow it. Neocons find it difficult to handle the discounting one must apply to large quantities of complex information drawn from different sources in order to come to a reasonable conclusion. They don’t work with a good theory of mind that allows for comparing unreliable info (from Curveball, say) to reliable info (from Hans Blix, say). And because they don’t recognize the ambiguity of the underlying info, they have no room for accepting the fact that different people have different perceptions of that info, and that actions have to adjust to the reality of varying perceptions. They can’t accept that some people, say, might believe with justification that the US is not altruistic and freedom-seeking; people like that, they think, are simply wrong, so we don’t need to pay attention to them. They live in a world of Newtonian ballistics, where the state of the world is exact and knowable, where bad guys are bad in the way that an 8-ball is black, and a given bankshot either will or will not sink it in the corner pocket. And so the solutions they apply to the world’s problems tend to be ballistic, as well. So far, they have a success rate of 0.0%. That’s a piece of hard data which even a neocon ought to be able to process; but for some reason they never do. mattsteinglass.wordpress.com