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Bill Clinton Against Iran Attack
Bill Clinton advocated a diplomatic resolution of the nuclear impasse with Iran and criticized the military option touted by the Bush Administration:
Former President Bill Clinton said Friday sanctions against Iran were working better than people think and questioned whether a military strike would work to end its nuclear program. He argued that two-thirds of Iran’s population wants a moderate government and that sanctions could have some influence on the nation’s powerful clerics.
“We may not have to go to war, and we may not have a disaster,” he told about 9,000 gathered at Kansas State University. “You need to talk to everybody before you bomb them. In other words, if you’re going to fight with somebody - I don’t care what you don’t have in common - you should talk first…
`We should be talking to the Iranians,” Clinton said. “Attacking them is a whole different kettle of fish.””
Clinton delivered the Alf Landon lecture at Kansas State University (audio or video here).
One wonders, of course, why Hillary Clinton couldn’t have said the same thing when she spoke before AIPAC and rattled the sabers of war, throwing in diplomatic discourse with Iran as an afterthought:
“I have advocated engagement with our enemies and Israel’s enemies because I want to understand better what we can do to defeat those who are aiming their hatred, their extremism and their weapons at us,” Clinton told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee dinner in New York…”I also want to send a message — if we ever do have to take more drastic action — to the rest of the world that we exhausted all possibilities because we need friends and allies to stand with us as we stand with Israel in this long war against terrorism and extremism,”
Couldn’t have been that she was pandering to her audience’s anti-Iranian prejudices, could it?
Madison Guy said:
Note to President Bush about the Iran puzzle: Still trying to figure out what happened to the good old days when the Shah sat on the Peacock Throne and the SAVAK kept him there? Wondering how to get rid of the mullahs and their alleged nuclear whatnots, and bring back the Peacock Throne instead? You don’t really need covert ops, aircraft carriers, cruise missiles and nuclear bunker busters. Just play with a peacock jigsaw puzzle. It’s fun and challenging, the puzzles are readily available and you don’t have to kill anyone. Just take the pieces one at a time and play around with them until you can make them fit. Here’s a partially completed one to get you started Don’t those eyespots look pretty?
Dieter said:
Sorry folks, Obama said the same as Hillary. Why did you forget to mention that?
Richard Silverstein said:
Boy, do you see things only in black & white. The only thing the two have in common is that Obama believes in not entirely ruling out a military option. For Hillary, as the passage I quoted makes clear, she sees a military option as a first resort or perhaps a close second. I am firmly convinced that Obama would NEVER use military force against Iran.