SOTU: Bush Approach to Iran Has Weakened U.S. Position
SOTU: Bush Approach to Iran Has Weakened U.S. Position
Bush said: “The Iranian government is defying the world with its nuclear ambitions – and the nations of the world must not permit the Iranian regime to gain nuclear weapons. America will continue to rally the world to confront these threats.”
FACT — BUSH MIDDLE EAST POLICY HAS WEAKENED OUR HAND: By invading Iraq without enough troops and without a plan for stabilizing the country, the administration allowed an historic expansion of Iranian influence westward into Iraq, even as the country’s new leadership has drifted further towards radicalism and rabid anti-Semitism. The Bush administration substituted a policy of dual containment (of Iran and Iraq) for something more dangerous: a single-minded focus on Iraq that has hampered our efforts to fight global terrorism and strengthened Iran’s influence.
FACT — BUSH OPPOSITION TO NEGOTIATIONS WEAKENED OUR HAND: The Bush administration dismissed three separate invitations to open back-channel communications with Iran’s government under the more moderate President Khatami. It refused to participate directly in the talks involving Britain, France, and Germany, despite warnings from diplomats and the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) that the talks were likely to fail without U.S. involvement. Instead of being an active player, the Bush administration sat on the sidelines and ceded leadership to others. As Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) stated last November, “The United States is capable of engaging Iran in direct dialogue without sacrificing any of its interests or objectives.”
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5 Responses to “SOTU: Bush Approach to Iran Has Weakened U.S. Position”
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Great job keeping up with all this - wonderful rebuttal points.
January 31st, 2006 at 9:28 pmNuk-u-ler. Arrrghh!
January 31st, 2006 at 9:28 pmBush said: “The Iranian government is defying the world with its nuclear ambitions – and the nations of the world must not permit the Iranian regime to gain nuclear weapons. America will continue to rally the world to confront these threats.â€
You seem to take Bush’s false claims at face value, and then lament that Bush hasn’t dealt with this ‘threat’ effectively. As a matter of fact, Iran is in full compliance with the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty which it signed, and has done nothing illegal, unlike its neighbors Pakistan and Israel, and those regimes receive no notice. There is no threat. Iran is fully justified in building a nuclear power capability–it’s completely legal. Its oil won’t last forever, and they’d rather sell it at a high price then consume it. That’s their right under the NNP Treaty. And even if they were seeking a bomb, who can blame them? We wouldn’t be threatening them if they had the bomb, just like we leave North Korea alone because they have the bomb.
You sound like Hillary (ugh). ‘The US is outsourcing the Iran threat.’ the Bush administration sat on the sidelines and ceded leadership to others.In fact, Bush and Rice have been pulling all the strings to line up opposition to Iran, thus laying the familiar WMD groundwork for military aggression.
BUSH OPPOSITION TO NEGOTIATIONS What’s to negotiate? Again, Iran is in full compliance with international law. Why should they negotiate that away? Huh? Why Iran? Why not Pakistan? Oh yeah, why not the U.S. and its war criminal president, whom TP quotes at face value? Now if Iran took us to the United Nations, that would be justice.
Oh, while we’re at it, TP’s comments that invading Iraq was just dandy IF we had employed more troops and had a better plan By invading Iraq without enough troops and without a plan for stabilizing the country, is a new, and I hope not fully thought-out, endorsement of U.S. criminal behavior.
February 1st, 2006 at 12:51 amThe President failed to mention the U.S. aligned with Iran and several other of his “unfree” designees in a recent vote to deny Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual & Transgenedered non-governemntal organizations official U.N. status. We were aligned with Iran, Sudan, China, Cuba and Zimbabwe on that one!
http://hrw.org/ english/ docs/ 2006/ 01/ 25/ iran12535.htm
February 1st, 2006 at 11:47 am[…] In his previous writings and speeches, Defense Secretary nominee Robert Gates has been among the many national security experts who recognize there are no good military options for Iran. In the summer of 2004, Gates and former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski co-chaired a task force sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations that argued for opening a dialogue with Iran, a position Bush has so far rejected. […]
November 9th, 2006 at 12:32 pm