On Tuesday, Karl Rove and Bill Kristol debated journalists Simon Jenkins and Jacob Wiesberg at an event sponsored by BBC. The debate was whether “President Bush is the worst president of the last 50 years“; Jenkins and Weisberg argued in favor of the resolution, while Rove and Kristol argued against it.

At one point, Weisberg said that the Bush administration had never convinced the world that it had “not taken out Muslims as a particular group.” Kristol and Rove literally laughed at the idea that the United States had targeted and arrested American Muslims as part of its “war on terror” effort:

KRISTOL: What have we done to Muslims in America? What has happened?

JENKINS: Arrested them.

KRISTOL: We’ve arrested Muslims in America? [LAUGHTER]

JENKINS: Incarcerated them without trial.

KRISTOL: We’ve incarcerated Muslims in America without trial?

ROVE: Rounded them up? Rounded, rounded them up? Name one?

KRISTOL: Nonsense.

ROVE: Name one instance.

JENKINS: The, [UNCLEAR] belabor me all day with lists of people who have vanished. Vanished.

ROVE: You know-

KRISTOL: Well, that-

ROVE: This is on the border of lunacy, with all due respect.

JENKINS: But you didn’t need to do it, you didn’t need to do it-

ROVE: We didn’t do it!

Posting the exchange — to highlight what he saw as Jenkins’ idiocy — on Contentions, Abe Greenwald dismissed Jenkins’ claims as “therapeutic mythologies” that were part of “Bush-villification.” “With their vanishing Muslims, torture chambers, and evil corporate overlords, Bush haters are better suited to the Dungeons and Dragons, sci-fi convention circuit than to the political sphere,” Greenwald wrote.

The specific targeting of Muslims in America is hardly a myth: Read more

Earlier this week, Pastor Rick Warren presented President Bush with the first International Medal of PEACE from the Global PEACE Coalition for his work on the global HIV/AIDS crisis. During the award ceremony, Warren ignored the obvious irony of presenting a man who started two wars with a peace award. Last night on Fox’s Hannity and Colmes, however, co-host Alan Colmes asked Warren to comment on that irony. Warren explained simply that Bush’s “peace award as not about peace”:

COLMES: But to give a peace award to a guy who started two wars…neither of which are completed yet. [...]

WARREN: Well, the Peace Award was not about peace in domestic — or foreign policy.

Sean Hannity, in contrast, failed to see anything wrong with presenting a peace award to Bush. Rather, Hannity suggested that Bush was promoting peace by attempting to “defeat evil.” Watch it:

According to a press release from the organization, however, the award was given in recognition of an “outstanding contribution toward alleviating the five global giants recognized by the Coalition including pandemic diseases, extreme poverty, illiteracy, self-centered leadership and spiritual emptiness.” The Coalition introduced its “P.E.A.C.E. plan” as a means to reduce the five “global giants.” The first tenet of that plan is to “promote reconciliation,” which cites the problem of international “war” and “conflict” specifically:

As Colmes acknowledged, Bush’s attention to the global HIV/AIDS crisis is admirable, but to ignore his obvious disruptions of international peace and security diminishes the efforts of the Global PEACE Coalition.

Appearing on Fox’s Hannity and Colmes last night to promote his new book, Pastor Rick Warren made a brief foray into foreign policy. Responding to Hannity’s assertion that “we need to take him [Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad] out,” Warren agreed, saying that stopping evil “is the legitimate role of government. The Bible says that God puts government on earth to punish evildoers.”

Watch it:

Does Warren really consider it part of his ministry to sanctify the inch-deep theologizing-cum-warmongering of thugs like Sean Hannity? If so, who else does Warren think Jesus would bomb?

I contacted Pastor Warren’s office for clarification, specifically to find out where, exactly, the Bible says that “God puts government on earth to punish evildoers” like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. They said they’d get back to me. I’ll update if and when they do. I suspect Warren was referring to Romans 13, in which the Apostle Paul admonished Christians to submit to governing authorities (Hear that Hannity? Submit!), and also addressed the power of civil government to punish criminals. This has nothing to do, as far as I know, with invading foreign countries and killing their leaders, which is the context in which Warren is speaking.

In any case, if this were a conversation between an Iranian TV host and an ayatollah in which they discussed scriptural justifications for “taking out” high ranking members of the U.S. government, you’d probably see Sean Hannity running the clip on his show — while slowly shaking his head in pious disapproval — as evidence of what crazy extremists those Iranians are. As it is, they’ll probably be running this on Iranian TV as evidence of what crazy extremists those Americans are. Read more

Our guest blogger is Peter Juul, a research associate at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

In a recent Brookings Institution report on Middle East strategy for the new administration, editors Richard Haass and Martin Indyk propose extending a nuclear guarantee to Israel in order to buy that country’s acquiescence for a lengthy period of engagement with Iran to bring Tehran’s nuclear program under international control. Along with Haass and Indyk, Bruce Reidel and Gary Samore, authors of the report’s chapter on non-proliferation, posit that Israel cannot abide by a nuclear Iran despite having adequate deterrent forces. Setting aside this debatable assumption about Israel’s own internal foreign and nuclear policy debate, there is little rational reason to believe that a U.S. nuclear guarantee would prove more reassuring to Israel than its own nuclear deterrent.

The United States has extended nuclear deterrent guarantees to other states — most notably NATO members and Japan — but these commitments existed in most cases to discourage allies from developing their own nuclear weapons programs. This is hardly the case with Israel, which it has its own highly developed, if undeclared, nuclear weapons program. A United States nuclear deterrent guarantee to Israel would be irrelevant to Israel’s overall strategic situation, and would likely have negative political repercussions for the United States in the region.

Israel’s nuclear deterrent is shrouded in secrecy, but it is estimated to have between 100 and 200 nuclear warheads. Like the United States, Israel’s nuclear delivery forces are structured to form a “triad” of air, land, and sea-based systems. Israel’s long-range F-15I and F-16I strike aircraft are believed to be nuclear capable, and have the range to reach targets in Iran without refueling. More central to Israel’s nuclear forces are its Jericho-series of ballistic missiles. Israel is estimated to have between 50 and 100 Jericho II missiles with a range between 1,500 kilometers and 3,000 kilometers, and in January tested a new 4,000 kilometer-range missile. This new missile puts all of Iran in Israel’s nuclear reach. Finally, Israel’s three Dolphin-class submarines are reportedly capable of firing Harpoon missiles modified to carry nuclear warheads, and in 2000 Israel reportedly tested a 1,500 kilometer range cruise missile from one of its submarines. Two more submarines are on order from Germany. Israel therefore has a mature nuclear deterrent likely capable of launching a second strike against adversaries.

Iran, on the other hand, is not believed to possess nuclear weapons at this time and has very limited options for delivering a bomb. Its current long-range missile systems (the Shahab-3 family) have ranges comparable to Israel’s solid-fuel Jericho system, but are liquid-fueled and require greater time to launch. Tehran recently claimed to have developed a solid-fuel missile with a 1,900 kilometer range, but questions remain as to exactly what kind of missile was actually launched. Even if Iran does develop nuclear weapons, its ballistic missile force remains relatively undeveloped, and Iran will likely not have a second strike capability similar to Israel’s for several years. In addition, there are reports that Ukrainian smugglers transferred nuclear-capable cruise missiles to Iran. Read more