Does anyone really care what Dick Cheney thinks about anything?
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Biden on Cheney
October 30, 2009 By
Selective Treason
October 3, 2009 By
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From TPM…
• Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) is visiting Honduras in order to support the recent military coup against a leftist president, which has been opposed by the Obama administration and all the surrounding countries in the region. (Late Update: DeMint’s office says he is not taking sides during his visit to the current Honduran leadership, denying the New York Times reports that this was his intention.)
• Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) will be going to the upcoming climate change conference in Copenhagen, bringing a “Truth Squad” to tell foreign officials there that the American government will not take any action: “Now, I want to make sure that those attending the Copenhagen conference know what is really happening in the United States Senate.”
• House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) traveled to Israel, where he spoke out against President Obama’s opposition to expanded settlements. He also defended Israel on the eviction of two Arab families from a house in east Jerusalem, which had been criticized by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
• Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL) boasted in June that he told Chinese officials not to trust America’s budget numbers. “One of the messages I had — because we need to build trust and confidence in our number one creditor,” said Kirk, “is that the budget numbers that the US government had put forward should not be believed.” Since then, he has declared his candidacy for U.S. Senate.
As the DailyKos points out, if these were Democratic congressmen during the Bush administration, Repubs would be screaming “Treason!!!”
“…these Republicans aren’t only creating their own version of foreign policy, they are acting on it by traveling overeas and directly undermining official U.S. policy.”
“Here we have Republican members of Congress directly undermining American diplomacy. Where are the great patriots among the Republican party or in the punditocracy now?”
There is no end to their hypocrisy. It’s party first, country second.
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Iran Busted
September 25, 2009 By
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After years of denying they were preparing to build nuclear weapons, comes this:
President Obama and leaders of Britain and France accused Iran on Friday of building a secret underground plant to manufacture nuclear fuel, saying the country has hidden the covert operation from international weapons inspectors for years.
President Nicholas Sarkozy of France, appearing beside Mr. Obama, said that Iran had deadline of two months to comply with international demands or face increased sanctions.
“The level of deception by the Iranian government, and the scale of what we believe is the breach of international commitments, will shock and anger the entire international community,” Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain said, standing on the other side of Mr. Obama. “The international community has no choice today but to draw a line in the sand.”
American officials said that they had been tracking the covert project for years, but that Mr. Obama decided to make public the American findings after Iran discovered, in recent weeks, that Western intelligence agencies had breached the secrecy surrounding the project.
There’s no way for Iran to lie themselves out of this one, though of course they’ll try. Slowly but surely, President Obama’s foreign policy approach is paying dividends. By scrapping the missile defense plan in Eastern Europe which among other things, satisfied Russia, he’s weakened one of Iran’s few remaining allies’ ability to defend this rogue nation.
With this latest development combined with Iranians taking to the streets as part of the Green Revolution and Obama’s overture towards the Islamic world, Iran is finding itself further isolated from the world community.
The plot thickens.
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Bill Clinton Shows How It’s Done
August 4, 2009 By
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Bill Clinton got the job done in record time.
The North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, pardoned two jailed American journalists, the official KCNA news agency has reported, according to Reuters. The report came after former President Bill Clinton met with the reclusive and ailing Mr. Kim in Pyongyang on Tuesday.
Mr. Kim granted “a special pardon,” KCNA said in a statement. It was not clear how rapidly the two journalists, Laura Ling, 32, and Euna Lee, 36, might be allowed to leave the country. They were being held near Pyongyang after having been sentenced to 12 years at hard labor for entering North Korea illegally.
The pardon added to speculation among analysts in Seoul that North Korea, after months of raising tensions and hostile rhetoric towards Washington, may be ready to return to dialogue with Washington.
Imagine that. No chest pounding. No carry a big stick BS talk. No “do what we say or we’ll bomb the hell out of you” bluster. Just smart old-fashioned diplomacy by a respected former president. After eight years of rule by neocons, how refreshing to once again see what respect and dialog can do when given the chance. Can anyone imagine a George W. Bush being called in to anywhere in the world to temper down a dispute of any sort? Not in this lifetime…unless it was a chili cookoff dispute in Midland Texas.
The only question now is how soon the right-wing media spins this thing in claiming that Clinton made the US look weak.
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A Nuclear Iran
July 23, 2009 By
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Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s latest remarks on Iran are quite a departure from the US’s position of not allowing Iran to develop nuclear weapons. …
“We… have made it clear that we’ll take actions, as I’ve said time and time again, crippling action working to upgrade the defences of our partners in the region,” Clinton told Thai television.
“We want Iran to calculate what I think is a fair assessment: that if the United States extends a defence umbrella over the region, if we do even more to develop the military capacity of those (allies) in the Gulf, it is unlikely that Iran will be any stronger or safer because they won’t be able to intimidate and dominate as they apparently believe they can once they have a nuclear weapon.”
The response from Israel’s minister of intelligence…
“I was not thrilled to hear the American statement…that they will protect their allies with a nuclear umbrella, as if they have already come to terms with a nuclear Iran. I think that’s a mistake”
The take on this is that the US’s hope to deter Iran’s nuclear ambitions by way of diplomacy is wavering. If sanctions fail what are the alternatives to stop Iran from developing it’s nuclear arms? Israel’s the wild card here and while an Israeli first-strike is unlikely, it is not improbable.
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