Covering Hillary Clinton’s trip to India, USA Today‘s Richard Wolf writes (5/8/12):
Fielding rapid-fire questions at a town-hall-style event in Kolkata, she denounced Iran’s nuclear arms program and urged India to reduce its Iranian oil imports further.
“We appreciate what has been done, and of course we want to keep the pressure on Iran,” she said.
When I read that I thought, “Here we go again, another outlet misstating the basic facts about the Iran debate.”
Then I checked the transcript of the Clinton’s town hall, and that is indeed what she said, in response to a question about U.S. pressuring India to stop buying oil from Iran:
That’s a very good question, and let me give you a little context for that question. When President Obama took over in 2009, we knew Iran’s continuing development of a nuclear weapons program would be very destabilizing in the region, because there would be an arms race with the nations in the region who have pre-existing enmity between themselves and Iran. And it would also cause a great threat to Israel.
USA Today should have noted that there is no evidence that Iran has any nuclear weapons program at all–as U.S. intelligence and the Pentagon secretary have acknowledged. That’s what newspapers should do when politicians mislead. Instead, the paper puts this headline over the piece: “Clinton Wraps Asia Trip with Tough Talk on Iran.”
“Tough talk” is a weak way to describe a government official’s misrepresentation of the facts.
I totally agree. Americans must wake up and sift through the skewed material we are given in the 1% – friendly media.
Iran’s continuing development of mutant sharks with lasers on their heads would be very destabilizing in the region too.
The US should be sanctioning and threatening to attack Israel and itself instead of Iran because of its collaboration with Israel’s development of its illegal nuclear weapons program:
http://www.irmep.org/ila/numec/
http://www.vanunu.com/uscampaign/index.html
While our Military Cemeteries continue to fill, the V.A. Hospital I go to because of a much earlier Lie Based War is now filling with mangled, burned , and traumatized Young G.I.s from THESE Lie Based Wars.
To be blunt, Clinton, like the Rest of her AIPAC Hirelings are LIARS!
Americans have made it clear that they neither want nor believe in the urgency of distant Wars hawked by traitorous hirelings whose sons and daughters will NEVER be in harm’s way.
The Real Fight for “Liberation” and “Democracy” is HERE!
Thanks
The big lie must be kept up, since there’s always another round of sanctions to justify.
@hass: You’re misinformed. Iran has no program developing mutant sharks with lasers on their heads. I believe they are developing mutant sharks with Frickin’ lasers on their heads. Get your facts straight. At any rate, your (hilarious) point stands: hypotheticals are terrifying.
People must understand the fact that they were fooled… the lie must be kept in order to continue the awful US global policy.
From Viet Nam to national amnesia to Iraq to NAFTA, then back to Iraq and on to more U.S. job-killing free trade schemes (like the Trans-Pacific Partnership FTA the President is pushing) we’re being jobbed…make that de-jobbed. Neoliberalism is rearing its ugly head all around the world. “Austerity” is its password. Simply stated that means inadequate funding for people-helping programs, and more money for the 1%. Now the sabers are being rattled againsty Iran. War, you see, is the neoliberal weapon of choice. It means larger profits for foreign and domestic war profiteers, and while they are counting their dough a couple of million of the pesky “great unwashed” class can be offed in the name of patriotism. Gray, you’re on the beam!
She lied about Iraq and she lies now. Haven’t we learned anything from the total big lies of Mme. Clinton. A lie is a lie is a lie.
The irony in all of this is that Israel, India and the US all have nuclear weapons, not Iran.
If it is the US that wants to have the Indian oil purchases from Iran stopped then,
maybe the US should replace India’s Iranian oil purchases with US oil. Or better yet send them refined product from the US. I’m sure the US politicians would willingly tell everyone here they need to cut back on oil use in order to put pressure on the Iranians to stop doing what the U.S. has been doing for decades even if the Iranians aren’t doing it.
To put together some of the points made above by Bill and others:
Sec. Clinton et al. talk about the nuclear weapons program of disfavored government which seems to all evidence not to have one, and do not talk about the nuclear weapons programs and nuclear weapons of the favored governments which do have them.
It’s attractive to consider the officials’ transparently false accusations against “the other” and silence about the self to be co-elements of their effort to distract themselves and others from the situation they do not want to face constructively (yet do want to exploit) that it is the governments with which they identify which are the larger and more active threats.
When Hillary was running against Obama and she was asked about Iran I will never forget her response, “We will obliterate Iran”. Strong word, obliterate. She has more testosterone than Bull O’Conner. She gives me shivers.
Just reading Rachel Maddow’s “Drift.” Thesis: every president “needs” a war. Why? Our crazy population really digs it. Like all bullies, fightin’ makes ’em feel strong and we do want to be strong, don’t we? Especially in an election year. Until war goes out and people learn to enjoy peace, we will have war, continue to increase nuclear weapons, and wring our hands about the coming lack of oil while the 1% laughs all the way to the bank – off shore, of course. I think Freud would call this a death wish. Some folks seem to think that’s OK too. After all, it’s a prophecy. Nothing like basing foreign policy on myth, which is how we’ve begun to describe Iran – the mythic enemy of the day. For Johnson it was the Chinese via Nam, for Reagan the USSR (including that henious Cuban menace); for Bush and Bush, Iraq; for AIPAC, IRAN and everyone else in the Middle East save Israel. And why are we building bases in the Pacific Rim? Maybe just in case Iran turns out to be yet another paper tiger? China looms.
According to Johan Galtung of Transcend the USA will loose their place as the hegemonic power in 2030. Let’s hope that then the US president will turn to care about the American people instead of just want to be the world sheriff as had been up to now. The world can take care of itself, and does need the US supervising. It is a pity that US world prestige is so low due to people like a Bush and a Hillary Clinton.
And I also regret that Obama’s speech in receiving the Peace Nobel Price talked about “just war”, and the word Peace was employed only a few times.
I think that when I listen to our leaders(even though they be lib- Dems), I hear Iran put into a certain context.That of a country ruled by a leadership that is a dander to us.To Israel.And to the world.Now i hear that from our military.Head of the CIA.Our secretary of state AND our president.!!!Ditto the last couple administrations.Then I open up FAIR and I hear that they are all full of shit,and in fact Iran may be a good change of plans from Disney World for the Goldstein family from Berkolt Iowa.Fair’s information conduits I am not sure are good enough to build a national policy over.I will stick with those who are linked into top level Intelligence briefings.
michael e –
Yup, that sure worked for us in Iraq, didn’t it. Did they finally find those WMDs that every “authority” that you mentioned warned us about? Oh yeah, now I remember, Bush said there had been a mistake. Then he made some asinine joke.
Me? I have more faith in FAIR. FAIR has no ax to grind, or war profiteers to coddle.
“… because there would be an arms race with the nations in the region who have pre-existing enmity between themselves and Iran. And it would also cause a great threat to Israel.”
Ah, I see – there’s no pre-existing enmity between Israel and Iran, s0 she needed a whole different reason to cover them off. The US goes to extraordinary lengths to excuse the behaviour of their bratty little adopted child.
Rich those on the left try to paint the entire Iraq war as WMDs.Now as that was the main public face to the war i can understand you using that as a talking point.But we all know that was only a small part of the resumption of that war.After 911 Saddam had flaunted all 17 caveats of his surrender document(any one of which should of led to a resumption of the first gulf war).He threw out inspectors and played a game of deception over his programs.Keeping the world guessing over his WMDs.This at a time when Bush had zero patience for such things.Bush demanded an end to it, and Saddam flipped him the finger.On his deathbed Saddam said he would of re armed in any way he saw fit.He would never allow inspectors to dictate to him what type of weaponry he could have.Till his dying breath he was still the tyrant.Still the lion of Judea.Still the maniac,mass murdering killer.A threat to everyone.He is not missed.Iraq has a chance at freedom.Damn that Bush right?
michael e –
“Those on the left”? Is that what folks like you think about those of us with facts? Well gee, thanks. That’s awfully nice of you.
“…Bush had zero patience…”? Oh boo-hoo. And do you think that justifies starting $4 trillion wars that have taken the lives of thousands of US and Iraqi people, displaced 10% of that population, and placed the US economy in a tailspin while helping millionaire arms profiteers become billionaires? Look, he and others lied to us. After they were exposed they had to find new reasons for shooting 800 Cruise Missiles on Iraq in the first 48 hours of the attack. They came up with more new “reasons” than Aesop had fables.
Michele, you’re entitled to your own opinion, just not your own facts. Ah, but you already know that don’t you?
Your rendition of UN weapons inspectors does not jibe with Scott Ritter’s version of what happened. Hmm, now let me think of why that could be….oh, I got it! He was one and he was there and you weren’t. He got his information first hand and you got yours from…FOX? (Just asking.)
The [unabridged] transcript of Hussein’s final moments does not support your statement about what he said on his “death bed”. Oh, and may I remind you that he was hung? There was no death bed.
Please re-read the third paragraph prior to responding. Facts are so easy to find. You do yourself and others a disservice by repeating fables created by neoconservative/neoliberal warmongers.
colin powell’s forthcoming book says that there was no serious discussion about going to war with iraq. just how to wage the war.
http://www.dailypaul.com/232263/colin-powells-new-book-no
it notes “The National Security Council never met to discuss the decision.”
————-
The Downing Street Memos, published in 2005 said, “[m]ilitary action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”
In 2010, the National Security Archives provided an analysis that said, “In contrast to an extensive record of planning for actual military operations, there is no record that President George W. Bush ever made a considered decision for war. All of the numerous White House and Pentagon meetings concerned moving the project forward, not whether a march into conflict was a proper course for the United States and its allies. Deliberations were instrumental to furthering the war project, not considerations of the basic course.”
In a 2007 memoir from George Tenet, the former CIA Director, he admitted that there was not much discussion about the war before it was launched. “There was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat,” he wrote. “And nor was there ever a significant discussion.”
The nations of the West lost any moral credibility on nuclear proliferation issues for all time when they rushed down to South Africa to snatch the nuclear weapons (weapons which they vehemently denied even existed) before Blacks assumed political power. Apparently, in the view of White Western “leaders,” even pathologically racist White societies with long histories of massive human rights violations are more deserving and more trustworthy when it comes to controlling weapons of mass destruction than are Black ones, even those which preach racial reconciliation. Until Whites/Europeans put as much effort into dealing with THEIR addictions to war and to developing and stockpiling weapons of mass destruction as they do when it comes to trying to keep others powerless and open to THEIR attacks, non-proliferation as they define it, is a sick joke.
Thanks for that, Woodward. I remember when Dubya met with reporters about three months after he started the Iraq war (in Philadelphia, if memory serves). Already, by this point, it was clear that the prime rationale for war, the “weapons of mass destruction,” had gone missing. Where were they? According to the administration, they would be found quickly once our boys had hit the ground there. A reporter asked Bush why there were, so far, no weapons found yet. His answer was astonishing. “We might never find any weapons (of mass destruction),” Bush said. The tone of his voice spoke directly to the lie that had been proffered about the weopons as rationale for war; his administration always knew there were no weapons; as Paul Wolfowitz put it, “the weapons were something (i.e., the rationale for a war already decided upon) we (the war hawks in the administration) could all agree upon.” (Agree upon as the lie they would run with.) To come back later and say, well, the weapons were only one in a long list of reasons we went to war is a Goddamn lie and a weaselly way to get around one’s implication in war crimes. Not surprisingly, the troll Michael e. above repeats what another world-class weasel, liar, and war-monger, Joe Lieberman, said on the Ed Schultz show a few years ago.
P.S.: You are absolutely wasting your time pointing out michael e.’s lies to him, Rich A. He’s going to ignore you and simply double down. He’s not interested in facts, or logic, or anything remotely resembling the truth. Not once, ever, at this blog, has he ever backed up any of his ravings. Never! I’m sure he doesn’t intend to–by this point it’s crystal clear that he’s incapable of doing so because he simply can’t. For whatever treason. (That most of what he says is, at best, very ill-informed, and at worst, a series of ill-considered lies very well may be why). I don’t give a shit why he can’t–he just can’t, and he’s not going away, so you either can ignore him or try to engage him. Good luck with the latter, mate.
Actually if Iran did become a nuclear state like Israel it would stabilize the region because it is Israel that has been destabilizing the region for years since its US aided ascension to the ranks of a Nuclear Power. So one way to stabilize the region is to defang Israel of its nukes.
Another would be to stop bullying Iran with lies to promote war. Right now the sanctions are the weapons used. Later it could be bombs and missiles.
The US and UK weakened Iraq with sanctions for 10 years while bombing it sporadically before they finally attacked in 2003. This was a plan that started with Bush I, intensified by Clinton and culminated by Bush II.
Night-Gaunt was the only one who dared say that Iran should have nuclear weapons. I believe that no country should have nuclear weapons as well as nuclear energy due to their inherent threat to the environment.
But if Israel and the US, who are and rightfully considered by people of the world to be rogue nations, are allowed to have nuclear weapons, then should all other nations including Iran. Everything else is an excuse for the real reason for attacking Iran: Imperial dominion over the region.
Before anyone begins another war they should come clean as to why. We all know by now that Dick Cheney was the most thorough and consistent war monger in the group of neo-con, Bushes and perhaps, even Clinton. He’d been hanging around the White House since the Ford Administration (and maybe Nixon too) beating the drums of war and, along with Meece, his fancy notion of a “unitary” Presidency. (Think an I can do anythings I want President – Congress can go _ _ _ _ thenselves) He was especially fond of war since his buddies at Brown and Root (think Haliburton) were aching to get contracts for services. They managed to do so with amazing speed with a little help from their friends in Congress. Why should we have a draft or even a larger military when we can hire outside the armed services and get plumbers, builders, cooks, etc. “cheaper.” (And don’t forget about how helpful it’s been to the Bosnians and Iraqis to have their daughters be paid for sex by these civilian workers. Just a nice aside.) Well, cheaper on pay per man but somehow the cost overruns came up to a third or half more thus enhancing CEO, etc. pay. Cheney smiled all the way to the bank. (Plywood: $14 grew to $87 by the time it reached Bosnia.)
Read Maddow’s book (DRIFT). Very interesting what came along with the “unitary” president. It’s time we made some changes in Washington and began to honor the Constitution once more.
I guess what still surprises me is what passes for facts on the liberal side.In studying WW2 we do not ignore the historical data as it relates to Hitler or Stalin or Tojo Or Churchill Or Rsvlt. We actually read (not ignore the memoirs of Eisenhower,Montgomery and so on.We don’t just call them all liars and rely on 23 year old investigative journalist Bobby Bingumton Buzzcock from the daily onion to sift through the story ,picking what he needs for his ax( that he grinds oh so well)to tell us what really happened.How about quoting Bush, and British prime minister…..Saddam and all the other key players.Instead you rely totally on facts from the gulf war”redux” crowd.Hmmmm Bush or Blair……Condoleezza or Rolling stone.Who knows more about what really happened?I pick Rolling stone.Make sure they ignore what all those loosers I just mentioned say about the war.So Iraq was better off under saddam .Ok thats your opinion.So we are worse off with him dead.Your opinion again.So yes he ignored his surrender document and we should always ignore someone who ignores the surrender document they signed with us.Your opinion again.Wonder how that would of gone down with Germany or japan?What it cost us in money is open to speculation.There are those who would say we will come out on top and that was the REAL reason for the war.One thing is for damn sure.Americans died.They died to secure freedom and security for us and for others as has so often happened in the past.Was it for naught?Was it wrong to even attempt it?That is truly above all our pay grades.History will see to it.
One last thought.The revolutionary war,the civil war,ww1 and 2…korea and Vietnam as well as the gulf wars were replete with failed intel.We must strive to do better using every means at our disposal(something the left blocks while complaining about the outcome, having it as we like to say “both ways”)like drones spy aircraft ect.We must admit those failings and fix the problem
Michael, here’s a quote from René Descartes:
You think like an imperialist, therefore you are an imperialist!
Freespirit
The Russians during the cold war often said the US striving to spread freedom/Democracy to the whole world was in fact imperialism.After the fall of the Soviet Union and the release of documents we found the Russians knew this was a lie and in fact a ruse to keep the debate off balance.Drag it into a place where all morality and understanding of the term was relative.The liberal s today continue in that tradition.You see You can not free the slaves in the civil war and call it an imperialist move (to set up a new structure more conducive to the victorious power)You can not free Iraqis and call it an imperialistic move as if it was done for the sake of nefarious reasons.You can not free Germans from Hitler and call it an imperialistic move because it benefited us and the world(as well as the Germans.)This a corruption of the term in the extreme.
Descartes is the lefts mascot.Science and math explains all.Religion is shite
Michael, look up the meaning of imperialism then learn how to introspect. That is the very component of character that is missing in imperialists: introspection. Sit quiet for a few minutes a day and really question all your deeply held beliefs such as America #1 and other such bullshit.
Freespirit…..
America moves like an elephant in a room of eggs.We make a dent beyond any design.But……. Do we admit freely that we want to spread freedom and democracy to everyone?Yes we do.Are we arrogant in that hope?Undoubtably! Does it benefit our national interest?Absolutely!Do we believe that Democracies work well together and seldom attack each other?We do.Must we of need be be the head honcho in this general set up?Umm I look to Canada to see if that rings true.Our nearest neighbor with not a gun pointed at each other.I simply don’t see imperialist design there in what would be the closest example of our greater designs.Have we moved to crush our problematic neighbor to the south?Hope not…..i will be vacationing there in a couple weeks.Beautiful land with amazing people and unlimited potential by the way….Im sure you can point to countries we hope to invade,conquer,and subjugate.To permanently annex into the United States of the world.Im hoping for Aruba(they don’t seem that tough)All joking aside i think you need to look at what we offer the world, not as imperialistic rape of that world- for our sole benefit.That story is warped.I hear libs talk in that fashion.I simply don’t agree with it.