In President Bush's press conference on Iran today, he said the turning point in recent U.S.-Iranian relations was the election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the summer of 2005. I beg to differ. Let's review Iranian actions up until that election. After 9/11, the Ayatollah condemned the attacks and candlelit vigils broke out in Tehran. After the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan toppled the Taliban government, American and Iranian diplomats met together in Bonn, with a handful of representatives from other UN members, to form a new government and constitution for Kabul. "None was more [helpful] than the Iranians," said James Dobbins, the American special envoy to Afghanistan at the time, writing in the Washington Post . "The original version of the Bonn agreement ... neglected to mention either democracy or the war on terrorism. It was the Iranian representative who spotted these omissions and successfully urged that the newly emerging Afghan government be required to commit to both."
Iran also cooperated with the United Nations to repatriate nearly one million Afghan refugees residing on its soil and--working with United States, Russia, and India--provided support to the Northern Alliance. As Flynt Leverett of the Brookings Institution told the Council on Foreign Relations, "I think at least some Iranian officials were hoping [this] could get leveraged into a broader strategic dialogue, but that channel was effectively foreclosed when President Bush in his 2002 State of the Union address labeled Iran as part of the 'Axis of Evil.'"
An overture from Iran for comprehensive bilateral talks, reportedly signed off at the highest levels of government, was offered to U.S. officials in May 2003 shortly after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Some experts say the proposal, conveyed via a Swiss emissary, amounted to a "grand bargain" that would have included offers of negotiations over Iran's support for terrorist organizations and recognizing Israel's right to exist. During recent congressional hearings, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she did not "remember ever seeing any such thing" as national security adviser, her position at the time of the overture. But former Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage recently told Newsweek that it appeared at the time that the Iranians "were trying to put too much on the table" for serious negotiations to occur.
In other words, contrary to President Bush's claim, the White House rebuffed Iran's advances pre-Ahmadinejad to let bygones be bygones and, like Libya, start a new relationship based on cooperation rather than conflict. The question is: Why? And did Bush's "axis of evil" speech and subsequent rebuff of Iranian hand maybe hasten the election of a hardliner like Ahmadinejad? We may never know. But interestingly, the following year, outgoing Secretary of State Colin Powell met with Iran's foreign minister, Kamal Kharrazi, in November at an international conference on Iraq at the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. Nothing of substance was reportedly discussed as Powell was seen by the Iranians as a lame duck with no real power. Yet Powell predicted then that normal U.S.-Iranian relations would be restored "in due course." Not so long as this administration continues to manipulate intelligence and fashion its foreign policy based on hyped-up predictions of a nuclear-armed Iran bent on terrorizing the rest of the world.
Though maybe Powell was onto something. Iran by no means is a saint but it has apparently reduced its supply of deadly roadside bombs to Shiite militias in Iraq and it does see itself as a cosmopolitan country that, according to the National Intelligence Estimate, responds to diplomatic pressure using a "cost-benefit" calculus, much like Libya, North Korea, or any state for that matter. Who knows? Maybe it's not too late for Tehran, like Tripoli, to forswear its nuclear aspirations and get on Washington's good graces. At least then we could move on to more pressing issues, like resolving the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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The Bush/Chene
When you hear a leader of a nation using such language it's easy to understand why Israel in particular would not want him to have control of a nuclear bomb. George W Bush is a proven liar and deceiver of the highest order, so what flows from his mouth cannot be trusted! However, Israel has a different take on Iran's nuclear ambitions, they are convinced that Iran is manufactur
This is as outrageous as it is irresponsi
For many reasons, war with Iran is not just a bad option, it would be a disaster. So I want to be crystal clear on this: if the President takes us to war with Iran without Congressio
The President'
Yesterday I gave a major address in Iowa outlining a plan to keep Iran from producing the material that could one day be used for a bomb -- without using force. I encourage you to take a few minutes to read that plan on my website:
http://www
The Bush administra
Fact is nukes are in general a defesive weapon with little use against a like armed adversary.
Seems that President George W. Bush the Younger and Adolf Hitler has been using Big Lies. Adolf Hilter used it for propaganda purposes. Our current President? I have no idea. Maybe to bend the truth to his own liking? Hope that our George will not become an Adolf Hitler in the near future.
Found this on Wikipedia under Big Lie:
Big Lie is a propaganda technique in which the lie is so complex that the public will either dismiss it as impossible or choose not to believe it out of willful ignorance.
It was defined by Adolf Hitler in his 1925 autobiogra
I do not want to start a war with Iran, unless it is blantanly obvious they are getting a nuke, but at the same time, do we take the Neville Chamberlai
Why fall into the same traps that the wimpocrats do?
Oh, when Bush lies, they call it "misstatem
BS - It's LYING.
nuclear weapon program in 2003] doesn't change his previously
("Don't confuse me with facts, my mind is made up!"). He himself certifies that he is, indeed
and in fact, clinically insane.
Claiming ignorance of such things is not a legally viable defense for fraud. And that's what she, and the rest of this pile of shit are guilty of (among thousands of other things), defrauding the American people out of trillions in tax dollars. Also, wiping their asses with the Constituti
Ms Lice should be in prison where she can do piano recitals for her fellow inmates.