Chuck Hagel chides Hillary

And now the Facts (0.00 / 0)

Here are the facts:
Hillary supports direct nuclear talks with Iran.  She believes the Bush adminstration was wrong to fail to enter into talks with Iran about its nuclear weapons program.  Hagel is (intentionally?) misrepresenting her statement that she would not agree, as president, to personally sit down with Iran's leaders without pre-conditions, that you don't know what the intentions of the Iranian leader may be (whether he would use a negotiation with the actual American president for propaganda purposes).

I'm a little surprised that Hagel would be that reckless with the facts. 

"When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on."  Franklin D. Roosevelt    

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by: Kathy Sullivan 2 @ Fri Nov 09, 2007 at 14:39:33 PM CST

Facts? Ha! n/t (0.00 / 0)

SGS is Jack Mitchell of Lowell, MA. The symbolism of the "sleeping giant" is based on my HOPE for America.

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by: Sleeping Giant Stirs @ Fri Nov 09, 2007 at 14:41:10 PM CST

[ Parent ]

The many sides of Hillary (4.00 / 1)

Gee, Kath. I don't know what Hagel's intentions are, but apparently he isn't misrepresenting any "facts".

It so cute when political operatives use words like facts, oh and trust. Ya trust, that kills me every time. LOL
Please, may I have another?

Mebbe when she tries to overcome her severe defecit with our friends on the other side of the aisle, she may ask Mitt to be her running mate.

That may give her a chance at defeating the presumptive GOP candidate - Rudy McThomabee.

SGS is Jack Mitchell of Lowell, MA. The symbolism of the "sleeping giant" is based on my HOPE for America.

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by: Sleeping Giant Stirs @ Fri Nov 09, 2007 at 15:28:26 PM CST

[ Parent ]

There you go again (0.00 / 0)

Hillary said that she supports direct talks; what she doesn't support (and that was the question at the debate) is saying that the president will sit down and talk to the leaders of Iran, etc. during the first year in office without preconditions. Voters understand that there is a big difference between committing to diplomacy, which she did, and saying sure, I as president personally will sit down and talk to the leader of a country which has been not just antagontisic to our country, but which has been helping to supply people killing American troops in Iraq.

Those are the facts; you may not like the facts, but they are what they are. 

"When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on."  Franklin D. Roosevelt    

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by: Kathy Sullivan 2 @ Fri Nov 09, 2007 at 16:28:31 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Fact. (0.00 / 0)

Nobody has to supply Iraqis with weapons.  The stockpiles of munitions and arms Saddam Hussein had amassed were never secured and are available to the Iraqi resistance to this day. 

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by: hannah @ Sat Nov 10, 2007 at 14:33:09 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Fact. (0.00 / 0)

History has shown Bush Two and Cheney to be liars.  History has shown that Saddam Hussein told the truth about the destruction of the weapons of mass destruction he'd acquired from the West.  History has shown that the IAEA is expert at assessing a nation's nuclear capabilities (wishes and dreams are another matter).  Iran has stated that it is not now producing weapons grade uranium and the IAEA has certified as much.
So, whom should we believe?

Everything would be hunky-dory if Iran agreed to purchase its nuclear fuel from the Russo-U.S. cartel and contract with the cartel for the re-processing of the waste.  In other words, the U.S. interest is in erecting a nuclear fuels cartel similar to the oil production and distribution cartel the oil barons used to enjoy.

If the U.S. were really serious about stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons, it would not only endorse the Central Asian Nuclear Weapons Free Zone, but promote its expansion to include the South Asian nations, the nations of the Arabian Peninsula and Egypt, which has already agreed to join.  Of course, that would put pressure on Israel to give up its nuclear program and it would put a significant crimp into the long-established U.S.theory that the threat of being nuked by the U.S. will make the other nations of the globe mind their p's and q's.

BTW, it might be useful to remember that the privatization of the profitable part of the nuclear fuels production and reprocessing industry occurred during the Clinton/Gore administration and that, in keeping with tradition, the liability for contamination and waste disposal was left with the Department of Energy--i.e. the people of the United States.

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by: hannah @ Sat Nov 10, 2007 at 15:10:26 PM CST

[ Parent ]

In a related story, Chuck Grassley isn't voting Democratic (0.00 / 0)

I know it's been a long week, and we're all annoyed about the Mukasey thing, and Chuck Hagel is one of the better Republican senators, but I don't know ... maybe we could not use Republican comments to whack our own candidates.

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by: JimC @ Fri Nov 09, 2007 at 15:19:44 PM CST

Oh, Jim (4.00 / 1)

Buckle your seat belt, it is going to be a bumpy ride; candidate supporters will be getting more and more crotchety as the primary approaches. By the time the polls open, there will be supporters who will have convinced themselves that if their candidate does not win the primary, life as we know it will end, and therefore it doesn't matter what they do, or what they say, because having their candidate finish first is the prime directive, the moral imperative, the be all and end all - well, you catch my drift.  Typically, they recover. There were a few days in 1988 that I thought that if Bruce Babbitt did not win the NH primary and the nomination, it would be the biggest catastrophe ever in the history of the universe. By the time of our primary, many of us will have lost our minds. 

"When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on."  Franklin D. Roosevelt    

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by: Kathy Sullivan 2 @ Fri Nov 09, 2007 at 16:39:48 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Ha (0.00 / 0)

You're right.

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by: JimC @ Fri Nov 09, 2007 at 16:53:09 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Like Claude Lemieux (0.00 / 0)

Kath,
You remind me of Claude, my favorite hockey goon. It is just a marvel, watching you do what you do.

I know if Hillary crashes, you will move on to the next thing. Conventional poetry in motion.

SGS is Jack Mitchell of Lowell, MA. The symbolism of the "sleeping giant" is based on my HOPE for America.

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by: Sleeping Giant Stirs @ Fri Nov 09, 2007 at 17:00:56 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Sorry, Jim (4.00 / 1)

Since the "E" word is looming large and me and a few million other Americans feel Hillary is the only candidate that could lose the election, I'm walking some Republicans into the house.

Besides as an Obama supporter, I am inclined to stick with the premise of the 2004 speech at the DNC.

Keynote Address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention
July 27, 2004
-snip-
"A belief that we are connected as one people. If there's a child on the south side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child. If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for her prescription and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it's not my grandmother. If there's an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties. It's that fundamental belief - I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper - that makes this country work. It's what allows us to pursue our individual dreams, yet still come together as a single American family. "E pluribus unum." Out of many, one.

Yet even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America - there's the United States of America. There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America. The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America."
-snip-

SGS is Jack Mitchell of Lowell, MA. The symbolism of the "sleeping giant" is based on my HOPE for America.

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by: Sleeping Giant Stirs @ Fri Nov 09, 2007 at 16:34:53 PM CST

You're right too (4.00 / 1)

Don't forget to walk them back out again. :)

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by: JimC @ Fri Nov 09, 2007 at 16:54:11 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Samantha Power (0.00 / 0)

Not a Republican.

Our War on Terror
By SAMANTHA POWER
July 29, 2007

The day after the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush declared the strikes by Al Qaeda "more than acts of terror. They were acts of war." Bush's "war on terror" was "not a figure of speech," he said. Rather, it was a defining framework. The war, Bush announced, would begin with Al Qaeda, but would "not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated." The global war on terror, he said, was the "inescapable calling of our generation."
The phrase and the agenda that grew out of it caught on, and from 9/11 onward, the administration used its pulpit to propagate several new premises. First, with the threat of Islamic radical terrorism, new rules, new tools and new mind-sets had to be devised to meet the novelty of the menace. As Vice President Dick Cheney put it, "old doctrines of security do not apply." The criminal justice approach of trying terrorists would have to be scrapped, supplanted by a military approach. Second, we were told, the states that sponsored terrorism or offered lodging to terrorists had to be treated the same way as those nonstate actors who carried out the threats. Even more dramatically, America's friends had to prove their loyalty by taking concrete steps in our global war. As Bush put it, the "duties" of peace-loving people "involve more than sympathy or words. No nation can be neutral." By requiring governments to step up, we would be able to root out the unreliable and distribute sanctions and favors accordingly.
Third, since international treaties and institutions often constrained Washington's ability to combat terrorism on its own terms, they should be dipped into and exploited selectively. While it was true that other countries valued those laws and institutions, the gravity of the terrorist threat would ultimately unite nations with shared interests. The urgency of the common cause would override choosiness about the means. Our allies would need us more than we would need them, so we could count on them to rally to our side in a crunch.
And fourth, in Bush's view, wartime demanded a strong commander in chief, and he would be far more effective prosecuting the war if he could free himself of the meddlesome legislative, judicial and even interagency checks fashionable in peacetime. Surely, Bush's team argued, the extreme continuing threats to our national security warranted a dramatic expansion of presidential power.

Bystanders to Genocide  BY SAMANTHA POWER
SEPTEMBER 2001 ATLANTIC MONTHLY :The author's exclusive interviews with scores of the participants in the decision-making, together with her analysis of newly declassified documents, yield a chilling narrative of self-serving caution and flaccid will-and countless missed opportunities to mitigate a colossal crime

Conversations with History: Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley

Our guest today is Samantha Power, who is a journalist, lawyer, and human rights activist. Formerly executive director of the Center for Human Rights at Harvard University, she has just published "A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide.

SGS is Jack Mitchell of Lowell, MA. The symbolism of the "sleeping giant" is based on my HOPE for America.

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by: Sleeping Giant Stirs @ Fri Nov 09, 2007 at 17:54:45 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Republican misrepresents Hillary's position (0.00 / 0)

  Why am I not surprised?

  Sen. Clinton (and Sen. Dodd and Sen. Biden) are correct to refuse to meet face-to-face with Ahmedinejhad and the other tyrants in the first 12 months of their Presidency without having any ground rules for the meeting. That was the question that was asked. The edited tape above cuts off Clinton's answer.

  We all know that Bush's complete lack of diplomacy (by any definition of the word) has been a disaster for this country.  Sen. Clinton has said repeatedly that restoring our status in the world and engaging in real, substantive talks with places like Iran are her priority. But negotiations with countries so estranged from us needs to be done with goals in mind.

  If we want Iran to give up development of nuclear weapons we need to do it with a combination of give and take -- carrots and sticks. That's done on a lower level than President.  That kind of diplomacy is done by negotiators working with experts on nuclear weapons and nuclear power.  When it appears that some sort of agreement might be hammered out, the Secretary of State or a special appointee is usually the next level of diplomacy. Heads of state don't sit down face-to-face unless they believe they can solve a problem or at least move the process along.

  This isn't some weird or esoteric process.  It's the way all of us work through difficult situations.  If you have a problem with your boss, you don't start by complaining to the owner of the company, you start with someone in Human Resources or your boss's boss. The more people working on a difficult problem, the more likely that you will be able to find grounds for agreement.  If you start with the one person at the top and you can't agree, you don't have anyplace else to go.  It's over.

  After seven years of Bush, the problems we have in the world are much too serious for simplistic, shoot-from-the-hip answers.  We need someone who can think through the difficulties and landmines that lie ahead and chart a sensible well-thought-out plan to proceed.

  I know people call that calculating -- I call it smart. We need someone smart to deal with some very bad people in this world. The only person I've seen in this primary race who is intelligent and experienced enough to do that is Hillary Clinton.
 

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by: calvin @ Fri Nov 09, 2007 at 17:16:18 PM CST

Borat "endorses" Obama (0.00 / 0)

Also, not a Republican.

High five! Borat is back on tour to amuse - and offend

Tue Nov 6, 2007 1:37pm EST 
By Belinda Goldsmith

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Borat, the fictional Kazakh reporter who caused a diplomatic stir with his movie adventures in the United States, is back -- with a guide book to "the glorious nation of Kazakhstan" and "minor nation of U.S. and A."
-snip-

Q: Who do you favor for President in the United States?

A: "I cannot believe that it possible a woman can become Premier of US and A - in Kazakhstan, we say that to give a woman power, is like to give a monkey a gun - very dangerous. We do not give monkeys guns any more in Kazakhstan ever since the Astana Zoo massacre of 2003 when Torkin the orang-utan shoot 17 schoolchildrens. I personal would like the basketball player, Barak Obamas to be Premier."

SGS is Jack Mitchell of Lowell, MA. The symbolism of the "sleeping giant" is based on my HOPE for America.

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by: Sleeping Giant Stirs @ Fri Nov 09, 2007 at 18:26:15 PM CST