Biden, The Joint Chiefs of Gaffe, Speaks Out on Iran Before Obama
Biden, although a bit dimwitted and always good for a laugh, actually tends to tell the truth from time to time, which is not always a good thing.
I was taught that honesty is the best policy, and in most circumstances, that is the case. However, politics is an entirely different situation, especially when dealing with a foreign country. Politicians have to be more cognizant of not only what they say but when they say it.
So, although Biden was correct in his assessment of Iran’s election results, his candid statement today regarding the validity of the election was probably not the smartest thing to say. I’m sure Obama is not that happy about this:
Vice President Joe Biden, going further than any other high-ranking American official to date in questioning the validity of last Friday’s election, said Sunday that “there’s some real doubt” that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was legitimately re-elected as president of Iran.
It’s also interesting that on the same day as Biden’s statement, the European Union exclaims the following:
The Presidency of the Council of the EU closely followed the course of the Presidential elections held on 12 June 2009 and notices Mr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was re-elected for the second term as the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The Presidency is concerned about alledged irregularities during the election process and post-electional violence that broke out immediately after the release of the official election results on 13 June 2009.
The Presidency hopes that outcome of the Presidential elections will bring the opportunity to resume the dialogue on nuclear issue and clear up Iranian position in this regard. The Presidency expects the new Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran will take its responsibility towards international community and respect its international obligations.
The EU, in essence, is recognizing the legitimacy of the Iranian elections and the new administration of Ahmadinejad. However, it calls the protests irregular, not Ahmadinejad’s win. This is one of the reasons I don’t ever want America compared to Europe – we are much better.
Biden may not have been politically correct and may have upset his boss, but I happen to personally agree with him on this one. This is technically a gaffe, because Obama has not come out in support of Biden’s statement or opinion on this issue. Obama, being the Commander in Chief is Joe Biden’s boss and should speak out on Iran’s election first. A politician has to always watch what he or she says… something that Biden has long forgotten how to do. If we find that yet again this administration contradicts itself by saying two different things, it certainly looks bad and shows a real lack of knowledge and/or leadership on how to manage a country.
The individual that we should be most concerned about is Obama – when will he say anything definitive about Iran?
Ahmadinejad Is Declared Winner – Arrests Rival Mousavi; UPDATE: Protests Still Ongoing in Iran (50-100 People Dead)
No surprise at all – Ahmadinejad (Immajihad) has been declared the winner of this year’s election in Iran. ACORN and the black panthers made their way to Iran to extend polling hours so dead people, non-citizens, Disney characters, and others could vote more than once. As much as Iran likes to tout the fact that it has a democratic election, it is more like North Korea’s election process where Kim Jong Il receives 150% of the vote.
The most alarming aspect of this win however, is today’s report that Mousavi, Ahmadinejad’s opponent, has been arrested. Obama and Ahmadinejad seems to have something in common; they both don’t like dissent.
Iranian presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi was reportedly arrested Saturday following the reformist’s defeat at the polls by hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Supporters of Mousavi, the main challenger to Ahmadinejad, responded to the election with the most serious unrest in Tehran in a decade and charged that the result was the work of a dictatorship.
Mousavi’s arrest was reported by an unofficial source, according to whom the presidential hopeful was arrested en route to the home of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Nevertheless, there were a number of contradictory reports from Iran on Saturday, in large part due to the heavy restrictions imposed on the media in the Islamic Republic, in particular on foreign reporters.
This is one of the reasons Iran must be watched closely. We cannot continue to pander to volatile regimes or their dictators. Nobody knows if Mousavi would have been a better choice, and Obama cannot claim victory with his Cairo speech either. I hope that this pseudo election curtails some of the naivete of the current administration, but I fear that would just be wishful thinking.
UPDATE:
The protests are still continuing after the arrest of Mousavi and it has been estimated that somewhere between 50-100 people are dead so far.
Israel; Obama’s Red-Headed Step Child
In the past couple of days, more has come to light with Obama’s stance, or lack there of, for support of Israel, compared to the rest of the Middle East and in particular, Iran and Palestine.
The Obama administration, namely Rahm Emanuel, also holds similar beliefs, which may strike some as odd, due to the fact that Rahm is Jewish. However, Rahm insisted on Monday that the only way to thwart Iran’s nuclear threat and resolve relations with the Middle East would come to fruition through Palestinian-Israeli talks.
Israeli TV stations had reported Monday night that Emanuel had actually linked the two matters, saying that the efforts to stop Iran hinged on peace talks with the Palestinians. The remarks were reportedly made in a closed-door meeting previous day with 300 major AIPAC donors on Sunday.
Last month, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned Israel that it risks losing Arab support for combating threats from Iran if it rejects peace negotiations with the Palestinians.
Clinton said Arab nations had conditioned helping Israel counter Iran on Jerusalem’s commitment to the peace process.
Meanwhile, in an interview with the Jerusalem Post on Sunday, former US House speaker Newt Gingrich blasted the Obama administration for setting itself on a collision course with Israel and endangering the Jewish state.
He called US President Barack Obama’s program of engagement with Iran a “fantasy,” and his Middle East policies “very dangerous for Israel.” He summed up Obama’s approach as “the clearest adoption of weakness since Jimmy Carter.”
And Newt is right, we should have learned our lesson after Carter, but we didn’t. One could then argue that we should have learned it after Clinton tried this same peace treaty mumbo-jumbo between Palestine and Israel. (The Oslo Accord in 1993 and the Wye River Memorandum). Later we came to find out that Yasir Arafat spoke out of both sides of his mouth and eventually was caught speaking at PLO and Hamas engagements/rallies. (But by then he had already received the Nobel Peace Prize)
If liberals are so adamant about the United States staying out of the business of other nations (their biggest qualm for the last 8 years was Iraq and forcing democracy) then why is forcing a treaty, peace, or a recognized state on a nation ok?
What causes those that are so progressive to think that Iran and other nations, that have continuously ranted and raved about the Jews and Israel, would ever want peace? Middle Eastern history has a very large Nazi influence and therefore, they have called for the extermination of Jews, and the West. There is something seriously wrong with a situation in which people cannot call a spade a spade and see the threat that is in front of their very eyes.
Take for example the latest; Ahmadinejad went on another tirade about Israel yesterday:
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad slammed Zionism as “occupation” and “aggression” Tuesday as he delivered his latest diatribe against the Jewish state on a visit to key Middle East ally Syria.
Zionism is merely the recognition of the Jewish state based on biblical times. The state of Israel was promised to the Jews before WWII and before others in the Middle East occupied the region. Israelis do not try to force themselves onto other nations by attempting to conquer the rest of the Middle East or enforce their religion on others – that’s the main difference and the reason why Ahmadinejad cannot be taken seriously.
“The Zionist occupiers are destructive microbes, because Zionism itself is occupation, aggression, the use of assassination and annihilation,” he told a joint news conference with President Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian capital.
“Zionism was created to threaten us. To support the Palestinian resistance is a humanitarian and popular obligation,” Ahmadinejad said in remarks in Farsi that were translated into Arabic.
“Syria and Iran are united in supporting the Palestinian resistance.”
The Iranian president’s comments came barely two weeks after he sparked a European walkout from a UN anti-racism conference in Geneva by equating Zionism with racism.
This intolerance does not help the cause in the Middle East and it only raises more eyebrows from the majority of the public who do not define themselves as progressive or liberal. This is not the way to show you are ready for peace. Even if some peace accord was met, it would be hard for me to believe that Iran and others would not continue to hold their “thousand” year grudge against Israel and have the same anti-Semitic sentiments.
Ahmadinejad asked why it was the Islamist Hamas movement which controls Gaza that is blacklisted by the European Union and the United States, and not Israel after its devastating offensive against the territory at the turn of the year.
“They’ve attacked Gaza, killing people in their own land and massacring women and children… and yet it’s the Palestinians they accuse of terrorism,” he complained.
Maybe because Israel didn’t initiate attacks? Maybe they retaliated in a more powerful way to stop the thousands of missiles from entering their country and endangering their citizens? Hamas sent over 3,000 missiles into Israeli airspace over the course of last year.
Israelis have also evacuated the Gaza strip and it is Palestinians that use their own for propaganda purposes reporting deaths in the region and accuse Israelis of those crimes. The main difference between Hamas and the Palestinians and the Israelis is that Israelis do not use women and children as shields, they use themselves to shield their women and children – I respect that more than the prior.
The United States “has put pressure on Syria and Iran, but it needs us and wants to develop relations,” he said.
The scariest statement by Ahmadinejad is the following:
“Circumstances are changing rapidly in our favour. We are on the road to victory.”
That should give you the chills!
The appeasement and call for universal nuclear disarmament is another alarming policy change on the horizon. This step to disarm would include Israel’s nukes, which would cause an inevitable disaster, leaving Israel completely vulnerable to any and all attacks on their soil by countries like Iran who are not a party to the United Nations or any other international treaties.
President Obama’s efforts to curb the spread of nuclear weapons threaten to expose and derail a 40-year-old secret U.S. agreement to shield Israel’s nuclear weapons from international scrutiny, former and current U.S. and Israeli officials and nuclear specialists say.
The issue will likely come to a head when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with Mr. Obama on May 18 in Washington. Mr. Netanyahu is expected to seek assurances from Mr. Obama that he will uphold the U.S. commitment and will not trade Israeli nuclear concessions for Iranian ones.
Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller, speaking Tuesday at a U.N. meeting on the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), said Israel should join the treaty, which would require Israel to declare and relinquish its nuclear arsenal.
“Universaladherence to the NPT itself, including by India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea, … remains a fundamental objective of the United States,” Ms. Gottemoeller told the meeting, according to Reuters.
She declined to say, however, whether the Obama administration would press Israel to join the treaty.
A senior White House official said the administration considered the nuclear programs of Israel and Iran to be unrelated “apples and oranges.”
Apples and oranges? The weapons programs may be different as far as quality and caliber, but if you continue to let Iran build up its nuclear facilities, centrifuges, and uranium/plutonium supplies, it will be sure to catch up – especially whilst Israel is vulnerable and doesn’t have the weaponry to defend itself anymore.
AIPAC, the strongest pro-Israeli lobby in the nation and on Capitol Hill, is on the case and working to fight the urgent push from the Obama administration to create a Palestinian state.
US congressional leaders and the most powerful pro-Israel lobby group in the US are attempting to forestall a significant shift in the White House’s Middle East policy.
The move comes amid growing signs that the US president, Barack Obama, intends to press for urgent efforts to be made towards the creation of a Palestinian state.
The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, is visiting Washington later this month amid growing expectations that Obama is preparing to take a tougher line over Israel’s reluctance to actively seek a two-state solution to its conflict with the Palestinians.
It will be the first time that Netanyahu and Obama have met since both were elected.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) this week sent hundreds of lobbyists to urge members of Congress to sign a letter to Obama.
The letter, written by two House of Representatives leaders, calls for Israel to be allowed to set the pace of negotiations.
I would agree, that the pace of negotiations for an international issue be set by the countries involved, not the United States.
Maybe the issue here is that too many progressives have gotten the jihad hip-hop bug. I hear it’s hard to ignore!/sarc.
Why Does Obama Smile When Speaking With Dictators?
I found this write-up very interesting and it made for a good read ~ enjoy!
The picture of the president of the United States smiling broadly as he met President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela startled me. Our president is a nice guy. Chavez is anything but.
The State Department maintains that Chávez has attacked democratic traditions and has put Venezuelan democracy on life support with unchecked concentration of power, political persecution, and intimidation. Foreign Affairs magazine says that Chávez is a power-hungry dictator with autocratic and megalomaniacal tendencies whose authoritarian vision and policies are a serious threat to his people. In testimony before the US Senate, the South American project director for the Center for Strategic International Studies said that Chavez’s government engages in “arresting opposition leaders, torturing some members of the opposition (according to human rights organizations) and encouraging, if not directing, its squads of Bolivarian Circles to beat up members of Congress and intimidate voters-all with impunity.”
In spite of a presidential term limit of six years, Chávez has suggested that he would like to remain in power for 25 years. Hmmm. An autocratic dictator who abuses human rights and undermines democracy being warmly embraced by the American president. There’s something wrong with that picture.
Then there was the incident of President Barack Obama seeming to bow before King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia at the G-20 summit in London. The president’s people denied it was a bow, but it certainly was a sign of great deference from the American president to the dictator of a country who just six weeks ago sentenced a 75-year-old woman to 40 lashes for having been secluded with her nephew after he delivered bread to her home. This is the same Abdullah whom, when asked why Saudi Arabia prohibits the public practice of religions other than Islam, said, “It is absurd to impose on an individual or a society rights that are alien to its beliefs or principles.”
Obama is also pursuing a renewed relationship with Cuba, a country which engages in systemic human rights abuses, including torture, arbitrary imprisonment, unfair trials and extrajudicial executions. Censorship is so extensive that Cubans face five-year prison sentences for connecting to the Internet illegally. And not only is emigration illegal, but even discussing it carries a six-month prison sentence.
Not only do we have this latest exchange with Hugo Chavez, and Obama taking a beating by Ortega and other Latin American leaders, but Fidel Castro is now calling Obama a liar in a round-about way and Iran’s Ahmadinejad is insulted and upset that Obama skipped the racism summit at the U.N.
Is it sinking in that dictators will yank your chain and use you as they have used everyone else, including their own, for their power, control and gain? These men have a history of abuse, hate, violence, you name it – it’s not going to change overnight for one man because his ego makes him believe it’s so.
Nothing anyone does will ever please these guys… They will always find an excuse to hate.
Iran and Ahmadinejad Condemn Jews at U.N. Racism Summit…On Holocaust Remembrance Day
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has accused Israel of being the ‘most cruel and racist regime,’ sparking a walkout by angry Western diplomats at a U.N. racism conference.
Ahmadinejad – I feel as though this would be a prime example of projection…
In a rambling speech, Ahmadinejad today pointed the finger at the United States, Europe and Israel and said they were destabilising the entire world.
Right, because the islamofascist groups, which Ahmadinejad, himself, is a part of, have not damaged or instilled chaos and destruction in various countries around the world. Read more
