You beat me to it. This is all over CNN. Obama needs to hit back hard. Bring up North Korea and Iran's attempt for a grand bargain in 2003.

Update: Obama's campaign just released a response calling it a "unprecedented political attack on foreign soil". They're going to have to do better than that.

What's next from these buffoons?



"Obama's ancestors were cannibals"???

Bush is a punk-ass bitch.

And he talked this trash even as his own Secretary of Defense urged the U.S. to "sit down and talk" with Iran: www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...53.html

Obama himself quickly responded to the comparison, calling it a false attack and listing past presidents who didn't think that diplomacy was such a bad idea:

"It is sad that President Bush would use a speech to the Knesset on the 6Oth anniversary of Israel's independence to launch a false political attack. It is time to turn the page on eight years of policies that have strengthened Iran and failed to secure America or our ally Israel."


"Instead of tough talk and no action, we need to do what Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan did and use all elements of American power -- including tough, principled, and direct diplomacy -- to pressure countries like Iran and Syria. George Bush knows that I have never supported engagement with terrorists, and the President's extraordinary politicization of foreign policy and the politics of fear do nothing to secure the American people or our stalwart ally Israel."

www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/0...59.html

Lieberman is towing the Likud line as usual:
________

Lieberman is Out of Line
by BooMan
Thu May 15th, 2008 at 12:05:11 PM EST

www.boomantribune.com/story/2...512/1073

The effort to turn Iran into the latest incarnation of Nazi Germany is deeply dishonest and depressing. For some people, anyone that makes Israel uncomfortable is a de facto Nazi. Iran has not fought a war of territorial expansion in centuries. I can't even think of an example in the last 500 years. What's more, Israel is armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons. Iran has no nuclear weapons. And, if they did have them, they'd be no more likely to explode one in Israel than Pakistan is today. If Pakistan were to attack Israel with nuclear weapons there would be no need for America to 'obliterate' them because Israel would do the job first.

Iran has its faults. So did the Soviet Union. But the Soviet Union never used its nuclear weapons. And, unlike the Soviet Union, Iran has no territorial ambitions. Their support of Hezbollah is as much about strengthening their Shi'a brethren in Lebanon's internecine political fights as it is about harassing Israelis. And their alleged support of Hamas is about having street cred as one of the few Islamic countries willing to continue the fight post Camp David.

I don't expect Israelis to turn a passive eye to activities that threaten and sometimes kill their citizens. Israelis are rightly angered by both Iran's actions and their irresponsible rhetoric. But Iran poses a low-level threat, not an existential one. The Iranians are not suicidal.

Moreover, it pays to remember that even Nixon and Kissinger met repeatedly with our communist adversaries in China, North Vietnam, and the Soviet Union. They talked to the Soviet ambassador almost daily. And that is really what this debate is about. Do we talk to our enemies or do we just try to kill them?

When President Bush goes before the Knesset and compares Democrats to Nazi appeasers, he's crossing a line. And for Joe Lieberman to issue this statement is just appalling.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Senator Joseph Lieberman (ID-CT) issued the following statement in response to President Bush’s statement to the Israel Knesset this morning:

“President Bush got it exactly right today when he warned about the threat of Iran and its terrorist proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah. It is imperative that we reject the flawed and naïve thinking that denies or dismisses the words of extremists and terrorists when they shout “Death to America” and “Death to Israel,” and that holds that—if only we were to sit down and negotiate with these killers—they would cease to threaten us. It is critical to our national security that our commander-in-chief is able to distinguish between America’s friends and America’s enemies, and not confuse the two.”

What does Joe want to do? Kill all the Iranians? Kill all the Lebanese? Kill all the Gazans? That kind of exterminationist thinking is a lot closer to NaziThink than Joe would like to admit. But it's implicit in his logic. And why does Joe Lieberman say that these groups threaten 'us'? Has Hezbollah attacked America, or attacked Americans in the last twenty years? Has Hamas, ever?

You want to know what has made Israel safer than anything else in its history? The peace treaties that Carter hammered out with Egypt and Clinton hammered out with Jordan. That was accomplished by talking, not fighting. Israel no longer faces any credible threat of land invasion, and they have the last two Democratic presidents to thank for it. Presidents Reagan and Bush encouraged two disastrous invasions of Lebanon. That's the kind of terrible advice Israel has received from Republican leaders that are supposed to be strong on terrorism. Prior to the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, suicide bombing was almost unheard of in the Islamic world, and Iran's influence was almost completely contained within their own borders.

Comparing Iran to Nazi Germany is a grave insult to our intelligence. Even our Secretaries of Defense* and State** recognize the necessity and advisability of engaging Iran. Is it any wonder why the Democrats kicked Joe Lieberman out of the party? I don't know what it would take to convince him that his policies make Israel less secure. History is so stark and decisive on the matter, that I suppose Lieberman just doesn't read it.

*www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...53.html
**www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/m...aq/index.html

Bush Uses Holy Land Pulpit to Launch Smear Campaign

PAUL BEGALA
The Huffington Post
Posted May 15, 2008 | 01:21 PM (EST)


George W. Bush is unworthy of the presidency. He is a disgrace to himself, our Nation, and the high office he holds.

In a speech to the Israeli Knesset on Thursday, Mr. Bush forfeited the last scraps of his moral authority, dishonoring himself by using one of the world's most important pulpits to launch a false and vicious political attack against Barack Obama.

I am such a strong supporter of Israel that when I worked in the White House some of my friends called me a "Likkud Democrat." It is especially appalling to supporters of Israel that Mr. Bush would stand on a hilltop in Jerusalem to invoke the Holocaust in order to make a cheap and deeply dishonest political point.

I am a person of faith, so it is especially galling that a man who calls himself a brother in faith would stand in the Holy Land and violate one of the Commandments God gave to Moses: "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor."

This is what Mr. Bush said, according to the text released by the White House:

"Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: "Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided." We have an obligation to call this what it is - the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."

His attack was disgraceful, demeaning and dishonest. Bush's own government has repeatedly conducted negotiations with terrorists and radicals, including:

Iran. Bush sent Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, then posted to Baghdad, to negotiate with Iran over security issues affecting Iraq. Bush's current Ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, told ABC News, "We are willing to sit down with Iran face to face for talks on Iraqi security at the invitation of the Iraqi government. We've had three rounds of those talks and we've told them we are ready to again."

Libya. Although Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi was behind the December, 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie Scotland, which killed 270 people, most of them Americans, the Bush Administration conducted months of negotiations with the terrorists, culminating in a 2003 agreement to dismantle Libyan long-range missiles and weapons of mass destruction;

North Korea. The Bush Administration, led by Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, has held numerous direct negotiations with the North Korean regime, a charter member of Mr. Bush's "axis of evil."

It should be noted that in each instance, the negotiations actually advanced America's security position. So even the Bush administration, by its actions, attests to the efficacy of negotiating with evildoers.

All this is to say George W. Bush is a hypocrite. So deep is his cynicism that he would go on foreign soil to invoke history's greatest crime to condemn conduct he himself has engaged in.

As an American I am ashamed that such a man represents me.

I say this as someone who has not supported Barack Obama in the Democratic primaries; someone who has reservations about Sen. Obama's plan to engage Iran in talks without any preconditions. But there comes a time when intra-party rivalries must yield, and all of us must stand together against the degradation of the Office of the Presidency.

by Ambassador Marc Ginsberg: www.huffingtonpost.com/amb-ma...09.html