Fumbling toward Diplomacy or War?

 

December 8, 2007 -- I listened to the December 4, 2007 Presidential Press Conference on Sirius radio.  As I heard the President's inflection, pause and tone, I wondered if what I was hearing was a man who had lost the ability to reason. The initial press conference questions focused on the new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), which declared that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program over four years ago in 2003. This was an about face from a prior NIE released in 2005.

 

Our President and his vice have been on the warpath, declaring the need to eliminate Iran's nuclear weapons program. We've all heard the assertion - "no option” should be taken off the table in terms of dealing with this issue. To be fair, Obama and Clinton each has mirrored this same rhetoric.   Yet all the while, Iranian President Ahmadinejad consistently denied these claims that his nation was actively pursuing nuclear weapons.  

 

When I saw the headline about the new report, I breathed a sigh of relief; the march to war with Iran was over.  Yet as I listened to the President's spin insisting that Iran "was dangerous, is dangerous and will be dangerous,” I felt as though a mad man was cooking up another unstable rationale for a preemptive strike.

 

After all, we've been watching the Iraq playbook. I, for one, was alarmed when the rhetoric was ratcheted up to induce World War III.  Can it be that Christians United For Israel dance and sing at the thought of bombs on Tehran?

 

What I heard from the leader of the free world was irrational spin and fumbling. And it's continuing, as Bush calls on Iran to "come clean" on it's nuclear energy program.

 

That's easy. Go back to the mid 1970s, when President Gerald Ford along with the Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Wolfowitz gang made arrangements to supply Iran with nuclear energy technology.

 

How I wish our reporters grasped a tad of history.  Fortunately, Esquire Magazine is not fearful of exposing truth concerning the Bush administration's purposeful mistakes and more recent ideological arrogance concerning Iran. Check out John Richardson's article, "The Secret History of the Impending War with Iran That the White House Doesn't Want You to Know." You'll not be taken in by spin again.