Political Punch

Obama's full context of what he said was so very clearly minimizing Iran's threat to us... I don't see how anyone can read and hear what he said and not come to that conclusion, unless their so partisan that they are going to here what they WANT to hear, no matter what is actually said!

And whoever wrote this article claiming Obama never said these things or he really wasn't saying that Iran is a far less threat to us than Russia, and it was taken out of context, simply MUST be a partisan.

Seems apparent to me Obama has figured out that wasn't a popular answer and like he's done with so many things, he's now trying to act like it never happened and he didn't mean what he said so clearly at the time... and it appears the Obama cheer leading media is TRYING to help him along in erasing the perception of what he actually said , despite the reality that he so obviously did say it!

This complaint is without foundation.
The writer admits Barack Hussein Obama said, and he quotes him as saying, “I mean, think about it. Iran, Cuba, Venezuela — these countries are tiny, compared to the Soviet Union.” Then he attempts to say Obama didn’t say that. He quotes Obama saying Iran “doesn’t pose a serious threat,” then he claims Obama didn’t say it. My ethics by which I raised my five children call that lying.
Actually, this is exactly the kind of double talk the entire Barack Hussein Obama campaign is known for. It doesn’t make sense, ergo, Barack Hussein Obama doesn’t make sense. Not as a spokesperson for the Democratic Party, not as a U.S. Senator, and certainly not as an American President. As President he would have to say what he means. As campaigner for that office he keeps claiming he did not say what he said. How stupid are we supposed to pretend to be?

scary that you have so many posters who can't see that mccain's ad is a lie, and that obama's statement, taken IN CONTEXT, makes sense. s'why i generally stay away from these blogs.

and this after the "sex education" lie. mccain should hang his head in shame.

To those who pointed out my misinformation regarding Canada's possession of nuclear weapons: mea culpa. I was wrong. Canada has no nukes, though they did share nuclear weapons with the U.S. pursuant to NATO until 1984.

Here's the thing, though: my point was the small number of countries in the world that could possibly hope to kill 100 million Americans, which a previous poster had breathlessly claimed Iran had the capability to do. I was overly generous in my estimation, so the number of countries is even smaller than I posited...which actually makes my point about the rarity of that kind of offensive power a stronger point, not a weaker one. Had I left a major nuclear power off of the list, my argument would have been weaker.

I have no problem admitting factual error. I stand by my analysis, however: there are only a handful of countries in the entire World that have the kind of destructive power that the previous poster attributed to Iran.

Let's keep things in perspective: we have the firepower to literally incinerate every square inch of the planet 10 or 12 times over. We spend more than any other country in the world on our military, and we can project force almost anywhere in the world in a very short amount of time.

Against our capabilities, which countries pose a viable threat? Russia and China, certainly. Both have the nuclear arsenals and the conventional armies that would be necessary to credibly challenge the U.S. After them...who?

Countries that have a handful of nuclear weapons pose enough of a threat that we can't act capriciously against them, because we could ultimately lose a city. But those same countries also know that if they were to use their nukes, we would use ours, and ours are plentiful enough to melt them into slag.
All of our potential adversaries know full well the enormous scale of our repsonses to Pearl Harbor and to 9/11. A nuclear attack would trigger a far more vehement response. So far, there isn't a country in the world that has shown itself to have leaders irrational enough to disregard our nuclear arsenal, and that includes Iran.

As for the risk of a rogue state giving nuclear weapons or know-how to terrorists, the A Q Khan network in Pakistan show that that's a genuine risk. But note that Pakistan gave technical data to another fringe state, North Korea, not a non-state militant group. The unpredictability of militant groups makes it unlikely that any state would willingly give one of them nuclear weapons: the militant you arm today could well turn those arms against you in the future. It happened to us when the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan became the Taliban and used weapons we had given them against our troops in defense of al Queda. It's one thing to have a crate full of Stinger missles used against you...but nuclear weapons are an entirely different risk.

We need to stop hyperventilating in response to every conceivable threat. We need to have a level-headed approach, as well as having some confidence in our own military abilities.

"...we can't even condemn Russia's invasion of Georgia (without being branded arrogant hypocrites), given our invasion of Iraq... or DO anything about it right now - and they KNOW it (with the troops being tied up there and in Afghanistan)."

Wow. Why does Putin have to say anything when Sheribaby can make his talking points for him right here? (Please see under Useful Idiot)

Btw, the real constraint on our use of military force in response to Russia's invasion has little to do with our ground forces being "tied up." We have more than sufficient air and naval assets to have forced the Russians to reconsider their actions, if it had been in our interest to do so. The interdiction of supply lines and the blockadeing of Black Sea ports would have been the preferred course of action if a military response had been required.

Just curious, but if Russia had conducted this invasion in, say, early 2001, with most of our troops in garrison and not commited to an active theater, would we have deployed the 82nd Airborne to Gori? Of course not; our national interests did not and do not require the injection of ground forces into that scenario.

You know, these utterly fallacious arguments that our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan precludes (and has precluded) the use of an effective military deterent in other regions (i.e., N.K., Iran, Georgia) are really growing old.

Feliz and Art Mach... ditto post to Rob. The point is that if we could keep from going to war with a Cold War Russia (U.S.S.R.) with its vast nuclear arsenal (which is where many in the Middle East are getting theirs from now, and Obama is working with legislation in the Senate to stop nuclear proliferation, but that's another story), then SURELY we can get Iran to stand down without having to nuke them, when the threat that Soviet Russia posed then was GREATER. Maybe you disagree that Soviet Russia was a greater threat then than Iran is now. But, apparently, an elemantary education for you is not what it used to be.

Then, Rob, if you can't understand how conteext is everything, you are utterly clueless. I could say that a 5-year-old girl is small I comparison to a 25-year-old woman; but, if I put that 5-year-old in a romm full of 2 month olds and call her small, I would look like an idiot. The RELATIVITY gievn in the orioginal context is crucial to understanding both the meaning of small and the intent behind calling them "small" (the relative significance of the threat posed). The McCain camp knows that it was trying to push the GOP talking points of Obama ignoring the threats of foreign opponents (i.e being naive and unrepared on foreign policy), when they actual speech says just the opposite (that we would crush them militarily, but as a last resort). If you can't see how that's misleading, then I can't help you. Like Bill Clinton said at the DNC Convention, America does more by the power of our example, than by the example of our power. E.g., we can't even condemn Russia's invasion of Georgia (without being branded arrogant hypocrites), given our invasion of Iraq - who didn't commit 9/11 and had no WMDs - or DO anything about it right now - and they KNOW it (with the troops being tied up there and in Afghanistan). And good for the update, because that ad IS playing in MO. I've seen it more than once here.

"Iran got nuclear power plants going with major help from U.S. Republican administrations."

And so? What's your intended point? The only power "plant" (not plants) in question was a "tiny" research reactor (5Mw) provided to Iran in the 1950s via the Atoms for Peace program. (BTW, this program was continued over the course of three democratic administrations, as well).

There is absolutely zero evidence that this reactor was used for anything other than it's intended purpose, which was to help Iran develop a civilian nuclear power generating capability.

If you are attempting to imply that we put Iran on the road to nuclear weapons development (and I think that you are), you are grossly mistaken.

I don't see the issue. Obama clearly stated that Iran, as well as Cuba and Venezuela, is tiny, and doesn't pose a serious threat to us. The only thing the McCain camp left out was Obama's comparison to the Soviet Union, who was bigger and posed a bigger threat. How is that "not even close" to what Obama said? Merely stating that it's a misrepresentation doesn't make it one.

As a ten year veteran and a conservative, I am disgusted with the McCain lying ads. George Bush and Rove put our party into the gutter, and I was hoping that McCain would get us out of it, and make us proud to be republicans again. Not to be. McCain has decided that lying, spinning and having the dregs of humanity like Rove,Limbaugh, Hennetty, Liebermann etc. is the way to go. As a 65 year old white vet I am supposed to vote for McCain according to the 'talking heads'. Well, here's one white senior that will be voting for change.

The political game seems to be a lot of back and forth about statements that were said and not enough about Americans checking out what the candidates ACTUAL plans and positions are. We're so easily manipulated, but we can do better than this.

Looks pretty accurate to me. Obama is clearly underestimating Iran. If Iran gets nukes the termoil they can cause will be immeasurable.

JAMAICA is a tiny country. Iran is NOT a tiny country, and if they end up taking control of the Shi'a side of Iraq after Obama pulls the troops out, they'll be a very large country with a ton of oil assets.

Obama apparently spent a very TINY amount of time in GEOGRAPHY class. This isn't the first stupid thing he's said--he thinks the US has any number of states but fifty, after all.

I'm a Democrat, but I think this guy is overrated. He can't talk without a teleprompter, and he says incredibly DUMB things...like "Iran is a tiny country."

It's down to a choice between DUMB and DUMBER--and Obama comes off as DUMBER.

Ok. So, what's John McCain's SPECIFIC plan for getting Iran to stand down on nukes? His web page states that he will increase military presence in Iraq to protect our troops there from Iran, but it says nothing tangible about nukes.

JOHN McCAIN IS A LIAR, THAT IS JUST A FACT!!! THAT WHY EVEN REPUBLICANS DON'T TRUST A WORD HE SAYS!!!

The Iraqis . . .wait, the Iranians are coming!

Above, Obama also states,

"If Iran ever tried to pose a serious threat to us, they wouldn't stand a chance."

So, those of you who are criticizing Obama's other statement, do you also disagree with this statement?

Careful how you answer, you wouldn't want to be seen as "unpatriotic."

Peter from Dover NH:

"I recall Obama claiming that John McCain wants to have a war for 100 years. Smear and Fear..."

McCain said he'd be willing to stay as much as 100 years. Was that just more of his sense of humor?

John McCain says that the economy is ok... Smear and Fear...

He said it.

" 'He doesn't remember how many houses he ownes any more...' That's a distortion that throws fear and age bigotry into the mix."

"Obama got into politics by disqualifying everyone running against him."

Whereas Republicans never seek to do that. They only disqualify voters.

"His technique over and over is to do the same [Smear and Fear]"

What is the principle here? If it's not OK for anyone to do it, then target the Republicans too. If it's OK for Republicans to do it, how can you expect the Democrats not to play the game too?

Baloney! How big was Osama bin Laden's country, (hint - he really didn't have one!). Likelwise, what difference does the lopsided comparison of Iran's military to the USA's military have to do with Iran nuking Israel? (hint - NOTHING)

We've BEEN 'talking' to them collectively, through the UN for years trying to get them to STOP their nuke program. They ain't listening and Obama has NEVER said what EXACTLY he would have to say to them to break the stalemate. IF he truly had some sort of brilliant plan to conduct talks with Iran - THEN WHY IS HE NOT PRESENTING IT RIGHT NOW??? HMMMMMM?

Actually, Albatross, Obama wants to INCREASE the military. Don't assume just because he's a democrat, that's what he wants. I suggest you actually read his position on the military.

I think the appropriate challenge to ABC News is to ask them to rewrite the ad copy so it is 'fair and balanced'. Not that campaign ads are supposed to be fair or balanced. Given what Obama DID say and McCain's take on that, as a campaign reply, I don't see anything wrong with it. Certainly no more distorted than Obama's ad's.

I would like to point out that if the US always refused to talk/negotiate with our enemies, John McCain would still be in that POW camp right now.

John McCain actually said that we could stay in Iraq for 100 years and it would be fine with him. January 3rd this year, in a town hall meeting in Derry, NH. That's not "Smear and Fear" the truth. And hearing a potential POTUS candidate say he's perfectly fine with us remaining in Iraq, in a war that is costing us trillions of dollars and the lives of thousands of our troops, while Iraq sits on a surplus of funds, for 100 years doesn't bother you?

When CNBC reports today that the FDIC is consdering that they may have to borrow money from the Treasury Department to help bail out banks, repeating that the Republican candidate thinks the ecomony is fine is not "Smear and Fear", but a valid point.

Seriously, both sides are guilty of using sound bites, but ABC is now targeting this one? Which is not terrible misconstrued. He was clearly stating that Iran is not that serious of a threat. You have to be an idiot to rate the danger of a nation by it's physical size - and I seriously hope that's not what Obama was trying to do. But is is apparent that he is clueless on history. He doesn't even know how we defeated the USSR!! Obama wants to downsize and de-fund our military and get rid of our missile defense systems while a threat like Iran still looms!? That is the opposite of what Reagan did!

The point of Obama's full comment should be obvious:

Russia, as the Soviet Union, was (and still is as the Russian Federation) a significant threat, and we were not afraid to engage in full-out diplomacy with them.

Iran, is not as big a threat as the Soviet Union was. So why don't we use the same tools that we used to work with Russia?

That is the point of his comments. He clearly does think Iran is a threat, and has said as much in other speeches and comments. His point is that we should use all of the tools available to us, not just intimidation and threats.

Well sound like Obama's smear and fear chicken have come home to roost...

I recall Obama claiming that John McCain wants to have a war for 100 years. Smear and Fear...

John McCain says that the economy is ok... Smear and Fear...

The fact is that the big zero compaired Iran with Cuba. The ad is not far off. Much closer than the distortion that NObama uses on McCain.

"He doesn't remember how many houses he ownes any more..." That's a distortion that throws fear and age bigotry into the mix.

Obama got into politics by disqualifying everyone running against him. His technique over and over is to do the same. You can't critizie him because that's racist. Now McCain can't speak of being a POW even though he actually was? It's like saying its not fair to say you went to Harvard when you actually did go there.

I see you don't bother to point out HOW it's not the same thing. McCain got the essence right. About the only thing you could fault him on was Obama saying the threat was relative to the Soviet Union. But Obama is wrong on that too, like everything else. The Russians didn't want to die, Iranians would consider it acceptable.

"And yet, we were willing to talk to the Soviet Union at the time when they were saying, 'We're going to wipe you off the planet.'
"

When did the Soviets ever say that? I must have been in a coma.

Iran got nuclear power plants going with major help from U.S. Republican administrations.

Dolf Fenster,

Er, no. Again.

What was under "lock and key" and monitoring AFTER the '94 agreement were the Yongbon Reactor and, most importantly, spent fuel rods. The NKs had removed some of these rods and extracted the spent fuel prior to the '93-'94 stand-off. This stand-off was ultimately precipitated by the refusal by NK to allow the IAEA to inspect sites suspected of holding spent fuel illicitly extracted from the Yongban facility. Additionally, the terms of the '94 agreement specifically avoided an accounting of nuclear materials extracted prior to the signing of the agreement, thus allowing the NKs to partially cover their tracks. No extracted fissile materials were ever surrendered by NK.
This is why the IAEA was left with only an estimate of how much the NKs had actually removed and processed. Fissile material under 'lock and key" would have been inventoried and the weight would have been determined down to fractions of a gram thus obviating the need for estimates.

Now, if you want to talk about the 8000 spent rods that were under IAEA monitoring prior to late 2002, that's another issue and not the one that I have been discussing. By this time, NK had already been in possession of several kgs of 239Pu for years and probably had at least a couple of nukes.

If your argument is that Bush diplomacy (or the lack thereof) lead to NK acquiring more nuclear material and weapons than it possessed in 2002, I stand down.

Heywood U. Reedmore wrote:

'What exactly did Obama mean when he said "If Iran ever tried to pose a serious threat to us, they wouldn't stand a chance." If? That clearly implies he believes they are not a serious threat.'

Iran has no nuclear weapons, AND no missiles capable of delivering them as far as Israel, let alone across a big part of the world to the U.S. Those are facts, not opinions.

jock59801 wrote:

'Well, Kruschev famously said "we will bury you." Is that close enough?'

That was a boast in a discussion with Nixon about scientific progress. War was not the subject.

Don't forget, this was the same Khruschev who a few short years later was at first crazy enough to plant missiles in Cuba, but backed down when Kennedy waved the right combination of carrots and sticks.

Something to think about?

Kudos to the below comments:

What exactly did Obama mean when he said "If Iran ever tried to pose a serious threat to us, they wouldn't stand a chance." If? That clearly implies he believes they are not a serious threat.

Posted by: Heywood U. Reedmore | Aug 28, 2008 12:36:00 AM

As usual the Republicans are lying, wow big surprise.... As they have been doing it for 8 years about everything!!!

McCain also said just the other day the economy is in good shape! I rest my case...

End the lying!

Obama/Biden 2008!!!

Oh this aired all right. I saw it tonight during a commercial break, watching the DNC convention. I'm in Virginia.

How can the McCain campaign get away with lying, again and again? Will the 4th estate get the truth out? Is there no honor anymore in the conservative party? I am very, very depressed.

"Which" books have you read...

What exactly did Obama mean when he said "If Iran ever tried to pose a serious threat to us, they wouldn't stand a chance." If? That clearly implies he believes they are not a serious threat.

Jake:

I see you're getting it from both sides, so you must be doing something right. And I often agree with you posts.

But I disagree that it's dishonest to point out that BO has said "Iran is a tiny country that doesn't pose a threat to us". Sure, the USSR could start the war to end all wars. I grew up with that. But rogue-state Iran could kill tens of millions of people once it has access to nuclear weapons. I am not comforted that 10 million is much less than 200 million, which seems to be the only way to make sense of BO's statement.

Are there other formulations of BO's strategic vision that meet the test of veracity? Is it fair to say "Obama belittled the threat from rogue states such as Iran"? I don't see how you could disagree with that. It was in fact the thrust of his comparison, that the Iran threat is "little" or "tiny" in some sense, and therefore less troubling.

In turn, the troubling thing about BO's full quote is that he seems to think that TALKING is how we won the Cold War, as in "Reagan talked to Gorbachev, and Gorby decided the wall had to come down." That worldview is ignorant in monumental proportion. Even Kennedy understood that "tiny" Cuba could pose a MORTAL threat to the US once nuclear missiles were installed. When are you going to complain about the sheer, audacious stupidity of the Obama worldview?

J. Martin Gelinas,

You said:

"When President Bush took office in 2000, NK was - very slowly - building a highly enriched uranium cache. Due to Bush's policy decision to declare NK a member of the "axis of evil" the country responded by leaving the NPT and then building up a plutonium enrichment facility."

Er, no.
The IAEA determined that NK, at the time of the '94 Framework Agreement, already possessed at least 24 kg of weapons-grade plutonium. Using a very conservative estimate of 12 kg per bomb, NK was well on it's way to at least two bombs. In April '97, a DoD spokesman officially stated, "When the U.S.-North Korea nuclear agreement was signed in Geneva in 1994, the U.S. intelligence authorities already believed North Korea had produced plutonium enough for at least one nuclear weapon." By 1998, the US intel community believed that NK had fully resumed the nuclear weapons program that it had renounced in 1994. I forget, who was the POTUS way back then?
In the fall of 2002, NK was publicly called out by the U.S. for violating the 1994 agreement and oil shipments to the NK were halted. NK responded by removing monitoring equipment at the
Yongbon nuclear plant and UN inspectors were removed from NK. By Dec 2002, the IAEA demanded renewed and expanded access to suspected sites. NK responded by rejecting a US call for one-on-one talks and withdrawing from the NPT in Jan of '03.

It is beyond dispute that NK had obtained sufficient quantities of weapons-grade plutonium well before Bush became POTUS in 2001, so your cause and effect calculations are wrong. Best estimates are that they were also in possession (courtesy of the AQ Khan network) of all required nuke weapons components (admittedly of varying reliability and quality) in the late '90's.
My cites are from the BBC and the FAS; where'd you get your bogus info? Seems to read right from Maddy Albright and Wendy Sherman's revisionist history of the events in question.

The context makes it a worse statement, considering what has been going on.

There he acknowledges that Russia would pose a threat.

Too bad he thinks that those days are in the past.

Worse is that he completely ignores the fact that we ARE talking to all these places, that is why we are not at war. The difference is that he wants to concede everything and appease everyone in the hopes that people will like him enough to be nice.

If 'tiny' Iran developed just one nuke and shipped it by container ship to any U.S. port, how dangerous would that 'tiny' country be then? What about two nukes? three?

One Drop,

You said: "...Because on this planet, reducing the U.S. population by 1/3 would be beyond the capabilities of all but the following countries:
1. The U.S.
2. Russia
3. China
4. Canada (I'm uncertain as to the size of their nuclear arsenal, but it's probably big enough);..."

Apparently, the Canadians have been successfully hiding their DOLT-33 "HOSER" ICBMs and LOONIE class SSBNs, because the known size of the Canadian nuclear arsenal and associated delivery vehicles is exactly... ZERO!

In plain language, Canada does not possess any nuclear weapons.

Thanks for the lesson in geopolitics, Oh, Strategic Mastermind!

"The only fault of Obama is that he does not like to come out with stupid but quick and strident sounding quotes. "

This is true. he says uh, ah, uh, ah, ... and then he says something completely stupid and wrong.
His statement about China having better infrastructure the other day was a good example of a factually out-to-lunch statement.

"Biden has mortgages and kids' colleges to pay for like many other Americans who are working hard to get ahead. "

It that why him, Dem Senator Chris Dodd, Senator Obama, and Obama's VP vetter Johnson all got sweetheart mortgage deals from the mortgage cos and credit companies they regulate?

Yeah, just your average corrupt Senators.

Obama's quote comparing Iran to Russia says "tiny" and not a "threat". The Black and White of it is one Iranian developed dirty bomb exploding in LA is a tremendously large threat. The fact check authors possibly have tiny minds ?

"Iran has zero nuclear weapons and zero missles capable of reaching the US." .... YET.

We all understand Obama-loving liberals will be as clueless about emerging threats and what to do about it as Obama is, but, seriously, a rogue nation that called for Israel to be wiped off the map and which pursues nuclear enrichment technology in defiance of nonproliferation agreements and which is on track to soon test nuclear weapons ... is NOT a threat?!?

"crosses a new line into dishonesty"?

What new line is that? This ad still has nothing on the Democrats' "100 Years" ad. This ad doesn't even approach the line the Democrats set.

"They [Iran] don't pose a serious threat to us"

"Iran... these countries are tiny"

"Iran, they spend one-one hundredth of what we spend on the military. If Iran ever tried to pose a serious threat to us, they wouldn't stand a chance."
-Barack Obama

IT SEEMS HONEST INDEED TO SAY THAT OBAMA DOESNT THINK IRAN IS A SERIOUS THREAT.

If this isnt an honest ad, then everything Obama and every other candidate out there is saying is dishonest. I'm adhast at how off-based the usually steady Tapper is on this.

Obama and Biden want to give Geogia ONE BILLION dollars in aid, but he have a problem with sombody owning seven houses.
This is America. What is wrong with this guy?

Even interpreted very strictly, the quote from Obama is pretty damning. Comparing Iran to the Soviet Union neatly demonstrates his pre-9/11 thinking, and comparing the defense spending of Iran to the U.S. completely misses the point that we live in the age of asymmetric warfare.

Obama said it......
Obama was channeling Neville Chamberlain...like all democrats do.

"Their campaign tactics make their trickle down from the top economic philosophy look innovative."

Are you telling me that I should ask a poor person for a job?

For the McCain Supporters who argue for his superior experience as a reason for preferring him to Senator Obama, I have one small question: Did you vote for Al Gore in 2000? Surely, if experience is the decisive criteria for electing a president, then someone who had served for eight years as the most influential vice president in American after many years of distinguished service in both houses of Congress, surely was far superior in that quality than a failed businessman with just six years in one of the weakest chief executive offices of any state. Did you vote Gore in 2000? If you didn't then I say you have no intellectual or moral credibility.

Can't anybody here, including the author of the original article, read plain English? Obama is quoted as saying:

"If Iran ever tried to pose a serious threat to us, they wouldn't stand a chance."

Stated differently, Obama is saying that Iran does not now pose a serious threat, and even if they wanted to, they couldn't. Whatever arguments there are with respect to whether the word "tiny" was taken out of context by McCain, clearly, this later passage asserts that Iran does not pose a serious threat.

When we try and draw parallels between the Cold War era and today's mess, please remember that there was a reason the Warsaw Pact was formed .... as a defense against an expected attack from NATO. In my career, I had the opportunity to speak with a number of Russian staffers and their allies under informal conditions. I remember one Major who went and found an American interpreter just in case the combination of my Russian and his English didn't quite work. "Tell your people to never leave NATO. We know what is like to have the Germans and the French and the Italians invade us. You are the restraining force." Now THAT's a fair indicator of fear.

But in those days, we had won wars within recent memory. Such times are far behind us. In those days, we had a military capable of sustaining itself in the field without a retinue of mercenaries and contractors. Countries had good reason to think we could do them serious harm.

Now? Not so much.

Especially with McCain's ads, I always check factcheck.org. They are objective hitting untruths and exaggerations on the part of both candidates. In regard to McCain's ads about Obama raising taxes, they used the word "deceit," and added they don't use that word lightly or often. I think this Iran ad is deceitful too.

@ katie - "USSR WAS RATIONAL - IRAN? WACKOS"

BUSH? NUTJOB.

This is for my friend Sammy - You end every sentence with Experience as if it is suppose to scare us, get over your self. First of all, According to my research, If Obama becomes president, he will have spent more time serving as a state legislator (8 years) than anyone who has occupied the WH since Lincoln, not including his few years as a Senator. McCain has been a member of senate since 1986 and during those years he has accomplished very little. It is interesting that he claims all this experience, but he has been wrong on certain issues of foriegn policy. Being POW does not make you an expert on foriegn policy, sorry. And, remember he admits he does not know much about the economy. I would think he would have picked something throughout those 25 plus years.

I am sure you had no problem with Bush lack of experience when you voted for him, he was govenor for Texas for a very short period of time before he ran, before that he was just a failed business man who rode the coattails of his father.

There was another charasmatic young Democrat, JFK , who was also critized for his lack of experience. Obama is older than Clinton and Rooselvelt when they took office.

I think what need more than experience, we need good judgement, and McCain is lacking, McCain is a dangerous man, he is obssessed with war and his own interests. According to Bloomberg News, McCain is more hawkish than Bush on Iraq, Russia and China. Conservative columnist Pat Buchanan says McCain "will make Cheney look like Gandhi."2

Obama campaign has every right to defend themselves against baseless attacks and lies, that is what they suppose to do. If they did not, people like you and other low information voters will believe anything you read about him as take it as fact.

I have taken upon myself to become an informed voter, hence why I do my research. I do not get my information from just one source or one talking head. I fact check, suggest you do the same.

what a liar
this is so low, but nothing new
John McCain has become a complete sellout , I would think he would look at this in shame-he has completely allinged himself with the neo cons and thier playbook with this-
lie to the people, scare the people and hope they are as stupid and scared as you are counting on
what happened to the war hero ?

Not sure why the new ad would be called "dishonest" since it seems to stick with BO's exact words.

On May 18, in Pendelton, Ore., Obama said that "strong countries and strong presidents talk to their adversaries. That's what Kennedy did with Khrushchev.

Oh yeah..good example

that went well..less than 2 months later the Berlin Wall went up

and within a year the soviets were seeding Cuba with nukes aimed at us.

doesn't Obama know this..more likely he knows his simpleton supporters don't know this.sad

So, Lisa @ 7: When I quote you as saying "I" "see this as a refutation of Obama's comments" you won't have complaints?

It would appear that many McCain supporters here have taken the untenable position that *implication is utterance*.

Not so.

Obama made a comparative statement about the difference between fairly small threats and the very major threat that was the Soviet Union. I suspect many here diminishing the extreme threat that was simply didn't live during that time. I did. The threat of global nuclear war was palpable and very real. It damn near happened during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

There is no evidence that - right now - Iran possesses a nuclear weapon. When President Bush took office in 2000, North Korea was - very slowly - building a highly enriched uranium cache. Due to Bush's policy decision to declare NK a member of the "axis of evil" the country responded by leaving the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and then building up a plutonium enrichment facility. It was the plutonium enrichment that got NK a real nuclear weapon. It would have taken a decade or more had NK remained pinned by the NPT and Clinton's 1993 Agreed Framework.

THAT POLICY CHOICE BY THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION SERIOUSLY ENDANGERED AMERICA. Bush is responsible for real nuclear proliferation. Iraq never had a nuclear weapon, yet the United States committed an act of aggression by invading a sovereign nation. Over what anyone who had read press reports outside of the US would have known was completely bogus claims by administration officials. And then, after the fact, most citizens figured it out too.

So. Bush caused a real nuclear proliferation nightmare and invaded a country ostensibly to prevent proliferation that did not occur, and could not have occurred. And everyone in the intelligence community knew.

The only rubes are the idiots who watch and believe television news.

I have been a supporter of John McCain for a long time, mainly because he refused to lose his principles in the face of bitter partisan fighting and idiocy.

I have reluctantly come to the painful conclusion that he is not in control of his own campaign -- and that he is not in control of his emotions -- and that he is not a good fit for the Presidency.

I love him, and I want him to stay politically active. He's just not a good choice. We should have nominated someone else.

Let's get real here. Obama was comparing Iran to the USSR. The USSR had tens of thousands of nuclear weapons stockpiled and/or pointed at us. Iran has...zero nuclear weapons. ZERO. By comparison, there IS no comparison.

The McCain ad is ridiculous. If you really want something to be concerned about, you should be worried that McCain is talking about using military force on a country that currently has the largest nuclear stockpile in the world and 40,000 tons of chemical weapons in their arsenal. (That would be Russia for those of you who are a little slow.) We managed to avoid nuclear war with Russia for 50 years, we endured the Cold War with many close calls, so that we can go to war with them over GEORGIA? Some pathetic, truly TINY Eastern European country that most Americans do not know about, do not care about, and do not receive any benefits from?

TINY. The kind of country that John McCain is willing to take America to the brink of nuclear war to defend.

ONE "VERY LARGE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN USSR AND PRESENT DAY IRAN" .... USSR WAS RATIONAL - IRAN? WACKOS - MAKING THEM EVEN MORE DANGEROUS - FACT OBAMA FAILS TO UNDERSTAND!!!!

McPow is a shameless liar. Duh. He lies daily and when called on it uses his now famous, but I was a POW retort.

I linked to this story from another website, and it's good to see someone mainstream calling out the McCain campaign on this distortion. However, when I went to the ABC news home page, I found links to just about every other campaign story I'd read today, but couldn't find this one anywhere. Even after clicking on "politics" I didn't see it. How is it determined which stories are linked on the home page?

"BILL AYERS" "BARACK OBAMA" -- Google it.

"decent"American:

At its peak the Soviet Union had over 40,000 nuclear weapons. Over 12,000 of these were strategic weapons that can/were placed on ICBMs which were capable of hitting any target in the US.

Iran has zero nuclear weapons and zero missles capable of reaching the US. So just how small of a ratio do you consider "tiny?"

Michelle and Barrack seem to think pretty highly of Barrack’s ability to transform the world into what it "should" be. Two questions come to mind. #1 What kind of experience at the executive level or in any capacity makes Obama qualified to be the Chief Executive of the most powerful Nation in the world? From what I have seen of Obama's experience as documented at the Dem convention, none. #2 Most people are not sure they want a President intent on transforming the "world" much less the US into a world as it "should be".

The Iranians have not initiated a war in 200 years. It's clear that this is a long-lasting, diabolically clever deceit masking their true intent. Be afraid, very afraid.

DecentAmerican, you point out that one of the reasons Iran is