Biden calls Bush comments 'bull****'

[RunInRed 16,494]

The point is, there is a difference between meeting with some one and appeasement, which is how some are trying to spin this. I also think it is slightly disingenious to suggest that meeting with some one legitimizes them or worse, "emboldens" them. I mean, emboldens them to do what? Of course, the cowboy approach to foreign policy has not emboldened any one the last 8 years has it? Hello Iran.

[RunInRed 16,494]

CNN has confirmed that Barack Obama will respond directly to President Bush’s apparent criticism of his foreign policy vision, which includes a willingness to consider dialogue with Iran and other nations hostile to the United States. The Illinois senator’s response will come at a campaign event later Friday in South Dakota.

The news was first revealed by senior Obama foreign policy adviser Susan Rice on NBC Friday morning.

In an address before the Israeli Knesset Thursday, President Bush compared leaders who shared advocated dialogue with nations like Iran to politicians who appeased Nazi aggression in the years leading up to the Second World War.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/

[CCTAU 3,350]

FOXNews.com - Foxnews.com has just learned that Bush could care less if achmed responds. The facts are out there. Agreeing to talk first no matter what is APPEASEMENT.

LINK THIS

[autigeremt 6,717]

I love how the lock step and tunnel vision of the left wing shines through when they feel the urge to self satisfy.

[RunInRed 16,494]

FOXNews.com - Foxnews.com has just learned that Bush could care less if achmed responds. The facts are out there. Agreeing to talk first no matter what is APPEASEMENT.

LINK THIS

Do you know what appeasement means?

Appeasement (n.): The policy of granting concessions to potential enemies to maintain peace

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/appeasement

Talking (n.): An exchange of ideas or opinions; a conversation

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/talk

[Tigermike 3,055]

I used to really like McCain. Wanted to believe he was different. But he's really become, or has always been, the kind of politician he claims he's not:

But given his own position on Hamas, McCain is the last politician who should be attacking Obama. Two years ago, just after Hamas won the Palestinian parliamentary elections, I interviewed McCain for the British network Sky News's "World News Tonight" program. Here is the crucial part of our exchange:

I asked: "Do you think that American diplomats should be operating the way they have in the past, working with the Palestinian government if Hamas is now in charge?"

McCain answered: "They're the government; sooner or later we are going to have to deal with them, one way or another, and I understand why this administration and previous administrations had such antipathy towards Hamas because of their dedication to violence and the things that they not only espouse but practice, so . . . but it's a new reality in the Middle East. I think the lesson is people want security and a decent life and decent future, that they want democracy. Fatah was not giving them that."

For some Europeans in Davos, Switzerland, where the interview took place, that's a perfectly reasonable answer. But it is an unusual if not unique response for an American politician from either party. And it is most certainly not how the newly conservative presumptive Republican nominee would reply today.

Given that exchange, the new John McCain might say that Hamas should be rooting for the old John McCain to win the presidential election. The old John McCain, it appears, was ready to do business with a Hamas-led government, while both Clinton and Obama have said that Hamas must change its policies toward Israel and terrorism before it can have diplomatic relations with the United States.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...id=opinionsbox1

McCain’s Hamas comments, context restored

posted at 10:28 am on May 16, 2008 by Ed Morrissey

The Left has had a field day with an expertly-clipped YouTube excerpt from a John McCain interview in January 2006, shortly after Hamas won the Palestinian Authority election. Former Clinton official James Rubin uses it for a dishonest attack on McCain, calling him a hypocrite for tying Barack Obama to Hamas while McCain supposedly supported diplomatic contact with the terrorist group. In doing so, Rubin and McCain’s opponents misrepresent both the Hamas issue and the larger context of McCain’s remarks:

"If the recent exchanges between President Bush, Barack Obama and John McCain on Hamas and terrorism are a preview of the general election, we are in for an ugly six months. Despite his reputation in the media as a charming maverick, McCain has shown that he is also happy to use Nixon-style dirty campaign tactics. By charging recently that Hamas is rooting for an Obama victory, McCain tried to use guilt by association to suggest that Obama is weak on national security and won’t stand up to terrorist organizations, or that, as Richard Nixon might have put it, Obama is soft on Israel."

Charging? Hamas came out and stated its support for an Obama victory. It’s not a matter of charging anything, although the relevancy of the comments are certainly debatable. Not only did Hamas endorse Obama, but his chief strategist proclaimed himself “flattered” by the statement from Ahmed Yousef. Obama’s church reproduced pro-Hamas propaganda in its newsletter, and his foreign-policy adviser Robert Malley met with Hamas on several occasions. Malley recently left the campaign, but his pro-Palestinian bent has been noted for months.

Rubin then mis-characterizes these comments taken from the YouTube video sweeping the netroots:

You Tube

"Two years ago, just after Hamas won the Palestinian parliamentary elections, I interviewed McCain for the British network Sky News’s “World News Tonight” program. Here is the crucial part of our exchange:

I asked: “Do you think that American diplomats should be operating the way they have in the past, working with the Palestinian government if Hamas is now in charge?”

McCain answered: “They’re the government; sooner or later we are going to have to deal with them, one way or another, and I understand why this administration and previous administrations had such antipathy towards Hamas because of their dedication to violence and the things that they not only espouse but practice, so . . . but it’s a new reality in the Middle East. I think the lesson is people want security and a decent life and decent future, that they want democracy. Fatah was not giving them that.”

“Deal with them, one way or another” doesn’t mean cutting deals with them; it means acknowledging their presence in the situation. That becomes clear when McCain’s further comments in the same time frame. After Hamas won that election, McCain made clear the conditions for engagement of Hamas in a press release dated 1/26/06:

"In the wake of yesterday’s Palestinian elections, Hamas must change itself fundamentally - renounce violence, abandon its goal of eradicating Israel and accept the two-state solution. These elections are evidence that democracy is indeed spreading in the Middle East, but Hamas is not a partner for peace so long as they advocate the overthrow of Israel."

In an interview with CNN, McCain once again made clear that the US would not negotiate with terrorists, whether they got elected or not:

"CNN’S BETTY NGUYEN: All right, let’s shift over to the global front. The Bush administration is reviewing all aspects of U.S. aid to the Palestinians now that Hamas has won the elections. And I do have to quote you here. A State Department spokesman did say this: ‘To be very clear’ – and I’m quoting now – ‘we do not provide money to terrorist organizations.’ What does this do to the U.S. relationship with the Palestinians?

MCCAIN: Well, hopefully, that Hamas now that they are going to govern, will be motivated to renounce this commitment to the extinction of the state of Israel. Then we can do business again, we can resume aid, we can resume the peace process."

The context here is crystal clear. McCain envisioned a possible change in Hamas from a terrorist group to a legitimate political party, one that recognized Israel and renounced violence. Under those conditions, McCain said that we could engage them in talks designed to establish peace, and only under those conditions. The Bush administration had the same policy at the time. Neither the US nor John McCain supported meeting with Hamas without preconditions, and they certainly didn’t have policy advisers meeting with them while they conducted terrorist attacks and plotted an armed takeover of Gaza.

This attack meme demonstrates a breathtaking bit of intellectual dishonesty. We expect that from the hard Left. Coming from the Washington Post, even in its opinion section, it disappoints. So much for the layers of fact-checkers and editors. And now that our friends on the Left have acknowledged the terrorist status of Hamas, can they explain Malley’s presence on the Obama campaign for months while his connections to Hamas were fairly well known?

link

Amazing what a little context and the truth will do for a conversation isn't it?

[RunInRed 16,494]

CNN has confirmed that Barack Obama will respond directly to President Bush’s apparent criticism of his foreign policy vision, which includes a willingness to consider dialogue with Iran and other nations hostile to the United States. The Illinois senator’s response will come at a campaign event later Friday in South Dakota.

The news was first revealed by senior Obama foreign policy adviser Susan Rice on NBC Friday morning.

In an address before the Israeli Knesset Thursday, President Bush compared leaders who shared advocated dialogue with nations like Iran to politicians who appeased Nazi aggression in the years leading up to the Second World War.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/

Obama responds:

Bring on a foreign policy debate! Where is your money?

[arnaldoabru 11]

FOXNews.com - Foxnews.com has just learned that Bush could care less if achmed responds. The facts are out there. Agreeing to talk first no matter what is APPEASEMENT.

LINK THIS

Do you know what appeasement means?

Appeasement (n.): The policy of granting concessions to potential enemies to maintain peace

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/appeasement

Talking (n.): An exchange of ideas or opinions; a conversation

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/talk

They don't, but it sounds weak to them

[autigeremt 6,717]

New Campaign Slogan for Obama

When Bush Speaks, we Listen!!! And

[Tigermike 3,055]

This is the master politician?

Rookie mistakes again: Obama owns appeasement

posted at 2:00 pm on May 16, 2008 by Ed Morrissey

George Bush seems to have really rattled Barack Obama and the Democratic Party with his speech yesterday in the Israeli Knesset. Rather than ignoring Bush’s argument against appeasement, or adopting it, Barack Obama has declared that Bush intended his denunciation of appeasement as an attack on his campaign, even though Bush never even mentioned the nationality of modern appeasers in his speech. Obama lashed out in a speech today, calling Bush’s rhetoric “appalling”:

Barack Obama has called President Bush’s comments on appeasement “exactly the kind of appalling attack that’s divided our country and alienates us from the rest of the world.”

Obama criticized Republican rival John McCain and President Bush for “dishonest and divisive” attacks in hinting that the Democratic presidential candidate would appease terrorists.

Obama strongly responded Friday to the comments Bush made in Israel on Thursday and McCain’s subsequent words. Obama told a town hall meeting, “That’s the kind of hypocrisy that we’ve been seeing in our foreign policy, the kind of fear-peddling, fear mongering that has prevented us from actually making us safer.” …

Yesterday, Obama accused President Bush of “a false political attack” after Bush warned in Israel against appeasing terrorists — early salvos in a general election campaign that’s already blazing even as the Democratic front-runner tries to sew up his party’s nomination.

But Bush never mentioned any specific person in his speech today, and didn’t even specify that he was referring to Americans. Newsbusters has the full transcript, with this relevant part of the speech.

Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the 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 I could only have talked to Hitler, all 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.

Some people suggest if the United States would just break ties with Israel, all our problems in the Middle East would go away. This is a tired argument that buys into the propaganda of the enemies of peace, and America utterly rejects it. Israel’s population may be just over 7 million. But when you confront terror and evil, you are 307 million strong, because the United States of America stands with you.

No one in the US who runs for public office has suggested that the US break with Israel to appease terrorists. Obama certainly hasn’t suggested that, and perhaps apart from the really lunatic fringes of both Left and Right, that notion doesn’t get any oxygen at all here. Obviously, Bush wasn’t referring to American politicians in this passage, but instead politicians in Europe and elsewhere who have either an animus towards Israel or appreciation for dhimmitude. Nothing — and I mean nothing — in this speech points to any candidate or the Democratic Party, unless they identify themselves as the reference.

Obama and his surrogates drew those connections themselves. Instead of acknowledging the historical truth of appeasement’s failures, they chose to argue with it. Obama could have taken the smart route and embraced it to explain how he understands the lessons of appeasement, which is why his talks with Iran would not result in it. Instead, he got volcanically defensive, which suggests that even Obama sees the parallels between his everything’s-on-the-table approach and the Chamberlain diplomacy which resulted in dismantling Czechoslovakia.

And if Obama considers discussion of foreign policy “divisive”, then he should hie himself right back to Academia. Guess what, Senator? Presidential elections focus on foreign-policy principles, and if you can’t defend yours, then you have no business running for office.

Update: Newt Gingrich calls this a study in guilt:

Update II: Marc Ambinder reports that Bush meant to scold Jimmy Carter for his recent visit with Hamas, as Ed Gillespie explained to reporters in Saudi Arabia:

“We did not anticipate that it would be taken that way, because its kind of hard to take it that way when you look at the actual words. … There was some anticipation that someone might say you know its an expression of rebuke to former President Carter for having met with Hamas. that was something that was anticipated but no one wrote about it or raised it.”

And if one actually reads what Bush said, that interpretation looks a lot more likely than a supposed attack on Obama. Carter had just hugged Khaled Mashaal in Damascus and insisted that the US should open a dialogue with Hamas.

Barack Obama, meanwhile, continues to embarrass himself today at a presser on an attack that never was.

LINK

Yeah bring it on. But bring on the truth first.

[rexbo 104]

It's obvious that Biden is full of bull$hit. Obama is full of bull$hit. You are full of bull$hit.

Biden's comments are nothing but political spin and total bull$hit running from the truth. Biden shilling and spinning for Obama.

As has been explained in another thread:

Really, is that right? Let’s go back and take a look at the tape, from which Obama has been running for the last few weeks:

You Tube

from Obama's own website:

Without preconditions. That means without Iran guaranteeing anything, let alone the big prize of their nuclear program. Gibbs’ statement makes absolutely no sense in context of Bush’s remarks or Obama’s previous statements. If Iran gave up its nuclear weapons program today, Bush would open diplomatic contacts with Iran and might even consider a summit. He’s made that very clear over the last few years, holding out WTO sponsorship and normalized relations in exchange for just that concession.If Obama now says he won’t meet with Iran until they surrender their nuclear-weapons program, how exactly does that differ from Bush? And how does that fit with his previous statements about having talks “without preconditions”?

Beyond that, Obama has never explained how talks with Ahmadinejad would convince Iran to stop being, well, the lunatic mullahcracy that it is. Instead of supporting the grassroots efforts at real reform, Obama would simply give credence to the sham “reformers” the Guardian Council approves as part of its oppressive control over the political process in Iran. Meeting with Ahmadinejad, who has held regional conferences extolling a world without Israel or the US, would give the hard-liners a boost in stature while reducing our credibility with Iranians looking to rid themselves of the mullahcracy and establish real representative government. They don’t want us to bomb Iran into submission, but they also don’t want us to abandon them for a Neville Chamberlain-like illusory diplomatic exchange that changes nothing.

If Biden wants to eliminate the confusion on these points, then he needs to start with Barack Obama, who apparently has no clue what preconditions mean. Maybe he should have learned that before running for President.

What is B*&^T is the last 7 years.

You're right, the last 7 years with all of those buildings knocked down, those dirty bombs going off, those Americans dieing by the tens of thousands at the hands of Islamic fascists, armed and fueled by the free run they have in Afghanistan and Iraq. And don't forget the Second Great Depression we are in, with unemployment at >15%, bread lines going for miles down Pennsylvania Ave. This is really just a great pit of despair we are living in; but I'm not afraid, I know the Great Man with Hope will make all our dreams come true!