A comment from the Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff which he never would have been allowed to utter if Cheney was still in charge of our foreign policy:
WALLACE: A report in the Washington Times this week said that you believe that a military strike against Iran would spur Iran’s nuclear facilities, would spur a bloody retaliation against U.S. interests in the Middle East and around the world, and that you have come to believe we’re going to have to learn to live with an Iranian nuclear weapon. Is that true?
MULLEN: Well, actually, I honestly didn’t even — I didn’t see that report. I’ve been one who have been concerned about a strike on Iran for some time because it could be very destabilizing, and it is the unintended consequences of that which aren’t predictable.
That was Saturday. This was today:
“It (a military strike) is a really important place to not go, if we can not go there in any way, shape or form,” he said.
A very important place to not go. Indeed. Dick must be having a fit about now.
kind of violates the ‘all options are on table’ rule.
It’s kind of nice, don’t you think, to have an administration that has modified that policy to read, “All options are on the table, except the monumentally stupid ones.”
Just think, if the previous administration had included that exception, they wouldn’t have had two disastrous foreign wars to distract us from the unrestrained plundering of the banking sys– oh, yeah, I get it now.
obama made it pretty clear today as well
the israeli hawks, including the ones in the u.s., have got to be feeling seriously bummed…it’s gonna be hard tp put the spin bidens’ comment that they were trying.
Washington cannot “dictate to other countries what their security interests are.”
That was a Palin line in the campaign. Incredible Is this an AIPAC talking point? Considering the amount aid we give Israel and the fact they have been using our military aid to commit atrocities against the Palestinians. I think we do have a say. We should stop funding the occupation anyway. Pull all military aid.
To put it another way, maybe we should start talking about Israel’s responsibility to be a self-supporting, independent state if they expect anyone to recognize their sovereignty. As it stands now, they’re little more than a hobby project of the affluent American Zionist minority. That being the case, why should I — as an agnostic scientist — be taxed to fund the bizarre and kooky religious delusions of right-wing Jews and their right-wing evangelical fellow travelers?
God gave you that land? Well, maybe God can fucking fund it, then. I’m sure tired of buying bullets for the IDF when I can’t buy adequate health care for my family.
I’ve been saying for months we need to end this alliance. I don’t care one bit if Israel stands or falls, it has nothing to do with me and our support for Israel has done nothing but undermine our interests and make it easier for Israel to spy on us.
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Interesting to read the whole speech with Q&A afterwards.
ADM. MULLEN: … Where we’re challenged here is the timeframe – which depending on who you talk to, the estimates of when they [Iran] would develop a nuclear weapon and again based on both your assumptions and who you talk to it’s been one to three years. It’s sort of in that kind of timeframe.
ADM. MULLEN: I spent a lot of time in direct engagement and time with my Israeli counterpart, General Ashkenazi. And over the last year, year-and-a-half – and this, I don’t think, is news to anybody – but fundamental to this is the Israelis see that Iran achieving a nuclear weapon capability adds an existential threat. And that fact is tied to the rhetoric of the leadership of Iran, which has said that they would seek to eliminate Israel.
And so what I think is very important, at least, certainly, from my perspective, is to understand the word “existential.” And that Israel gets to speak for itself, act for itself – it’s a sovereign country. But that’s a very real part of this entire discussion. And I think actually most, from my perspective, my counterparts, my engagements in the Middle East, including most of the Gulf area, understand that they may or may not agree, but they understand that that’s clearly where Israel is.
And so that, to me, is a very real part of all of what we’re dealing with here. And that gets back to the criticality, in my view, of solving this before Iran gets a nuclear capability, or that anyone would take action to strike them. And I think that window is a very narrow window. So I’m actually encouraged by our political leadership committed to the dialogue, even after the challenges that obviously arose in the election cycle in Iran. And so I think that commitment – and I’m hopeful that that dialogue is productive. I worry about it a great deal if it’s not.
As I staed earlier, Mullen’s statement on military option ambivalent at the least.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."