McCain:
McCain paints Obama as naive about Middle East
WASHINGTON (CNN) — Sen. John McCain Monday called for tougher worldwide pressure on Iran and painted his potential rival Sen. Barack Obama as naive about the Middle East.
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee called for “targeted sanctions that will impose a heavy cost on the regime’s leaders,” such as limiting Iran’s ability to import gasoline, denying travel visas to its leaders, freezing their assets and imposing financial sanctions on its central bank.
McCain was speaking at the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the influential pro-Israel lobbying organization.
In a clear sign McCain has begun his general election campaign, the speech was peppered with attacks on Obama, the Illinois senator who is the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Wrestling With Reality:
Any country with 150 nuclear weapons, while all other regional adversaries have none, is in a position of strength. Wars(Iraq) and rumors of wars(Iran) is all the neocons can campaign on. They are truly naive about the economics of their own courntry(America – not Israel)
They are truly naive about managing weather disasters. They are truly naive about wars even though wars are the “strong” points of neocons.
Neocons have nothing to campaign on. Most of what America cared deeply about was train-wrecked by the Bush team. The neocons have, for the most part, stopped responding to the American electorate on some major issues. What can they say about the price of oil – “we are addicted to oil“?. What can they say about America’s economy – “we are not in a recession“? What did they say about handling the aftermath of Katrina – “you are doing a fine job“?
The Bush team and neocons created train-wreck after train-wreck in their standard job performances. Maybe the Bush team needed to perform in an area where there was no competition. Foreign policy is the Bush team’s domain.
For some reason, no other world leaders wanted the job of hunting down terrorist throughout the world. That was just the challenge for the Bush team and the war loving neocons. Getting the resources of war – money and young lives, was no problem for the STRONGEST MAN ON EARTH. It would have been a problem if the neocons had to produce their own resources to fight the war. They used OPR(other people’s resources). So far, they have not earned nor saved the country much in terms of assets. .
Senator McCain is not the only one who believes that naivity or worse is still a factor in America’s Middle East’s misadventure.There are many others who questioned America’s role in the Middle East. Here are a few: :
Prince Andrew:
Prince Andrew rebukes America over Iraq
By Toby Helm, Public Policy Editor
The Duke of York has launched an unprecedented attack on President George W Bush’s White House administration for failing to listen more to the advice of the British Government over the Iraq war.The Duke of York has criticised the Bush administration over the Iraq war. The Duke of York expressed his regret that the US failed to heed British advice over post-war Iraq. the Duke expresses his strong personal regret that the US failed to heed British advice over the post-war strategy for Iraq, with disastrous consequences.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1577608/Prince-Andrew-rebukes-America-over-Iraq.html
Tyler Drumheller
:
Tyler Drumheller, a retired 26 year veteran with the CIA, told CBS’s Ed Bradley:
“The idea of going after Iraq was U.S. policy. It was going to happen one way or the other,”
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/21/60minutes/main1527749.shtml
Hans Blix:
A war of utter folly
Responsibility for this spectacular tragedy must lie with those who ignored the facts five years ago
Hans Blix The Guardian,
Thursday March 20 2008
The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a tragedy – for Iraq, for the US, for the UN, for truth and human dignity. I can only see one gain: the end of Saddam Hussein, a murderous tyrant. Had the war not finished him he would, in all likelihood, have become another Gadafy or Castro; an oppressor of his own people but no longer a threat to the world. Iraq was on its knees after a decade of sanctions.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/mar/20/iraq.usa
Sir Jeremy Greenstock:
Top aide’s damning attack on Blair’s Iraq war
By Andrew Pierce and Thomas Harding
Last Updated: 1:52AM GMT 23/02/2007
A damning assessment of Tony Blair’s lack of leadership in Iraq amid its descent into lawlessness has been made by one of Britain’s most senior diplomats.
Sir Jeremy Greenstock, the former ambassador to the United Nations and the first British envoy to Iraq, said the Prime Minister had taken his “eye off the ball” in the crucial first days and weeks after the liberation, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.
In the starkest language concerning the failure of the Government to anticipate the insurgency, Sir Jeremy said: “In the days following the victory of 9 April [2003] no one, it seems to me, was instructed to put the security of Iraq first. To put law and order on the streets first. There was no police force. There was no constituted army except the victorious invaders.
“And there was no American general that I could … establish who was given the accountable responsibility to make sure that the first duty of any government – and we were the government – was to keep law and order on the streets. There was a vacuum from the beginning in which looters, saboteurs, the criminals, the insurgents moved very quickly
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1543458/Top-aide’s-damning-attack-on-Blair’s-Iraq-war.html
Pope Benedict XVI:
NEW YORK (CNN) — Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday recalled growing up during the Nazi era in his native Germany and stressed the “fundamental importance of freedom” as he addressed a rally of young people in New York.
Holocaust carnival float shocks in Brazil
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jan 29, 2008 (AFP) – Jewish groups in Brazil have expressed disgust over a controversial float to appear in Brazil’s upcoming carnival parade that depicts dead victims of the Nazi Holocaust.
A Judge refused to allow that float to participate in the Mardi Gras parade.
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German mail firm issues stamps of Hitler deputy:
FRANKFURT, May 21 (Reuters) – German mail company Deutsche Post has inadvertently issued stamps bearing the image of Adolf Hitler’s former deputy, Rudolf Hess, the company said on Wednesday.
Deutsche Post printed 20 stamps with Hess next to a bouquet of flowers as part of a service which allows clients to order custom-made envelopes, a company spokesman said.
“It is very unfortunate. But it happened,” the spokesman said. “I presume it came from the far-right scene. But those 20 envelopes won’t shake up German democracy.”
The stamps would be offensive to Jewish groups and embarrassing to Germans anxious to live down the country’s Nazi past.
The company said it would make every effort to avoid a repeat of the incident.
The Hess blunder was not the first time customers had tried to order stamps commemorating Nazi leaders, the spokesman said.
Earlier this year, the company intercepted a request to have stamps printed featuring Hitler as a small child, he said.
The latest delivery stemmed from a private order made in March, a few weeks before Hess’s birthday, he added.
Hess, who served as Hitler’s deputy before he flew to Britain in 1941 on an apparent peace mission, was tried at Nuremberg for war crimes and sentenced to life in Berlin’s Spandau prison.
He was the only prisoner in the vast complex for the last 21 years and was guarded by jailers from occupying Allied powers until he committed suicide in 1987 aged 93. (Reporting by Eva Kuehnen; Editing by Giles Elgood)
http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssIndustryMaterialsUtilitiesNews/idUSL2189519920080521
The people who ought to know better, may be playing a role in bringing back reminders of the Nazi era. A “concentration camp” whether it hold Jews or Palestinians is not something one nation should enforce on another. Much progress toward a world of tolerance had been made – until the Bush team, its neocons and its Middle East sidekick came along.
It is ironic that the Bush team’s Middle East sidekick may have played a role in reminding the world of the Nazis’.collective punishment of a “confined” group of people. That was not acceptable to the world during the WWII era and it still isn’t acceptable today – for most of the world. Neocons may be an exception..
Revisit “The Age of The Neocons” at:
http://joejolly.wordpress.com/2008/05/08/the-age-of-neocons/
Tags: 150 nuclear weapons, american israel public affairs committee, blair, Foreign Policy, Hans Blix, hitler, holocaust, Iran, mccain, Obama, pope benedict xvi, prince andrew, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, tyler drumheller, Wars
