Democrats Accuse Bush of Politics in Speech in Israel
The president compares negotiating with Iran to appeasing Hitler
Democrats lashed out at President Bush, accusing him of engaging in partisan politics during remarks he made to Israel's parliament today.
"What I see emerging in this campaign is an ugly pattern I quite frankly find disturbing and I think is threatening our national security," says Sen. Joseph Biden, the Democratic chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "We should not be engaging in the parliaments of other nations, making political points against your opponents that are outrageous."
The Delaware Democrat was referring to remarks that Bush made comparing the idea of negotiating with Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the appeasement of Adolf Hitler before World War II. The remark was widely seen as a direct attack on Democratic presidential frontrunner Barack Obama, who has suggested that the next president should consider meeting the leaders of such U.S. foes as Iran and North Korea.
"Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along," Bush said during events celebrating Israel's 60th anniversary. "We have heard this foolish delusion before."
Bush cited the remarks of a U.S. senator who suggested in 1939 that he could have negotiated with Hitler to avert the Nazi invasion of Poland. "We have an obligation to call this what it is—the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history," Bush declared.
Obama condemned the president for launching a "false political attack," while Biden called the remarks "malarkey" during a conference call with reporters (although he declined to repeat a stronger expletive that he uttered earlier in the day).
Biden noted that the Bush administration has conducted a series of negotiations with North Korea despite its record of proliferating nuclear technology, and has even conducted some low-level meetings with Iranian diplomats. "This fellow seems to be out of touch with his own administration," Biden says. "His own secretary of defense and the secretary of state favor engagement with Iran."
He pointed to remarks that Defense Secretary Robert Gates made Wednesday about the need to use a combination of pressure and incentives to launch a dialogue with Iran. "We need to figure out a way to develop some leverage...and then sit down and talk with them," Gates told a group of retired diplomats. "If there is going to be a discussion, then they need something, too. We can't go to a discussion and be completely the demander, with them not feeling that they need anything from us."
—Kevin Whitelaw
Reader Comments
Cleaning One's Own Doorstep
Looks like even country music stations are upset with Bush attacking an American citizen:
“Currently, 147 country music stations have instituted the [Bush] ban, a number which has been growing by the hour. Clear Channel, a major syndicator to all radio formats across America, is considering the ban, which would increase the numbers significantly and be a major blow to the White House. Several Clear Channel stations have independently instituted their own ban.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-j-elisberg/country-radio-stations-sh_b_102147.html
Bush may find his Hitler remarks backfiring even further on him considering his own well documented family history of appeasement, support and money laundering for Hitler.
http://newsmine.org/archive/cabal-elite/families/bush-dynasty/bush-family-fortune-from-nazis-dutch-connection.txt
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/012303A.ma.dead.htm
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0925-01http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=8783.htm
http://ecosyn.us/Bush-Hitler/Bush-Hitler.html
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/ROG309A.html
Obama the Reactionary
This whole story is a reactionary farse. What do all the headlines say but that Bush said something about Barack... Is there any sense arguing now that the unpopular president was not interjecting presidential politics but it was the presidential politician himself. Barack talks about being a unifying leader but he is the one interjecting this little political firestorm. Only to take our attention off the fact that Hillary is still winning even though he is the 'presumptive nominee,' and his own statements of talking with Iran without preconditions? Interesting that he didn't this another 'distraction' from the real issues of the campaign.
Hypocracy? Nah.
If Bush and the Republican party weren't so preoccupied triple-knotting the noose they're currently hanging themselves with, maybe we could have some real debate. Instead, it's just mindless jabber from the master of it, good ol' Dubya, and the reactions of horror on both sides (Democrats at the mind-numbing fear-mongering, Republicans at the deeper and deeper divide Bush is carving between them and the American people whom they are scrabbling madly and so far unsuccessfully to turn around and win over this fall).
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