Time's Joe Klein is out to prove that
McCain is lying about Obama's position on negotiating with Iran,
and doesn't know who is running the country.
He wrote:
On Friday, I promised to check into whether Obama
had ever said that he would negotiate--specifically, by name--with
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Indeed, according to the crack Time Magazine
research department and the Obama campaign, he never has.
As for J. Klein's first point,
Michael Goldfarb has already done
an able job of discrediting it by posting a video of Obama using
the name Ahmadinejad in the context of his pledge to negotiate with
Iran, so I expect that a correction will be forthcoming.
But J. Klein makes even more of a fool of himself -- if that's
at all possible -- by trying to suggest that Obama may have been
talking about Iran's supreme leader, rather than its president:
(Obama) did say that he would negotiate with the
Iranian leadership--but, on matters of foreign policy and Iran's
nuclear program, the guy in charge is the Supreme Leader Ali
Khamenei. As of today, John McCain was still accusing Obama of
wanting to negotiate with Ahmadinejad. Why doesn't the McCain
campaign and other assorted Republicans ever accuse Obama of
wanting to negotiate with Khamenei? Well, because Khamenei isn't
quite the flagrant anti-Semite Ahmadinejad is...and, as we keep
hearing, Obama has a Jewish problem.
I wonder what his definition of "flagrant anti-Semite" is, because
it turns out that while Ahmadinejad has called Israel a "stinking
corpse" that needed to be wiped off the map, Khamenei has
called it a "cancerous tumor" that
"should be removed from the region..."
As Reuters reported on Decmber 15, 2000:
"Iran's stance has always been clear on this ugly
phenomenon (Israel). We have repeatedly said that this cancerous
tumor of a state should be removed from the region," Khamenei told
thousands of Muslim worshippers in Tehran.
The larger point here is this. The left wants to portray McCain as
an ignoramus for constantly mentioning Ahmadinejad --the most
identifiable public face of Iran -- rather than Supreme Leader
Khamenei. J. Klein
proudly confronted McCain on this
at a press conference today. But it isn't as if Ahmadinejad is a
member of some opposition party, nor would he be allowed to make
the statements he does were his views not shared by the ruling
regime. It's pretty clear that his inflamatory statements
were just in keeping with long-standing Iranian policy.
So, McCain was absolutely correct when he responded to J.
Klein's chest-pounding interrogation by saying of Ahmadinejad
that:
When he's the person that comes to the United
Nations and declares his country's policy is the extermination of
the state of Israel, quote, in his words, wipe them off of the map,
then I know that he is speaking for the Iranian government and
articulating their policy and he was elected and is running for
reelection as the leader of that country.
If Obama and his media allies want to change course, and advocate
meeting with the guy who thinks Israel is a "cancerous tumor"
instead, that's their right.
But I say, let's call the whole thing off.
topics:
Foreign Policy, John McCain, Iran, Israel
