SubscribeDemocrats Pounce On ‘No Nukes’ NIE Claim
Our friends at CNS News have put together a nice selection of reactions to the NIE report:
Iran Stopped Nuclear Weapons Program in 2003, Report Says
By Susan Jones
CNSNews.com Senior Editor
December 04, 2007
(CNSNews.com) - A new intelligence report released on Monday says Iran apparently stopped developing nuclear weapons four years ago…
According to a New York Times analysis published on Tuesday, “Rarely, if ever, has a single intelligence report so completely, so suddenly, and so surprisingly altered a foreign policy debate here.”
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) was one of the Democrats who — in May 2006 — requested the intelligence estimate on Iran to prevent President Bush from going to war with that country as he did with Iraq.
On Monday, Reid said the latest National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) challenged “some of this administration’s alarming rhetoric about the threat posed by Iran.”
Said Reid, “We should be having a surge of diplomacy with Iran, and based upon this, I think it would be a pretty good idea.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said the NIE shows that international monitoring and targeted sanctions can be effective in preventing nuclear proliferation:
“While we should harbor no illusions about the intentions of some Iranian leaders, the new Iran NIE suggests there is time for a new policy toward Iran that deters it from restarting its nuclear program while also improving relations overall.”
Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich accused the “pro-war” Bush administration of “manipulating intelligence.”
“The President and Vice President have been beating the war drums, and the House and the Senate have been dancing to that beat,” Kucinich said in a news release.”
Kucinich also criticized his fellow Demoratic presidential hopefuls for saying that “all options are on the table” when it comes to Iran. Given the new intelligence report, Kucinich said he would demand that the other candidates “explain their susceptibility to Bush’s claims of Iranian nuclear threats.”
“Why can’t Senators Clinton, Obama, and Edwards recognize that their threatening statements and actions against Iran are not only naive and foolhardy, they are also diplomatically and militarily provocative?” Kucinich asked.
“Whatever those candidates say today, remember what they said before: Iran must be stopped at all cost. The fact that Iran stopped pursuing nuclear weaponry four years ago is more than an inconvenient revelation for those candidates. It’s an indictment of their judgment and their qualifications to lead this nation.”
Last year, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton accused President Bush of “downplaying” the threat of a nuclear Iran. “[W]e we must move as quickly as feasible for sanctions in the United Nations,” Clinton said in a January 2006 speech at Princeton University.
On Monday, Clinton’s campaign said the new intelligence assessment on Iran validates her push for diplomacy…
It was ever thus.
6 Responses to “Democrats Pounce On ‘No Nukes’ NIE Claim”
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December 4th, 2007 at 1:07 pm
OK! Now I got this connection between Nancy Pelosi & THE SCARECROW & I can’t get it out of my head.
“First they took my leg & threw it over there! Then they took my other leg & threw it over there!”
Yeah, that just about defines our great leader. She’s all over the place.
December 4th, 2007 at 2:14 pm
“The President and Vice President have been beating the war drums, and the House and the Senate have been dancing to that beat,” Kucinich said in a news release.
*sigh* Not that any thinking person takes this man seriously (which apparently means there are plenty unthinking people in Ohio), but just for a bit of entertainment….
How dare he?! What a disgusting display of racist ethnocentrism. It’s a shame that in this day and age, a self-proclaimed (self-promoting, but what’s the difference) progressive should stoop to such degrading language. On behalf of Native Americans everywhere, I condemn these disgusting words, the intent of which was to compare the President and his minions to the vicious stereotype of American Indians as drum-beating, warmongering savages. Not that I am a Native American, but hey, that doesn’t stop Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and other assorted scum from claiming to speak for other “victimized” groups that they, as successful, powerful white people have little in common with (except, perhaps, for the belief that all white people are racists, and all white males are sexist racists…except for Democrats, of course, they are the “good white folks”).
Is anybody surprised the Democrats are jumping on this NIE like a loose ball in the endzone? How could they avoid another chance to engage “have your cake and eat it too” politics. As many of you have said countless times already today and yesterday, this report comes from the same organization that claimed Iraq had an active, massive WMD program, the same organization Democrats have decried as shills of the administration, and yet NOW they want to believe the NIE is absolute 100% verfiable truth?
Its just like voting for the war before they voted against it. That’s today’s Democratic Party for you.
December 4th, 2007 at 2:34 pm
Kucinich?!!! Wasn’t he the mayor of Munchkin Land?
But seriously, I happen to be a native American. Of couse, I’m used to it. I was born & raised in New Jersey.
December 4th, 2007 at 5:04 pm
BS. The muslims will stop at nothing to subjegate and conquer the world for islam. Don’t think for a second that they are not attempting to build or acquire nukes with their oil money! Bush needs to get serious about destroying islam and fighting to win instead of lying and saying islam is a religion of peace. Can you imagine the crusaders saying “hmm should we stop the islamic invasion or try to understand why they hate us and appease them”? We have been fighting the islamic invasion for 1,200 years, we need to fight to win and we need to stop the socialist liberal propoganda machine from guaranteeing our defeat.
December 4th, 2007 at 5:37 pm
Dennis Kucinich doesn’t understand the Middle East AT ALL! Remember in the Koran a Muslim can lie to the infidel? Iran doesn’t have peaceful intentions. I see this as the calm before the the storm.
“Kucinich?!!! Wasn’t he the mayor of Munchkin Land?”
RB, I thought he was the UFO King! LOL
December 4th, 2007 at 5:42 pm
Hi Tex:
Well, you’re close. He was actually E.T.’s stunt double.