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Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Hillary the Hawk: The Neocons' favourite Democrat threatens to "obliterate" Iran



Hillary Clinton, in her most bellicose comments since the presidential race began, today threatened to “obliterate” Iran if it attacked Israel.

The Guardian reports:
"Speaking as voters went to the polls in the potentially crucial Pennsylvania primary, the New York senator said: "I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran (if it attacks Israel)."
Barack Obama immediately accused her of "sabre-rattling", saying this was the kind of language that had been used by the Bush administration over the last few years and was not helpful. Obama, responding to Clinton's interview, said: "One of the things that we've seen over the last several years is a bunch of talk using words like 'obliterate'. "It doesn't actually produce good results. And so I'm not interested in sabre-rattling."

Clinton’s statement is not only bellicose, it’s also extremely deceitful. Iran can’t launch a nuclear strike against Israel for the simple reason that it doesn’t possess nuclear weapons. Nor, as the Joint Intelligence Report concluded, does it have a nuclear weapons programme. Would Iran launch a conventional attack? To do so would be suicidal, knowing that Israel possesses nuclear weapons. The only scenario one could imagine an Iranian attack on Israel occuring is in retaliation to an Israeli pre-emptive strike on Iran's nuclear energy facilities, as leading Israeli politicians have already threatened. And if this sequence of events did happen, then Hillary Clinton believes it would be right for the US to "obliterate" Iran.

Hillary the Hawk is forecast to win the Pennsylvania primary tonight. But let’s hope that her margin of victory is so small that it will mean that this truly wretched woman drops out of the race for the Democratic nomination.

UPDATE: Richard Silverstein has written a very good Comment is Free piece on Hillary the Hawk's statements on Iran, which you can read here.

3 comments:

Graham Day said...

I'm trying not to have any illusions in Obama, but this demonstrates yet again that he's the only grown-up in the race for President (I include McCain, the "foreign policy pro" who continually gets things wrong on ... umm... foreign policy).

Anonymous said...

Good job the CIA never gets its intellegence wrong eh?

Imagine the trouble that could happen if they did...

Its good of Hillary to answer a direct question with a direct answer. If a hypothetical Iranian nuclear attack on Israel were to take place the US, as an ally of Isreal, would bomb the bejesus out of Iran under President Clinton. (ick) Not unreasonable, in fact its rather what you expect of an ally.

Massive storm in a teacup here.

Had Hillary said 'the time has come to see that the Islamic state be wiped off the map' then perhaps there would be a real story.

Cheers

Anonymous Pete

Douglas said...

Hillary may have won the primary vote in Pennsylvania, but only reduced Obama's delegate lead from 140 to 130.

However, it should be noted that the reported delegate counts for each candidate contain over 200 superdelegates, who could change their mind for any or no good reason.

The American blogosphere is starting to investigate Obama's relationship with Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn.

I hereby declare I don't like the people Barack Obama has surrounded himself with in the course of his life. I don't like Tony Rezko, I don't like Jeremiah Wright, I don't like Raila Odinga, and I don't like either Bill Ayers or Bernadine Dohrn. I don't like his voting record either, but I only have two years to go on.