"If you really, really want war with Iran." Part 2: Rudy and Podhoretz

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

"This is a follow up on yesterday's episode of TPMtv, in which we ran through the list of foreign policy fanatics and Iran-war-mongers Rudy Giuliani has advising him. Now normally it's not reasonable to hold a candidate to every policy and particular embraced by their named advisors. But the case of Iran is unique. Rudy's key advisor on the issue is Norman Podhoretz. And as we showed in yesterday's episode, Podhoretz doesn't think we should threaten Iran with military action or leave it on the table or whatever the phrase may be. He says we must go to the war with Iran. We have to do it.

Nor is Iran just any foreign policy issue. It is the central foreign policy question before us right now. Rudy's key advisors says war is a must. And his advisor on Iran particularly, Michael Rubin, seems to lean strongly in the same direction, though I'm not sure if he's addressed the issue recently in public, as Podhoretz repeatedly has.

Yet to the best of my knowledge no one has asked Rudy this question, even though he's interviewed regularly these days. So who will ask it? The question is so central and his advisors' position is so clear, it's simply a journalistic responsibility for any reporters who gets a chance to ask it not to."

--Josh Marshall

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/056216.php

Part One:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/056028.php

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHfel3twH0w

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

1. "In Tehran by Summer" (TPM 10.11.07)

Rudy Giuliani has just announced a new raft of foreign policy advisors. And I guess the premise of the campaign is now that the Bush administration wasn't sufficiently riddled by neoconservative whackjobs.

Topping the list: Michael Rubin as Senior Iran and Turkey Advisor and Middle East Advisory Board Member.

I really don't know how to describe Rubin for those who aren't familiar with him. He worked at Doug Feith's Office of Special Plans. But that hardly does the matter justice -- rather like saying Dick Cheney was a supporter of the Iraq War. On the TPM Scale of Pure Neoconism (TM) Rubin gets well over 99%. Like the most interesting and frightening neos, Michael is that perfect mix of extreme factual knowledge and extreme lack of judgment, prone to wild-eyed theories and fantasies of various sorts but all in the end leading inexorably toward catastrophic policy moves for the United States.

You really might as well put Ahmed Chalabi as your top Mideast or Iran advisor.



http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/055716.php

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

3. previous post:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x3616229

[laststeamtrain]

2. Only crazy people want a 'war' on Iran.

Only a minority of likely voters in the US 'likes' the existing 'war'(occupation) of Iraq.

We've not been well served by the fourth estate. They seem not to be able to report this simple fact.

We hear way too much from war mongering idiots like Podhoretz & not enough from plain ol' regular Americans.

Word on the street? The neocon position is not so good. That should be on 24/7 cable news 24/7.

Too much time is given to people who don't know their butts from their elbows. William Kristol for one. When someone like that is mistaken for an 'expert' on anything it's madness.

Rudy is wrong. About pretty much everything. Just another money-grubbing skank.

I long for a candidate who's really, REALLY the opposite.