Digging the Hole Deeper
By Charles Lemos on May 23, 2008 at 8:00 PM in Barack Obama, Bill Richardson, Iran, John McCain
Trying to dig himself out of hole on his willingness to meet with global villians face to face without precondition, Obama stutters some more:
Obama objected on CNN this week to “this obsession with Ahmadinejad” and explained guardedly: “I would be willing to meet with Iranian leaders if we had done sufficient preparations for that meeting.
“Whether Ahmadinejad is the right person to meet with right now, we don’t even know how much power he is going to have a year from now,” Obama added. “He is not the most powerful person in Iran.”
He said he would expect “to meet with those people who can actually make decisions” in Iran on its nuclear program, its aid to terrorists and destabilization in Iraq.
Well true, the Ayotollah Khomeini is the Supreme Leader of Iran but he doesn’t run the day-to-day affairs of the Iranian government. Ahmadinejad has more day-to-day control and while the Ayotallah Khomenini is likely to sign off on any high level contact between the United States and the Islamic Republic, it is unlikely that the Iranians would want to exclude Ahmadinejad from those deliberations.
And who in Iran is going to be willing to meet with a President Obama if Ahmadinejad is being purposefully excluded from a meeting?
And the “experienced’ foreign affairs expert Bill Richardson is beyond lame with this argument:
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, for one, is drawing distinctions between Iran and Cuba.
A veteran of semiofficial negotiations with dictators, he said Obama should be open to meeting Cuban President Raul Castro, but “I think you don’t talk to Ahmadinejad. You talk to some of the moderate clerics.”
Those conversations with moderate clerics would have to be, ipso facto, behind close doors and through back channesl. For which cleric in Iran is going accept a public meeting with Obama that sidesteps the leadership of Iran? This is the most inane argument I have ever heard. From Richardson? This is sheer stupidity and they are giving McCain an opening.
As I have said before, many issues that have not been an issue in the Democratic primary for a variety of reasons from media bias to Clinton’s unwillingness to really crucify Obama will jump to the fore-front in the general election.
In this instance, Obama’s comments from July 2007 at the Citadel CNN/Youtube Debate are now front and center in the campaign. Furthermore they are likely to stay front and center because the GOP won’t let go of them. And Obama doesn’t play defense very well, does he? The Obama camp keeps on digging themselves a deeper hole.
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