2008 Elections: The Nuclear Threat

Good grief. Just when we were starting back on that old Clinton Love Roller Coaster, beginning to feel sympathetic to Hillary for the misogyny of the media vultures, she finds a way to knock us back on our behind and go WTF??

Raw Story tells us that Senator Clinton went on Good Morning America yesterday to issue this statement:

“I want the Iranians to know, if I am president, we will attack Iran,” if they launch nukes against Israel, Clinton said. “I want them to understand that. … We would be able to totally obliterate them. That’s a terrible thing to say, but those people who run Iran need to understand that.”

Clinton said she hoped her stern warning would serve as a deterrent from Iran doing anything “foolish and tragic.”

Say WHAT??? The Iranians don't have nuclear weapons. Israel does. The Iranians are a decade or more away having functional nuclear weapons. Israel has a goddamned nuclear arsenal.

So how exactly will Iran launch nukes against Israel, Senator? Or is this a different verse of the "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" song that Senator John McSenile has been singing lately? Wait, let us rephrase that. Are you fucking insane, Senator? Are you out of your fucking mind? Are you just tossing off this statement because you, like Senator McSenile, share the hope of keeping your nation in a state of perpetual war?

Iran has not threatened Israel with nukes because Iran has no nukes. We hold no brief for the mullahs who run that country. But threatening to obliterate a nation, threatening a nuclear attack &mdash isn't that the reason we helped Israel acquire an arsenal of nukes? Israel is perfectly capable of defending herself. She has more nukes than the rest of the Middle-East combined. Because no one else in the Middle East has, or has plans to acquire, nuclear weapons.

Don't you read the intelligence reports? The NIE reports, the IAEA reports? Oh, that's right. You don't. That's why you gave George Bush your vote to authorize the endless war against and occupation of Iraq. Despite the fact that 42% of the Senate voted against such authorization. Despite the fact that Senator Carl Levin proposed an amendment that would have forced Bush's neocon warmonger cabal to seek further permission to wage war. You preferred to give an idiot a blank check and then acted surprised when he used it.

And now you talk so lightly about obliterating an entire nation. Using nuclear weapons against Iran will affect these countries:

• Iraq
  
• Armenia
  
• Azerbaijan
  
• Turkmenistan
  
• Afghanistan
  
• Pakistan
  
• Oman
  
• Qatar
  
• UAE
  
• Saudi Arabia
  
• Kuwait
  
• Bahrain

In addition, fallout would affect:

• Yemen
  
• Egypt
  
• Jordan
  
• Syria
  
• Lebanon
  
• Turkey
  
• Cyprus
  
• Georgia
  
• Uzbekistan
  
• Kashmir
  
• India

Are you insane? You're threatening an imaginary enemy with real consequences that could affect half the world's population?

Back away from the red button, Senator. Do not pass Go. Do not collect delegates or votes. We don't need another lunatic within a mile of the controls of the largest nuclear arsenal in the world.

Holy quacking duckshit. Why do you do this to yourself, and to all the people who once loved and respected you? Why?

People, anyone who cannot distinguish between enemies real and imagined, threats real and imagined, anyone who can talk so casually of obliterating a nation and possibly killing and definitely sickening billions of people has no business being near the reins of power. Do you want that kind of blood on your hands? Vote for Ron Paul, vote for your local dogcatcher, write in your grandson, but do not let this woman near the red button.

Update: To his credit, Barack Obama sounds a welcome note of sanity. His comments, in part:

Obama promised a swift and forceful response to an attack on Israel by Iran, but he said the hypothetical of a nuclear attack “presupposes a failure to begin with.” Iran does not have a nuclear weapon yet and the US should do everything possible to stop that, he said. Obama has said he would open diplomatic channels with Iran, but he has not ruled out the possibility of an attack on the country to prevent its acquisition of nuclear weapons.

We can live with that.

Raw Story has the video clip.

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