Actually, North Korea played the earlier Clinton administration for suckers. (The Guaranteed Framework even had a fancy name as well as fine feelings about reaching an agreement that we knew that nation would break.)

That's with or without anyone in Team Obama realizing this means extra room for fuel tax increases.

They seem to be itching for us to get involved so they can blast out the old rhetoric with a little something to back it up. Damn meddlesome west trying to bring down our perfect republic!

If you condemn the violence and simply state it's up to the Iranian people, then they can't twist that to their ends and they have nobody to pass the buck onto. It looks like a very pathetic attempt to shift the protesters anger onto the old enemy, we shouldn't give them any level of credibility.

And what does that mean exactly? A speech condemning their repressive actions? Sanctions? No diplomatic relations with Iran? Except all of those things are already in place. You've already said you don't want military involvement. So what exactly do you have your knickers in a bunch about? Ignoring North Korea until it got a nuclear weapon? Oh wait.. that was Bush.

Yes and no. I'm all for women's rights. I'm all for women not being forced to wear a burka. However, if a woman wants to wear a burka or a head scarf or a cross or a sari, she should be able to wear it and Sarkozy has no business telling her what she can and cannot put on her body. As for organized religion, I don't have a problem with people freely worshipping or not worshipping as they see fit.

As for whether this makes Obama look like a wimp? It makes Obama look rational and Sarkozy look like he's trying to prove or compensate for something. I expect you only liked his statement because he was bashing Muslims. He certainly wasn't supporting freedom. Freedom means Sarkozy doesn't dictate what women can or cannot wear.

Who cares who wins the election in Iran.

If the Iranian religious ruling elites find out, along with the citizens, that the world will not stand for a rigged election then the stage is set for peaceful transition through voting.

It’s not a matter of who wins this time. It’s the process that counts and the world’s reaction to that process.

“1. Most of the lefties here in the USA egging Obama on are simply childish and want to Feel Better.

2. Probably all of the righties here in the USA bashing Obama are opportunistic cheap-shot shooters.

3. If anyone Did Something, it would be the USA, followed when it was safe and politically sound by France et al.”

You get my personal hero award for those word, DLS. LOL!

Mirror talk, as well as classic liberal misuse of “think” [sic]. I've already noted numerous times that those pushing Obama to make more harsh statements and support the revolt (most emotionally his critics on the Left, which all true thinkers would have predicted, anyway) want to repeat the elder Bush's blunder with the Kurds and Shiites after the first Gulf War and subsequent revolts.

(Of course, the Left does diverge not only in focing primarily on Feelings but in unwillingness to go in with military force to back up a revolt that seems to be succeeding, or that faces harsh repression as a result.)

Some of us choose not to force Obama to crow loudly, no more than we are going to seek “regime change” in Sudan not because of terrorism or other serious threats but because we Feel Bad about what they are doing to their blacks in the south of the country (something actually several decades in effect).

In our case, it would be more like English Only, prop 187, and other anti-PC stuff hated by the haters.

This is exactly what Obama said:

The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching. We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost. We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people. The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights.

As I said in Cairo, suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. The Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions of their own government. If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect the dignity of its own people and govern through consent, not coercion.

So how is that not making a clear and strong statement about the government respecting free and fair elections? How is this 'he politically tip-toed around this pivotal moment' or “What people are saying is that the Leader of the Free World should take a stand on free, fair and honest elections, while it matters, without waiting for polls or focus groups, showing some courage of his convictions, not voting “present”, putting himself on the line, getting some skin in the game, getting off the bleachers and on the field and finally, being a man”? The only actual skin he could get in the game is if he came out unequivocally for the candidate the people of Iran support or if he committed troops. That is skin. What exactly are you asking him to do then? Do you know for a FACT that Mousavi won? You've danced around that question pretty solidly and several commentors have asked you to answer it.

[applause]

This was mentioned, I believe, on CNN this weekend. And it leads to the following thought, if you think:

Didn't we, not only the USA but the rest of the West and Mossad, get embarrassed about the quality of intelligence about Iraq and the state circa 2002-3 of its weapons of mass destruction and other related programs? Prior to the war, Hussein had them and used them. But once we invaded, well — we're still waiting to find those missing WMDs, aren't we? (They were not under Bush's chair, don't forget.)

Have many people forgotten that lesson? And they neglect it with a larger, more active rogue regime, who has been assisted by the likes of Russia and China for ages at least with military capability? Do you really think that counter-intelligence in the country (where the regime is still a target of activist groups that have Western assistance at least to some extent) has been neglected?

Food for thought, for those who think…

* * *

“[Sarkozy s]ounds like someone liberals would love, if he didn’t make Obama seem like such a wimp.”

1. Most of the lefties here in the USA egging Obama on are simply childish and want to Feel Better.

2. Probably all of the righties here in the USA bashing Obama are opportunistic cheap-shot shooters.

3. If anyone Did Something, it would be the USA, followed when it was safe and politically sound by France et al.

Thanks for the great post.

The people who want Obama to use force against Iran are right… that's one way to stop the Iranians from fighting each other. They will then unite and fight against us, as an enemy occupier.

Does anyone on here remember the 2000 prez elections and the fact that due to irregularities that the Supreme Court essentially decided it, even though the person who received the popular vote was not made president?

Does anyone remember the massive 1992 Rodney King riots, complete with rampaging looting and burning cities…. over police brutality? I remember that LA was practically on lockdown, and the riots weren't just confined to South Central LA, but the looters made it to other parts of teh city, including Bevery Hills….

We handled both of these problems and did not want other countries to interfere. Would we have been happy if Russia choose to send in their troops to help our rioting in 1992? Thereby taking advantage of our situation and perhaps using that as an excuse to maintain Russian troops on our soil?

What right do we have to tell Iran who to handle their internal affairs?

I don't like the beatings and squelching of the media in Iran (or anywhere for that matter). When the Iranian government's actions rise to the level of humanitarian abuse, then we should address those concerns. And Obama has made it clear to the Iranians that the US is against such abuses. Obama has called for the Iranian government to stop killing their own people. I think that's all we should do now. Why should we meddle any more than this?

Why do Americans treat other countries as US states? I mean… if there was rioting after elections in some US state, then we would expect our national government to step in. But Iran is a different country.

The Great Satan-Like thingy called France is causing the dissent!!

Doesn't quite fit, huh? The Iranian regime would like nothing more than to paint the dissenters with our words and crack down hard on them. But they can't now. They just have to deal with THEIR PEOPLE. And it's making them crack.

Let’s see what the French President said, just to gain a flavor of where he’s coming from.

“In our country, we cannot accept that women be prisoners behind a screen, cut off from all social life, deprived of all identity,” Sarkozy said to extended applause in a speech at the Chateau of Versailles southwest of Paris.
“The burqa is not a religious sign, it's a sign of subservience, a sign of debasement—I want to say it solemnly,” he said. “It will not be welcome on the territory of the French Republic.”

Not only is for women’s rights and dignity, he is against the strictures of an organized religion.

Sounds like someone liberals would love, if he didn’t make Obama seem like such a wimp.

It’s hard to get through to liberals, but I’ll try one more time.

None of us on the right – me, the right wing pundits, the neocons, Dick Cheney or anyone else – is advocating any candidate.

We are standing with the people in the street protesting the rigging of an election. Whoever wins, wins. Just don’t insult the Iranian people and the world by claiming such a flawed election was free and fair.

If non-violent change is ever to come, elections need to be credible. Non-credible elections need to be protested, mocked and denounced by the other world leaders. Half-assed, careful, limp-wristed, almost-denunciations are a declaration of how the U.S. favors conflict avoidance over democracy.

When your neighbor is finished beating his wife, you can either ignore her black eye or you can come out and say this ends now. One shows restraint, the other takes balls.

Obama is the model of restraint.

So you want a president who will tell people what they can or can not wear in defiance of their constitutionally guarenteed freedom of religion? Is this another “principled position of the Right”, anti-relgious freedom? The contradictions must be making you dizzy.