If those were his answers, he DOES NOT DESERVE TO BE ANYWHERE NEAR the presidency.

He’s an idiot. And unread. And uninformed.

Eat him out of house and home. Best use of his campaign dollars.

Great question. You definately showed him that progressive bloggers are intelligent and tough and aren’t going to give anyone a free ride. On that note…if you happen to speak with Harry Reid I would love to find the answer to the question…â€Where is phase 2 of the senate intelligence report on pre-war Iraq†Yesterday Boxer was asked about using (is it article 21?) to shut down the senate to go into closed session to speak about it. Well there is still no phase 2 report. I am wondering where it is. Just throwing it out there. Thanks

I second jmba’s request, if you can manage it:
â€Where is phase 2 of the senate intelligence report on pre-war Iraqâ€

well, if we’re going to discuss pet peeves…. I’m sick of seeing YKOS as a gathering of â€thousands of bloggersâ€. ALthough there are lots of â€name†bloggers attending, most of those in attendance are readers of blogs who understand that the internet can be a powerful engine of change, and want to be a part of that change (or just wanted to meet some of the people they have been communicating with through comments and diaries on DailyKos for years.)

It’s becoming apparent that a large number of people in power are attempting to lead the country into the â€terrorism = WMD†idea without actually saying it. I think that and the nebulous â€regional strategy†are the guiding principles to the US’ foreign policy posture.

p.lukasiak

the term is used interchangably.. bloggers are posters on Daily Kos and front pagers as well. I like â€managing editors†for the front pagers, â€bloggers†for the diarists, but whatever.

Please tell me (or refer me)to more about Boxer. Did she REALLY endorse Lieberman?

Don’t kid yourself, Empty Wheel.

Don’t get me wrong – your website is brilliant… but the idea that you might have gotten him to think differently about this subject is a long shot.

If this man is willing to say â€Iran is the biggest WMD threat out there†he is so far lost to simple reason that nothing you say is going to make a difference. When an elected official speaks to you like this, so insultingly, like some kind of automated talking point robot, the truly revolutionary response would be to:

1. Walk away
2. Throw your drink in his face
3. Ask him if he is bought and paid for by the Israel Lobby
4. Ask him whether or not he is a fucking moron or something

Of course, simple questions about Iran’s natural resources, political structure, topography, languages, religion, and history would be enough to reveal that this guy is a complete and total idiot.

So this may be a dumb question but: what was the right answer?

One person I discussed it with ventured, â€The difference is that there’s a huge US presence in Pakistan. Suppose you have on your block a known killer who you know has been going out trying to buy a gun, and a guy who keeps a gun locked at home but who you know has a juvenile delinquent kid at home who has threatened you. Who is the more immediate threat?â€

(Personally I’d move to another block.)

Seriously — what would have been the best answer for Warner to give?

Yeah, how dare Mark Warner attempt to be a politician and punt on a question from a nobody, and give an answer that ? I am SO much smarter than Warner is. What a loser he is. All that crap about his business history and his governorship…he’s a stupid doofus.

Thank god we have such a long proven track record of truth tellers winning the Presidency. Fight the Power!!

Truth Teller – I don’t get it. Irony? Double Irony? What gives?

I am not suggesting that anybody is smarter than Warner but I am fairly certain that I could tell you more about the Middle East in 15 minutes than you’ll ever get from all of Warner’s stoopid ass sound bytes.

It doesn’t take much to even know just a little about US policy in relation to Iran and the rest of the Middle East. The man can’t be that dumb.

But dumbness isn’t really the issue. It’s not stupidity we are dealing with here. It’s ambition, self-censorship, cowardice, and indifference.

Frank: Unless Iran’s a greater threat to Pakistan, there is no â€right†answer. If the best he can come up with is reason’s Iran’s a threat, I can think of any numberof actual, greater potential threats, not the least of which is are the loose nukes from Russia that the Bush adinistration has neglected to do anything about.

As for the guy who says that there is a â€huge US presence in Pakistanâ€, he’s full of crap. We have 130K+ troops in Iraq, a country of 25 million and we can’t keep the peace there. Pakistan has a population of 165 million, more than half that of the US, as well as a fairly modern military (something the Iraqis didn’t have). That’s roughly a 13:2 ratio. And I’m pretty sure we don’t have anywhere near the 800,000 troops available it would take to turn Pakistan into the equivalent of Iraq.

Oh, and did I mention that Iran’s population is three times that of Iraq?

How does what Howard Dean said fit in with your thoughts about Warner?
â€â€¦Secondly, under no circumstances will a Democratic Administration ever allow Iran to become a nuclear power.†Feb 28, 2006.

Are you quibbling that Iran is the biggest nuclear threat out there? Or do you hope that a Democratic Administration might allow Iran to be a nuclear power? Or do you disagree with Dean on this one as well?

emptypockets

No. There is no reasonable argument that Iran is bigger nuke threat than Pakistan. None.

Iran won’t have the bomb for five years, unless someone deals them technology. Far and away the leading candidate to deal them technology is, voila, Pakistan. There are suggestions the AQ Khan network is still active. Why are we trying to shut off country after country that has gotten AQ Khan’s nukes, rather than addressing the problem at its source.

I have heard Pakistan described as the equivlanet of Iran in 1978–a country in which we believe we have real presence, but one in which a large popular movement could make that presence meaningless. And this Iran of 1978 has a bomb.

But here’s another way of thinking of this. Whatever we do to Iran is going to destabilize it. Which means we’re going to have another nation-building case on our hands. Why not learn how to build civil society (and thereby stabilize the country) in a country that is nominally an ally, rather than trying to do it again in a hostile situation.

And as I pointed out, Warner really is arguing about terrorism, and he’s arguing that Hamas is a bigger problem than Al Qaeda. By the end of the conversation, of course, he reiterated that Al Qaeda was the big problem. Which is the key disconnect here–if Al Qaeda is the problem, we need to do something about Pakistan. If a nuclear-armed oil state is the problem, then let’s discuss that.

cho nailed it. Warner’s drunk the Neocon Koolaid. He belongs nowhere near the presidency. We already know how well that’s worked out.

Sorry about the mis-attribution, emptypockets.

In any case, there is no â€huge†US presence in Pakistan. The Pakistanis — and by that, I mean the current government — don’t want us there. We’re not very popular, as you may have noticed. Just after September 11, they refused to offer staging areas for the attack on Afghanistan. They reluctantly allowed overflight. As recently as two years ago, Rumsfeld was asked whether there were troops in Pakistan and he replied â€not that I know of†(admittedly, you have to consider the source). There have been plenty of rumors of special forces working within the country or penetrating in raids from Afghanistan, but that’s not a major presence.

If Musharraf fell to a coup (that’s how he came to power) engineered by al-Qaeda sympathizers (of which there a number in intelligence and military), they’d have much of the military apparatus of Pakistan at their disposal. They’d know where the nukes are — we probably don’t. They probably wouldn’t keep them all together in one place. So the idea of some small force securing a nuclear site becomes rather ridiculous. Most likely, multiple mobile warheads would need to be found and secured. That’s not an impossible task, but it’s no cakewalk either in a country where we haven’t been able to find Osama bin Laden.

â€Anyway, I think I at least made him think about this differently.â€

EW, as one of the most intelligent people on the Internet (you!, not me), I find it hard to believe what you say here in this quote. It bespeaks a hope and a wish. I know, as someone who works in a job where one’s hopes and needs can intrusively bend reality, that we must be wary of our own projections.

Your assessment of Warner is correct, as your questioning indicated. The attraction that comes with proximity to power affects EVERYONE who comes into contact with it, so that’s no shame. But please reconsider your assumptions as to the effects of your intervention. It will only make you wiser and more effective.

~pockets

I asked the question in the way I did to test whether Warner had thought critically about the current security narrative we’ve got. No one, IMO, is making the point I’m making-that we have no business going to Iran with Pakistan sitting there as a festering boil. So yes, if Warner had talked about civil society in both places, I would have jumped on his pricey bandwagon. Barring someone speaking that intelligently, I will settle for an explicitly anti-stupid war (learned that from my new buddy Joe Wilson) candidate, thankyouverymuch.

TO those who think I’m being naive about the â€think about it differently†comment, I should have added one more detail. One of the last things he said to anyone was when he and I shook hands and exchanged cards. He looked me in the eyes and said, â€if I’m wrong about something, I’m not afraid to admit it.†Do I know that he was referring to me, or to my comment? No. But every other disagreement we had with him (on health care and a few other things) he closed the discussion by saying â€we’re going to have to agree to disagree about this.†He didn’t do that with the Iran question (though to be fair, the Iran question quickly morphed into the Iran-Saudi Arabia-Greater Middle East question). So maybe, maybe he realized he had to think about this some more. I do hope the front-pagers at DKos report this. Iran is an easy question (not really, but that’s what they think). But Iran compared to Pakistan is not an easy question.

emptypockets, I believe the question was: Why does Warner consider Iran the biggest WMD threat, not whether it is a potential WMD threat.

Given that they don’t currently have any nuclear weapons, and in most estimates they are a ways off from developing them, there’s no possible way that they should be considered the biggest threat. Pakistan, on the other hand, has nuclear weapons, has tested nuclear weapons, is the country where at least some of the military and intelligence officials are presumed to be providing protection to bin Laden, and is the source of nuclear weapons knowledge and equipment to other countries via the father of the Pakistani nuclear program, A.Q. Khan. If Iran gets a nuke, it’s probably going to be as a result of dealings with the Khan network before it was supposedly shut down.

That makes Pakistan a much more serious threat than Iran. It’s not even a close call. No a nuclear-armed Iran wouldn’t be a good idea, but it’s a bridge we can bomb when we get to it. And there are several other serious threats ahead of Iran, as well.

Warner is running for the Presidency and is afraid anything he says re: Iran before the bombs start dropping on Teheran will do his candidacy in. Same fear that immobilized Kerry and Edwards re: Iraq. He can’t say what he thinks until he thinks a majority of the public think what he thinks.

This is why changing public opinion one person at a time is so important. No politician who has the faintest chance of getting elected in this very conservative and divided country can afford to be first in line. Look what happened to the fundamentally conservative Howard Dean. Too correct, too soon.

The alternative is for a charismatic candidate tos show real leadership, but our public institutions are no longer set up for that.

knut, if Warner’s afraid of taking and then explaining an unpopular position, then he has no right to be President. If he can’t come out and say that the Bush administration’s policy on Iran ignores far more serious threats such as unsecured Russian nukes, Pakistan, etc., then he just plain doesn’t deserve to be Prez.

If he’s going to start out his candidacy either misinformed or flat-out lying, then what distinguishes him from Bush and Cheney?

If you were mistaken for a â€big time bloggerâ€, what the heck was *I* doing in that room?

He doesn’t yet â€get†foreign policy, not on your question, and not on my follow-up on the Saudi regime. It’s one thing to say â€wouldn’t it be nice if they didn’t support terroristsâ€, it’s another to actually have a plan to prod them into doing so.

crab, it’s not a matter of whether Warner said exactly what I want, it’s whether he told the truth and sounded like he knew what he was talking about.

I’m not a Middle East expert. I just read the newspapers and stuff. When Warner — or anyone else — says stuff like this, they just sound as stupid about foreign policy as George W. Bush, who we know gets his news from â€summariesâ€. How the hell are they going to do any better than he did?

Darrel, you are overestimating the importance of these statements. Nobody will come back to him with these unless they inflame voters that he sees as persuadeable. That’s who he’s speaking to. I know that as a base D you may be offended by it, but he’snot talking to you. But you should be in his corner if he wins the nomination. Go look at his record. he’s no Republican. If you prefer, say Wes Clark, great, (so would I!) But Clark is not much of a politician. If you’re waiting for a truth teller, you’ll be waiting a long time.

Yes, you play it safe on this issue because so much will change. You don’t treat foreign policy statements about a dynamic situation the same way you do, say, Social Security.

I think Iran IS a WMD threat, but not for many years, probably. What’s so wrong with believing that? I bet many, many Americans believe the same. This doesn’t make me or them Republicans.

Warner, like any skilled politician, knows how voters think and respond. It’s like a hit record…it doesn’t matter if you think it’s bad music. If it’s a top seller, it’s a hit.

And again, you are making an inference as to his knowledge level and â€the truthâ€. And the truth in this case is debateable, (is the truth what you believe?) for you haven’t adequately defined the terms of this argument (which I don’t have much more patience for….let’s revisit this again some other day.)

If you think there’s a politician in the world who *doesn’t* carefully position, that’s naive.

crab, I view national security and international diplomacy issues as one of the most important areas a President deals with. As the current dumbass in the WH has shown, if you get involved in a foreign war and spend all of the country’s money on military contractors and equipment, then you don’t really have much left over to do anything at home, however well-intentioned you might be. That was a trap Johnson got into with Vietnam, as well.

And again, if EW’s recounting of her question was acurate, the issue wasn’t whether Iran was a potential threat — which I already agreed it was — but whether it was the biggest threat — which it isn’t.

And yeah, many Americans (apparently including Warner) believe Iran’s an imminent threat because that’s what they’ve been told for the past several months, but a lot of them still believe Iraq was involved in 9/11 and that Saddam and bin Laden were good buddies. But that wasn’t true either. I’m surprised you’ve already forgotten that.

Arrayed against this are the pressures of what the donors want to hear

Is there really a pro â€war with Iran†donor base?

darrellplant is saying most of what I want to say on this.

But yes, the question was designed to challenge the wisdom that Iran is the biggest WMD threat. In his defense of that position, I believe (though I wish a journalist with more intelligence than Wankette had reported on it so I could check my understanding) Warner basically listed only non-WMD threat factors, and ended up asserting within the same conversation that Iran is the biggest threat because of Hamas, but Al Qaeda is a real threat, the big one. Those are not logically consistent positions, and I just wanted to point that out to him.