{"id":11555,"date":"2007-07-23T10:27:58","date_gmt":"2007-07-23T14:27:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/11555.html"},"modified":"2007-07-23T10:27:58","modified_gmt":"2007-07-23T14:27:58","slug":"where-are-liebermans-complaints","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/where-are-liebermans-complaints\/","title":{"rendered":"Where are Lieberman’s complaints?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m pleased to see the White House willing to engage Tehran in bilateral discussions, particularly on the issue of security in Iraq, but I have to wonder, isn’t this<\/a> the kind of thing that should drive the neocons batty?<\/p>\n

The United States and Iran will hold a second round of direct talks to discuss Iraq’s worsening security situation as early as Tuesday, even as U.S. military commanders continue to accuse Iranian operatives of fomenting the instability.<\/p>\n

Iraq’s foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, told news services Sunday that the two sides will sit down together on Tuesday, a date confirmed by U.S. Embassy officials in Baghdad.<\/p>\n

The announcement came as the U.S. military said it had detained two alleged weapons smugglers with suspected links to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s elite al-Quds Force. Weapons were confiscated during a pre-dawn raid Sunday on a farm compound east of Baghdad near the Iranian border, the military said. The suspects, the military said, were allegedly smuggling the armor-piercing roadside bombs that have killed many American soldiers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The news comes the same day we learn that the Bush administration has cleared about 3,500 Iranians for immigration into the United States<\/a> in the last nine months, quadruple the number of Iraqis the administration has accepted.<\/p>\n

I gather from all of this that Rice is beating Cheney to Bush’s ear, at least for the time being, but where is all the conservative complaining? Shouldn’t Lieberman and his allies be denouncing the administration’s tactics?
\n
\nThe U.S. has captured two suspected weapons smugglers with possible ties to Iran’s elite al-Quds Force. The Senate just passed, unanimously, a resolution censuring Iran “for what it said was complicity in the killing of U.S. soldiers in Iraq.” Sen. Sam Brownback appeared on Fox News a few days ago, declaring that he is ready<\/a> to preemptively strike Iran.<\/p>\n

Joe Lieberman has practically been begging<\/a> for a military confrontation.<\/p>\n

Last month, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) argued on CBS’s Face the Nation, that the U.S. should “be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq.” “If there’s any hope” of stopping Iran’s nuclear program, “we can’t just talk to them…. We’ve got to use our force and to me that would include taking military action.”<\/p>\n

[Three weeks ago] in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Lieberman writes, “[E]very leader [in Washington] has a responsibility to acknowledge that … the Iranian government … has all but declared war on us and our allies in the Middle East.” He argues that the use of force against Iran is needed for one primary reason — to temper Iran’s “expansionist” desires to “dominate” its neighbors.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As far as the neocons are concerned, Iran is already responsible for killing Americans on the battlefield and backing terrorist attacks on U.S. interests. The Bush administration is responding with … bilateral diplomatic discussions?<\/p>\n

To be sure, I’m glad the White House is resisting, at least so far, starting another reckless war, but shouldn’t the same people who are demanding a confrontation be condemning Bush for talking to the enemy? If President Kerry responded to Iranian attacks on Americans with another diplomatic sit-down, do you suppose the right would have something to say about it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m pleased to see the White House willing to engage Tehran in bilateral discussions, particularly on the issue of security in Iraq, but I have to wonder, isn’t this the kind of thing that should drive the neocons batty? The United States and Iran will hold a second round of direct talks to discuss Iraq’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11555\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}