{"id":13272,"date":"2007-10-17T16:30:34","date_gmt":"2007-10-17T20:30:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/13272.html"},"modified":"2007-10-17T16:30:34","modified_gmt":"2007-10-17T20:30:34","slug":"bush-warns-of-world-war-iii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/bush-warns-of-world-war-iii\/","title":{"rendered":"Bush warns of ‘World War III’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Much of the president’s press conference<\/a> today was devoted to discussion of the administration’s policy towards Iran, which was not at all encouraging.<\/p>\n

Q: But you definitively believe Iran wants to build a nuclear weapon?<\/p>\n

BUSH: I think so long — until they suspend and\/or make it clear that they — that their statements aren’t real, yeah, I believe they want to have the capacity, the knowledge, in order to make a nuclear weapon. And I know it’s in the world’s interest to prevent them from doing so. I believe that the Iranian — if Iran had a nuclear weapon, it would be a dangerous threat to world peace.<\/p>\n

But this — we got a leader in Iran who has announced that he wants to destroy Israel. So I’ve told people that if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon. I take the threat of Iran with a nuclear weapon very seriously.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I was going to explain why this is crazy, but I see that Matt Yglesias beat me to it<\/a>. I hope he won’t mind too much if I blatantly steal<\/strike> borrow his observation.<\/p>\n

Two points. One: This is inane. World War III? Against Iran? Really? Because Iran seems<\/i> a lot like a medium-sized middle income country with few military capabilities rather than a near peer-competitor of the sort against which you might fight a world war.<\/p>\n

Two: Note where Bush has placed the goalposts here. Not preventing Iran from having a nuclear weapon. Preventing Iran from having the knowledge necessary<\/i> to make a nuclear weapon. I’m not sure what the significance of that switch is, but it seems significant.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Like I said, not at all encouraging.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Much of the president’s press conference today was devoted to discussion of the administration’s policy towards Iran, which was not at all encouraging. Q: But you definitively believe Iran wants to build a nuclear weapon? BUSH: I think so long — until they suspend and\/or make it clear that they — that their statements aren’t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13272","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=13272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13272\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}