{"id":13280,"date":"2007-10-18T12:50:05","date_gmt":"2007-10-18T16:50:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/13280.html"},"modified":"2007-10-18T12:50:05","modified_gmt":"2007-10-18T16:50:05","slug":"with-wwiii-reference-bush-was-only-making-a-point","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/with-wwiii-reference-bush-was-only-making-a-point\/","title":{"rendered":"With WWIII reference, Bush was only ‘making a point’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Asked at a White House press conference yesterday whether he believes Iran wants to build a nuclear weapon, the president was unusually careless<\/a> in his choice of words.<\/p>\n

“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

Naturally, hearing the president of the United States reference “World War III” while discussing foreign policy, particularly in regards to a county at whom Bush has rattled his saber, raised a few eyebrows.<\/p>\n

This morning, the White House tried to walk the comments back<\/a> a bit.<\/p>\n

President Bush was simply “making a point” when he stated at his press conference this week that anyone who wants to avert World War III wants to keep nuclear weapons out of Iran’s hands, the White House said today.<\/p>\n

“The president was not making any war plans,” White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said today. “He was not making any declaration. He was making a point.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Oh<\/i>, the president was making a point<\/i>. In that case, Bush’s remarks made perfect<\/i> sense.
\n
\nThe problem, of course, is that it’s not at all clear what this “point” might have been. It certainly sounded as if the president said World War III would happen if Iran acquired “the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.”<\/p>\n

What, pray tell, was the “point” Bush hoped to get across?<\/p>\n

The right seems to have taken, and embraced<\/a>, the president’s words at face value.<\/p>\n

I’m not sure why this is supposed to be noteworthy, but Drudge put a red headline on it: Video: Bush warns of World War III if Iran gets the bomb.<\/p>\n

I guess it’s shocking if you really, really want to convince yourself that a nuclear Iran would be no threat to the world. To those who aren’t willfully blind, however, it’s a straightforward statement of fact.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

See? Bush’s supporters seem to have understood the “point” just fine.<\/p>\n

Remember, as Matt Yglesias noted<\/a> yesterday, the president not only suggested we’d launch World War III over Iran, but also suggested that the trigger is Iran having the “knowledge necessary<\/i> to make a nuclear weapon,” not just the weapon itself.<\/p>\n

The White House can try and argue today that the president’s comments were no big deal, but in this climate, random references to World War III are taken a little more seriously than that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Asked at a White House press conference yesterday whether he believes Iran wants to build a nuclear weapon, the president was unusually careless in his choice of words. “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 […]<\/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-13280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13280","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=13280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13280\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}