Mrs. Clinton’s Statements on Iran

RUSH: I went back to Mr. Snerdley’s office during the break. He said, ‘That was a smoking hour, smoking hour!’

I said, ‘I know.’ I exhaled. I said, ‘But you know, every day — every day — we have to come in here and defend this country against the Democrats and the libs! Every day, it’s what we have to do here.’

I hearken back to before this program existed, prior to 1988, how this kind of stuff today would go unchecked, unchallenged, and everybody would believe it. This NIE stuff and so forth. Let me give you the lib position on this again. When the intelligence says what the liberals want it to say, well, then of course it’s reliable! But when the intelligence doesn’t say what the liberals want it to say, it’s not reliable. So the same agencies that supposedly got Iran wrong respecting its nuclear program, are now to be believed because they say Iran has stopped trying to make a bomb? And somehow this is bad news for Bush. The spin here is just breathtaking, and then Dingy Harry. There’s an AP story here, Dingy Harry said, yes, we asked for this report. Well, if Dingy Harry asked for it, then it does raise a question about timing of its release, does it not? Let’s go back to the news archives. Thanks for the good work of the people at Sweetness & Light, the blog. Two stories, first an AP story, January 19th, 2006. Headline: ‘Senator Clinton Calls for Iran Sanctions — Sen. Hillary Clinton called for United Nations sanctions against Iran and faulted the Bush administration for ‘downplaying’ the threat Tehran’s nuclear program poses.’

Folks, this is just almost two years ago. Mrs. Clinton says (paraphrased), ‘Bush is blowing this. Bush isn’t taking Iran seriously enough.’ She went to the UN demanding a sanctions program. ‘In an address Wednesday evening at Princeton University, [Hillary] Clinton, said it was a mistake for the US to have Britain, France and Germany head up nuclear talks with Iran over the past 2 1/2 years. Last week, Iran resumed nuclear research in a move Tehran claims is for energy, not weapons. ‘I believe that we lost critical time in dealing with Iran because the White House chose to downplay the threats and chose to outsource the negotiations,’ Clinton said.’ The Drive-Bys are not going to remind anybody of their own previous reports, like we are doing today. So here’s Mrs. Clinton through her spokesman today, saying (paraphrased), ‘This goes to show you just how diplomacy can work, and that Bush’s cowboy approach is not the way to go on this. This is diplomacy! This is exactly what Mrs. Clinton wants.’ Mrs. Clinton was upset about, that diplomacy wasn’t working from the French and the Germans and the Brits! There’s even more in this story.

There’s another AP story, and the date of this story is February 2, 2007. ‘Calling Iran a danger to the United States and one of Israel’s greatest threats, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said ‘no option can be taken off the table’ when dealing with [Iran]. But Clinton, a top 2008 Democratic presidential contender, also called for a dialogue with countries hostile to Israel — including Iran and Syria — as a way to promote peace in the Middle East. ‘I have advocated engagement with our enemies and Israel’s enemies,’ Clinton told a crowd of Israel supporters on Thursday. ‘I believe we can gain valuable knowledge and leverage from being part of a process again that enables us to get a better idea of how to take on and defeat our adversaries.” So two stories about Mrs. Clinton demanding that the US get tough with Iran. She says Iran is a threat, calls Iran a threat to the US, one of Israel’s greatest dangers. She’s unhappy with the Bush administration’s diplomacy or lack thereof. So the report comes out today, the NIE, and, of course, Mrs. Clinton forgets all that she has said here and blames the Bush administration for being too cowboy! Every day — every day! — we have to come in here and defend this country against the media, defend this country from the Drive-By Media, the Democrats, and the left in this country. That’s what the job has become. I’m happy to do it, don’t misunderstand. But it’s cleaning up the messes made by the Drive-Bys and correcting the lies and the distortions of Democrat presidential candidates and Democrats, period.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Sweetness & Light, the blogger doing great work today uncovering Mrs. Clinton newspaper stories, AP, Washington Post, on this National Intelligence Estimate story. She’s out there saying, ‘This proves my policy of diplomacy is working in Iran,’ when, in fact, her history, as these news stories document, has been to criticize the Bush administration for not doing enough and not being tough enough on Iran and being too lazy and leaving it up to the Brits and the Germans and the French to negotiate with Iran over its nuclear program, and now another one has been uncovered. Mrs. Clinton writing in Foreign Affairs, which I think is the official house organ of the Council on Foreign Relations, in November-December 2007 — that would be this current issue — ”Hillary Demands US Get Tough with Iran.’ — The Bush administration has opposed talks with our adversaries, seeming to believe that we are not strong enough to defend our interests through negotiations. This is a misleading and counterproductive strategy.’

This is Mrs. Clinton writing here, ‘True statesmanship requires that we engage with our adversaries, not for the sake of talking but because robust diplomacy is a prerequisite to achieving our aims. The case in point is Iran. Iran poses a long-term strategic challenge to the United States, our NATO allies, and Israel. It is the country that most practices state-sponsored terrorism, and it uses its surrogates to supply explosives that kill US troops in Iraq. The Bush administration refuses to talk to Iran about its nuclear program, preferring to ignore bad behavior rather than challenge it. Meanwhile, Iran has enhanced its nuclear-enrichment capabilities, armed Iraqi Shiite militias, funneled arms to Hezbollah, and subsidized Hamas, even as the government continues to hurt its own citizens by mismanaging the economy,’ and blah, blah, blah.

This is the current issue of Foreign Affairs. ‘As a result, we have lost precious time. Iran must conform to its nonproliferation obligations and must not be permitted to build or acquire nuclear weapons. If Iran does not comply with its own commitments and the will of the international community, all options must remain on the table.’ She writes this probably a couple weeks ago, because, again, this is the November-December 2007 edition of Foreign Affairs, and now, all of a sudden, we find out from the NIE that Iran shut down its nuclear development program in 2003. Does Mrs. Clinton not look like an abject idiot? Will the Drive-Bys recall any of this? Will they point it out to their own audiences? No, ladies and gentlemen, it will not happen. You can make book on that.