[NYTr] Bush, Cheney, Rice and Kucinich on Iran

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

The Nation via Yahoo - Oct 25, 2007
http://news.yahoo.com/s/thenation/20071025/cm_thenation/1246120


Bush, Cheney, Rice and Kucinich on Iran 

by John Nichols

The Nation -- Those echoes that Americans are hearing in the
noisy-and-getting-noisier debate about Iran are from 2002 and 2003,
when members of the current administration were busy spinning the
fantasy that the United States needed to attack Iraq.

George "Uranium From Africa" Bush sure sounds like he wants to attack
Iran. Just last week, the president said, "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 (Iran) from (obtaining) the knowledge
necessary to make a nuclear weapon."

Dick "Greeted As Liberators" Cheney sure sounds like he wants to attack
Iran. This week, the vice president declared: "Our country, and the
entire international community, cannot stand by as a terror-supporting
state fulfills its grandest ambitions."

Secretary of State Condoleezza "Mushroom Clouds" Rice sure sounds like
she wants to attack Iran. "Unfortunately the Iranian government
continues to spurn our offer of open negotiations, instead threatening
peace and security by pursuing nuclear technologies that can lead to a
nuclear weapon..." Rice said on Thursday, as she announced drastic new
sanctions against the country that serious analysts say poses little
threat to its neighbors and no real threat to the U.S.

And, as in 2002 and early 2003, the most rational response is coming
from Congressman Dennis Kucinich, the Ohio Democrat who says, "After
the lies and deception used to lead us to war in Iraq, the belligerent
Bush Administration cannot be given leeway with statements that suggest
a preemptive attack on Iran is necessary," says Kucinich, a candidate
for the Democratic presidential nod who deserves a much better hearing
that he has been afforded so far by the media and Democratic power
brokers. "We are systematically destroying every available route to
restoring peace and security in the Middle East," he adds.

Kucinich may be running for the White House, but his message is most
relevant to Capitol Hill. "Congress," he says, "must take back its
exclusive authority to declare war from the Bush Administration."

He's right.

But being right is not always enough in tenuous times.

Being heard is what matters.

It could well be that the American experiment's best hope lies in the
remote prospect that, having been proven right in 2002 and 2003, it
will be Kucinich's counsel -- as opposed to that of Bush, Cheney and
Rice -- that is heeded in this new moment of peril.

The point here is not a political one. This is not about whether
Kucinich becomes president, or the Democratic nominee, or even a strong
contender in his race with cautious Democrats such as Hillary Clinton
and Barack Obama. This is about the most fundamental question in a
democracy: At a time when talk of war is growing louder, will we hear a
real debate or merely the exaggerated echoes of those who have never
gotten anything right?

The answer could well be measured by the extent to which Dennis
Kucinich and those who stood with him in 2002 and 2003 are afforded the
forums that their record of having been able to cut through the spin of
the past should afford them in the present.