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President Obama Brushes Off GOP Debate Criticism Of His Iran Nukes Policy

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At Saturday night’s Republican presidential debate on national security and foreign policy, co-frontrunner Mitt Romney and others harshly criticized President Obama‘s efforts to prevent Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon, based on a recent International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report. At a press conference in Hawaii Sunday evening, President Obama brushed off the “shocking” criticism, and saying that anyone who oversimplifies the issue “is either politicking, or doesn’t know what they’re talking about.”

CBS News’ Norah O’Donnell asked the President, Sunday night, about Mott Romney’s criticism specifically, beginning, “the Republicans did have a debate on CBS last night.  A lot of it was about foreign policy, and they were very critical of your record…”

“That’s shocking,” the President interjected, amid laughs from reporters.

“So if I could get you to respond to something that Mitt Romney said,” O’Donnell continued. “He said your biggest foreign policy failure is Iran.  He said that if you are reelected Iran will have a nuclear weapon.  Is Mitt Romney wrong?”

The President began by saying, “I am going to make a practice of not commenting on whatever is said in Republican debates until they’ve got an actual nominee,” before explaining the importance of building international opposition to a nuclear Iran. “you take a look at what we’ve been able to accomplish in mobilizing the world community against Iran over the last three years,” the President said, “and it shows steady, determined, firm progress in isolating the Iranian regime, and sending a clear message that the world believes it would be dangerous for them to have a nuclear weapon.”

“Now, is this an easy issue?  No,” the President said. “Anybody who claims it is, is either politicking or doesn’t know what they’re talking about.”

Here’s the President’s response, from Fox News:


Early on in Saturday night’s debate, candidates competed to see who could be the most alarmist in reacting to the IAEA report, with Mitt Romney the hands-down winner, telling the debate crowd, “if we reelect Barack Obama, Iran will have a nuclear weapon. And if we elect Mitt Romney, if you’d like me as the next president, they will not have a nuclear weapon.”

Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) earned a close silver by declaring that the US should bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities “before the next explosion we hear in Iran is a nuclear one, and then the world changes,” losing out only because his premise seems to be that Iran’s first order of business as a nuclear power will be to nuke themselves.

Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) observed that his rivals’ panicky responses sounded an awful lot like the drumbeat that marched the US into the Iraq War, saying, “I’m afraid what’s going on right now is similar to the war propaganda that went on against Iraq.”

Much of the criticism seems to revolve around the amorphous use of the threat of military action, as if that threat isn’t already crystal clear in the minds of the Iranian regime. In responding to the criticisms, President Obama said, as he has many times in the years I’ve been covering him, that no options are off the table. While Romney posited the use of force as a last resort (where have we heard that before?), other candidates suggested more provocative actions.

One of the stranger criticisms came from Newt Gingrich, who called for “maximum covert operations– to block and disrupt the Iranian program– in– including– taking out their scientists, including breaking up their systems. All of it covertly, all of it deniable.”

He sounded a lot like a guy complaining that he couldn’t see the participants at the Ninja Parade (that’s the point: you’re not supposed to see them, they’re ninjas). Later in the debate, Rick Santorum, of all people, demonstrated a grasp of this fact, saying, “there have been scientists turning up dead in Russia and in Iran. There have been computer viruses. There have been problems at their facility. I hope that the United States has been involved with that. I hope that we have been doing everything we can covertly to make sure that that program doesn’t proceed forward.”

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  • Random

    So basically if a Republican beats Obama next November the US is pretty much going to invade Iran?  Just another reason not to vote for the party of hate.

  • Anonymous

    The trouble is once the actual nominee stands next to this guy, they are going to look a bit rubbish. Sad, but true. Whatever one may think about BO, he is smooth and a bIt above those hilarious guys in the GOP. 

  • Anonymous

    While the GOP salivates for another misguided, horrific and obscenely expensive war, Obama is once again showing himself to be the adult navigating a dangerous world. 

    The idea of any of those lightweights — save, perhaps, Huntsman — getting anywhere near the nuclear button should put fear in the heart of all sentient beings. 

  • Anonymous

    Your teeth are brighter than you are.

  • Anonymous

    WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court says it will hear arguments over President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, setting up an election-year showdown over the White House’s main domestic policy achievement.
    The justices on Monday revealed they would take the case. That means arguments could come in March, allowing plenty of time for a decision in late June, just over four months before Election Day.

  • Anonymous

    Funny, Obama has said he would not allow Iran do get the bomb. now how will he do that?

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1412986774 Alexandra Nofi

    You know, if Ron Paul wasn’t such a crappy journalist, totally lacking tact when expressing his opinions in the past, I might actually like him for being against war, and torture. Not sure why a Libertarian is in a Republican debate, but, whatever!

    Because the media has been bought and owned by the Republican party for so long, I have no idea who the Democratic nominees are, if any…

  • Anonymous

    Iran is a threat not because it will use the nuclear weapons if must be building, unless they are stupid. What the West fears is Nuclear Iran because they know it won’t be used but act as deterrent. Then how are we going to intimidate them? This is the worry. We have zero right to tell Iran sh!t, and even less credibility.

  • AliveStillKickin

    Let’s see the Kenyan Marxist brush this one off.

  • Anonymous

    Party of hate? Look in the mirror, my friend. The Democrats have no room to be calling the GOP the party of hate. Nobody said the US would invade Iran without provocation.

  • AliveStillKickin

    While the GOP salivates for another misguided, horrific and obscenely
    expensive war, Obama is once again showing himself to be the idiot APOLOGIZING to a dangerous world.

    Don’t allow FACTS to get in your way.

  • Anonymous

    You don’t know…that’s the point!

  • Anonymous

    What’s the definition of “provocation?” The concept of preventive war is so abstract. 

  • Anonymous

    The Obama administration requested the USSC to take the case and settle it….dumbass. If they didn’t do it, the appellate process could have dragged on for a couple more years. 

  • ATHF

    You need to find the whole video or just the beginning where obummer says he was born in Hawaii and he can show you the hospital if you want.

    What I want to see or meet are the people he went to school with while in Hawaii when he was a little kid. I want to see class pictures etc…. How come none of his teachers were interviewed to talked about the little kids who would become POTUS? If he was in any of my classes I would remember him. He real name is Barry Obama, now with a name like that little kids would have made fun of his name.

    Donald Trump was right nobody knows anything about Obama as a kid that proves he was born here.
    True there is not enough proof to say he was born out of the country but at the same time for me there is not enough people from Obama’s past coming forward to say that they knew him as a kid growing up in hawaii before his mom and dad shipped him off to Islamist training in Indonesian.

    Hell I’d get my 1 minute of fame and find old elementary school pictures of me and obama so I could get of t.v. but there is nobody that remembers obama living in Hawaii or going to school there. Sure a doctor that delivered him (dead now) and the wife of the dead doctor that can barely read (verifying)  her dead husband’s signature on the certificate of live birth.

    not enough saying he’s an illegal and not enough proving he is legal

  • Anonymous

    Point taken. I was just about to revise or delete the comment.

  • Google is easy to use.

    Donald Trump is a huckster and you are an idiot.  What kind of last names do you think the majority of kids in Hawaiian public schools have?  

    http://www.mauinews.com/page/content.detail/id/513898.html?nav=5074

  • AliveStillKickin

    The appellate process would have given the idiot Obama more time to entrench Obamacare into the system…..thereby making it virtually impossible to repeal it. That would FAVOR Obama.
    Having it heard by The SCOTUS asap only makes it easier to trash.
    Calling me a dumbass and being wrong only makes you a dumber ass.
    AliveStillKickin eats another progressive’s lunch.

  • Anonymous

    “… One of the stranger criticisms came from Newt Gingrich, who called for “maximum covert operations– to block and disrupt the Iranian program– in– including– taking out their scientists, including breaking up their systems. All of it covertly, all of it deniable.”
    Strange? really? Like Israel (allegedly) planting the Stuxnet Virus in Iran’s Bushehr nuclear plant to scramble and stop their nuclear system from operating. 
    Actually it sounded like the most rational, practical and least expensive option in dealing with Iran.

  • AliveStillKickin

    I am certain it will be an apology of some kind and if that doesn’t work he will send in Biden to do some heavy-duty butt kissing.
    Last Resort: Blame it on Bush

  • Anonymous

    You have clearly forgotten how terrible he is in any debate type situation. He cannot think on his feet without a scripted response. Hopefully he has improved his delivery and with all those town halls, he has had to. I hardly think anyone will believe that all his stammering and “ummm” pauses are a deliberate reflection of his brilliant IQ this time around. I hope for the voters sake we get several opportunities to see some great debates.

  • Anonymous

    Do the GOP goons even know what a “nuke” is???

  • Anonymous

    Do you even know what a brain is?

  • Anonymous

    Mr. Obama, tear down that teleprompter!

  • proud2teabagu

    Yes, but do you know that thing you have up your as aint a missile.

  • http://www.thecobraslair.com Cobra

    What debates were you watching?  Certainly not the McCain/Obama debates. Certainly not the Obama/Clinton debates. Most definitely not the Obama/Keyes debates.

    Where do you get this?

    –Cobra

  • http://www.thecobraslair.com Cobra

    Moreover….when you can stand in front of the Republican Congress at a retreat and answer THEIR questions off the cuff, without notes,  for almost an hour and a half….

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5vOMIN673A

     You come off sounding like just another crazed Obama Hater, surfergrl. You don’t have to agree with or like Obama’s answers, but you’re crazy if you don’t think  Obama can’t “think on his feet.”

    –Cobra

  • http://www.thecobraslair.com Cobra

    The entrails of dead terrorists  humbly accept Obama’s apologies.

    –Cobra

  • http://www.thecobraslair.com Cobra

    Oh…so the plan is to TELL the world we’re going to engage in “maximum covert (secret) operations” in Iran, and when they happen, deny we did it.

    That’s really the plan?  Really?

    –Cobra

  • Anonymous

    Yes, Hussein, you certainly don’t do anything for political reasons yourself, now do you, you son of a two bit trashy whore!    The boy is a loser in every way and as long as we have him sitting in the Oval Office, things will only get worse and America will be UnProtected because Obama is not man enough to do the job of protecting the USA!  I will vote for whoever runs against this worthless scumbag we have sitting in the WH!

  • Anonymous

    Obama is terrible at debates? Huh? He is outstanding at debates. Remember, styles differ in debates. Obama looks and sounds exceptionally good. He never says what he really thinks and is very careful. He compensates by lowering the level of debate and talks in such a banal fashion in terms of  the substance of what he says, which is so obviously deliberate to avoid sounding like an egghead. The guy is highly gifted and isn’t going to be beaten by such an obvious phoney like Gingrich.

    A contrast would be some one who is overtly good at debates, such as Elizabeth Warren or even Gingrich himself. Because they are going to antagonise roughly half the people, they are a lot easier to attack than Obama is. People may dislike Obama’s politics but he is almost never offensive. If you are an independent, Obama is tough to resist.

  • Anonymous

    “You come off sounding like just another crazed Obama Hater, surfergrl…”WOW you jump all the way to crazed and hate from my comment? That conclusions makes you sound like an Obama apologist who will defend his every action and word… or can’t, so you rely on an extreme character stereotyping because someone disagree with your opinion. 

    Speaking in front of Republicans as the President of the United States is NOT a debate and he sure as hell better be able to answer their questions, and defend his positions that is part of the job he was elected to do. You don’t think he prepared for that meeting? 

    In 2008 I was not impressed by many of his answers during the debates, including the Democrat primaries against Hillary Clinton (his foreign policy was living in Indonesia as a child – his words) and that make me “crazed & hateful”?
    I was sincere in my statement that I hope American’s will have several opportunities to see some great presidential debates. What is so hateful and crazed about that? 

  • http://www.thecobraslair.com Cobra

      First of all, Obama was on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and crafted anti-nuclear proliferation bills with Sen. Dick Luger (R). This is public record, common knowledge and easily accessible.

     Second, when does “I was not impressed by many of his answers” = “terrible in debate situations?” 

    Performance? Rick Perry = “terrible”  Admiral Stockdale = “terrible”. That you didn’t like Obama’s answers doesn’t make the debate performance “terrible.”

    He “cannot think on his feet without a scripted response?”  Huh?  I gave you a perfect example, and you dismiss it. I bet you didn’t even click on the link.

     Let me put it to you this way.  I don’t agree with damn near anything Mitt Romney (The eventual nominee for the GOP) does. I think that when he doesn’t interrupt people, or put his hands on them, he gives a polished debate performance, no matter how much I find the answers wrong in my personal opinion.

     Do you see the difference?

    –Cobra

  • Horsefeather

    LOL!  Admiral “GRIDLOCK” Stockdale.

  • Anonymous

    Not until you throw away your computer.

  • Anonymous

    Is it spelled Newt?

  • Anonymous

    He did better in debates than the other Democrats he had to run against before that party’s primary, and every one of them can out debate Bachmann, Perry, Cain, or Santorum. Only Mitt, Newt, and Huntsman could give Obama any challenge at all. Paul is a capable debater, but he does not appeal to enough people to ever go up against Obama.

  • Anonymous

    That was Mitt who said that in the debate. How is Mitt going to stop Iran?

  • shibumi419

     Perhaps BO has already instituted his Iran plan.  In rapid succession the following took place. He announced that we’re pulling our troops out of Iraq at the end of the year. Then days later, Netanyahu goes before the Knesset to seek approval for a strike. Then it’s publicly announced that Iran is indeed on path for a nuke. Oh yea, don’t forget that the No-fly zone over Iraq will also expire at the end of the year, leaving Israel with the shortest route to Iran. The recent unexplained explosion, computer viruses, disappearances and death of their scientists.  A possible planned “hot mike” incident that you would think would distance Obama from Netanyahu. The recent sale of “bunker busters” to the UAE and the September transfer of 55 bunker-busters to Israel. …coincidence?  Seems like Obama has facilitated an inevitable attack by neighboring countries including Israeli while he himself stands along the side-lines.

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