Joe Klein calls out John McCain for his rhetoric on Iran, and notes that the United States needs to be more careful so we're not allowed to be an excu
June 23, 2009

Joe Klein calls out John McCain for his rhetoric on Iran, and notes that the United States needs to be more careful so we're not allowed to be an excuse for the regime to get much more brutal with the protesters than it has already been. It was nice to see someone basically tell McCain and his ilk to STFU and quit making thing worse.

King: President Obama's holding a news conference tomorrow. What do you expect? Do you expect him to respond to critics and get tougher?

Klein: I certainly hope not. I think that his response has been appropriate so far and I think that some of his critics have been very unseemly at a very, very delicate moment when we don't want the Supreme Leader or Ahmadinejad to be able to blame the United States for these protests.

You see what they're trying to do with CNN and with the foreign journalists and to me it's significant that last Friday when the Supreme Leader spoke at Friday prayers....who did he blame? He didn't blame us. He blamed the British, you know the British BBC Persia service is a major factor in getting the information out in Iran.

But the reason why he couldn't blame us is because the people of Iran know that Barack Obama has held out his hand to them. And I think that the President's playing this very correctly because those protesters in the street may be against the regime, but they are also very skeptical about our role in their country for the last fifty years. We've had a pretty checkered past.

King: Senator McCain's going to be here tomorrow. He is one of those critics. What would you say to him Joe?

Klein: Be quiet. You don't need to do this. You know, what you're doing is a self indulgence at this point. You know, Senator McCain, if he's going to talk about this should also talk about the fact that the United States supported Saddam Hussein in the Iran Iraq war for eight years. Every one of those protesters out in the street, every last one of them believes that the United States did supply Saddam Hussein with the poison gas that debilitated tens of thousands of Iranian men.

Can you help us out?

For nearly 20 years we have been exposing Washington lies and untangling media deceit, but now Facebook is drowning us in an ocean of right wing lies. Please give a one-time or recurring donation, or buy a year's subscription for an ad-free experience. Thank you.

Discussion

We welcome relevant, respectful comments. Any comments that are sexist or in any other way deemed hateful by our staff will be deleted and constitute grounds for a ban from posting on the site. Please refer to our Terms of Service for information on our posting policy.
Mastodon