February 20, 2007

Pandering Edwards Showing True Colors?

A little while back I did a broad side on John Edward's speech to a conference in Herzliya, Israel. (Before that, I was heaping praise).

Maybe he's just a politician playing both sides, but I found this of interest. But this tid bit is making its rounds on the blogosphere, from Peter Bart's Variety column January 19, 2007. Writing about Hollywood politics, Bart describes an encounter John Edwards had at a recption hosed by "Adam Venit, a honcho at Endeavor":

The aggressively photogenic John Edwards was cruising along, detailing his litany of liberal causes last week until, during question time, he invoked the "I" word -- Israel. Perhaps the greatest short-term threat to world peace, Edwards remarked, was the possibility that Israel would bomb Iran's nuclear facilities. As a chill descended on the gathering, the Edwards event was brought to a polite close.

If the event is described fairly, it says as much about the crowd as it does Edwards. We should be concerned about an Israeli attack, and Iranian potential response. According to Zbigniew Brzezinski's testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Februray 1, 2007, Edwards is right:

A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks [that is, Bush's surge fails]; followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure; then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the U.S. blamed on Iran; culminating in a “defensive” U.S. military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

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