Four years from now, Mitt Romney will be president of the United States. … Point Two: The Republicans always nominate for president the candidate who’s next in line, even if that person is deeply unpopular (e.g., the GOP base’s hatred for John McCain did not prevent him from being nominated; he was the guy who lost to Bush in 2000, ergo…). In 2008, the runner-up was Romney.

You know, you would think Republicans who are so attached to the “we always nominate the next guy in line” thing would know which guy was the runner up last year. It was Huckabee.

Now that that’s out of the way, you can go back to reading about Iran on some other blog. Apparently they had some sort of election. I’m so glad McCain isn’t president right now.

I assume Ledeen’s next post is going to be about how we need to start covertly funding counter-revolutionaries to destabilize Ortega’s government, which is just a Soviet Iranian proxy. Luckily, he’s just the person to connect us to some Islamic radicals we can sell weapons to to cover the cost.

He also tried the standard Holocaust denier rhetoric of “questioning, not denying.” It’s pretty transparent. He also waffled on his alleged comments about wanting Israel to be destroyed, which isn’t that surprising.

I don’t really care that he spoke at Columbia. We have nothing to be afraid of by having him speak here. Judging by the comments attributed to him in media reports, his image probably won’t improve.

VIENNA, Austria – A confidential U.N. nuclear agency report has found “no evidence” to back U.S. claims that Iran tried to make atomic arms, but it cannot rule out the possibility because of past cover-ups by Tehran, diplomats told The Associated Press on Monday.

While acknowledging IAEA finds of traces of highly enriched, weapons-grade uranium on its enrichment centrifuges, it says the “contamination” originated outside Iran and was inadvertently imported with the equipment bought abroad. Washington says it is evidence of a weapons program.

They’re obviously hiding their program. I’m sure they have wooden drones that can fly all the way to the States and release poison gas! And did you hear about he aluminum tubes they imported? I mean look what happened in Iraq: the U.N. stalls and we go in and find huge……….well………I’ll get back to you.

Wait, we found mobile weapons labs! No, those are for hydrogen balloons.

They were shipped to Syria! Well, through Turkey, and we don’t really seem to care that much about finding them, even though they were a grave threat earlier, so maybe not.

Err………

You’re just a communist.

TEHRAN (Reuters) – Iran said on Wednesday it would not share intelligence with the United States about al Qaeda members it is holding despite repeated requests from Washington for Tehran to do so.

“It is not possible to threaten a country, to block its assets, to accuse it and then want talks,” he said.

Now, for all I know, Iran is lying about the actual reasons they don’t cooperate, but you have to admit, they’ve got the U.S. here. That’s exactly what we do. We don’t do diplomacy, we try to intimidate you into cooperating. Some would say that’s the way to go, but it only makes everything worth. Heavy handedness only fuels these people, it only increases their numbers. This is obvious to anyone who wants to think about it.

But just a week or so ago they bombed their principal bases, according to the Herald Tribune:

“Without public announcement, American forces have bombed the
principal bases of the main armed Iranian opposition group in Iraq,
which has maintained several thousand fighters with tanks and artillery
along Iraq’s border with Iran for more than a decade.”
Interesting. Looks like public relations to me. Allow the damaged group
to keep their arms, negotiate a cease fire, you make it look like
you’re putting pressure on Iran when you really aren’t.
More on U.S. support of Iran at Emperor’s New Clothes.