Reply #49: Thanks for the link, but it is hardly comforting.......- - EDWARDS - - on - - IRAN - -

[Faryn Balyncd]

Edwards on Iran

Did Edwards' remarks at a Hollywood fundraiser really nullify his statements at Herzyila?

(by a disillusioned Edwards admirer)




Thanks for the link,Venable, but Peter Bart's gossipy & inexplicable account is hardly comforting.

The report of Ron Brynaert (published in Raw Story January 23) gave a verbatim transcript of both Edwards speech and answers to specific questions at Herzliya. His language was not only clear, but deliberate, specific, and punctuated with reiteration ("we need to keep ALL options on the table, Let me reiterate – ALL options must remain on the table.")

Ron Brynaert did not report that Edwards was "simplistic or easily categorized" or "hawkish"; what Brynaert did was provide a transcript of exactly what Edwards said, and it is the clarity of Edwards deliberate words which many rightly find exceedingly troubling.

If Brynaert misquoted Edwards, a correction by Edwards would be welcome, and seems overdue.

The link you provided, to Variety Columnist Peter Bart's "The Back Lot: The real Hollywood politics - D.C. vibe is bubbling up" is problematic:

Written more in the style of a gossip columnist than a journalist, Bart relates this breathy account, which appears to be the basis for your conclusion that Edwards is "more pacifistic" after all:

"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."



The problems with this are many:

The impression of the account as reported by Bart, apparently paraphrased and without quotation marks, is entirely the opposite of the verbatim detailed transcript of Edward's deliberate, reiterated remarks made at the conference in Herzliya, at approximately the same time.

If Bart's implications in his sparse, para-phased, gossipy account are accurate, then the detailed verbatim transcript reported from the Herzliya conference calls loudly for clarification.



Your post, however, enlarged on Bart's uncorroborated paraphrase, and constructed a direct quote, ("the greatest danger to world peace is Israel bombing Iran" quoth John Edwards, as you posted it {#15}), for some reason omitting the qualification "short-term" one of the very few specifics supplied in Bart's account.

Does a key to understanding such apparent blatant Edwards contradiction lie in the words you chose to omit from Bart's account ("short-term"). Was Edwards actually saying in this Hollywood fundraiser (put together, in Bart's words, by a talent-agency "honcho" whose partner is the brother of the DLC's Rahm Emanuel) that Israel bombing Iran would threaten world peace in the "short-term", but was beneficial in the "long-term"? Was this the reason a "chill descended", as Bart described it, over the "antiwar" crowd in attendance? Who knows?

We can only guess, because, unlike the Hezliya conference (where we can each read,verbatim, Edward's speech and his detailed answers to questions, we have only a Hollywood columnist's apparently paraphrased account of brief & inexplicable Edwards' comments at a DLC-related, Hollywood talent agent's fundraiser.

Without any corroborating testimony, or further details by Bart himself, there seems no easy way to clarify the glaring contradictions between Bart's story and Edward's Herzliya transcript.


. . . . . . . . . .


With Patriot Missiles (of no strategic or tactical value in fighting Iraqi insurgents, now being deployed in the middle east, with a second naval strike force also on the way, with Wesley Clark telling Fox News that the White House is dangerously "laying the groundwork" for war with Iran, it's time we took the threat of a massive escalation into a wider middle east war seriously.





If John Edwards is not on the side of beating the drums for war with Iran, it's time he publicly disavow his statements in Herzliya.



Please, John, say it one more time, "I ---- was ---- wrong!"