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WASHINGTON (AP) Aug. 2 – Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said he would not use nuclear weapons “in any circumstance” to fight terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
“I think it would be a profound mistake for us to use nuclear weapons in any circumstance,” Obama said, with a pause, “involving civilians.” Then he quickly added, “Let me scratch that. There’s been no discussion of nuclear weapons. That’s not on the table.”
Obama was responding to a question by the Associated Press about whether there was any circumstance where he would be prepared or willing to use nuclear weapons to defeat terrorism and al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.
Obama’s Rivals Criticize Him Over Nuclear Strike Remarks
Running Against the Base - Hillary, Obama,
and the Democrats' High-Risk Strategy
When asked whether his answer also applied to the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons, he said it did.
The Illinois senator warned Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf in a major foreign policy speech that he would use U.S. military force in Pakistan even without Musharraf’s permission if necessary to root out terrorists.
Pakistan has nuclear weapons and is politically unstable, raising concerns that the current military leadership could be replaced by religious fanatics who would be less cautious in using the weapons.
Messrs. Biden and Dodd said it was unwise to telegraph his strategy in advance, a line that Senator Clinton echoed yesterday. “Presidents should be very careful at all times in discussing the use or nonuse of nuclear weapons,” she told reporters at a press conference at the Capitol. “I don’t believe that any president should make any blanket statements with respect to the use or nonuse of nuclear weapons.”
Asked later about taking military action against Al Qaeda in Pakistan, she said, “Everyone agrees our goal should be to capture or kill bin Laden and his lieutenants, but how we do it should not be telegraphed or discussed, for obvious reasons.”
Messrs. Biden and Dodd also escalated their criticism.
“Over the past several days, Senator Obama’s assertions about foreign and military affairs have been, frankly, confusing and confused,” Mr. Dodd said in a statement. “He has made threats he should not make and made unwise categorical statements about military options.”
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Mrs. Clinton’s warning not to “telegraph” war strategy came even as she stepped up her efforts to force the Pentagon to disclose its contingency plans for withdrawing American troops from Iraq. After she and other members of the Senate Armed Services Committee received a classified briefing from an undersecretary of defense, Eric Edelman, Mrs. Clinton joined with Senator Kerry of Massachusetts and Senator Boxer of California to introduce legislation that would require such briefings in the future.
Mr. Edelman agreed to the meeting after initially rebuffing Mrs. Clinton’s request with a letter in which he suggested that her calls for troop withdrawal were “reinforcing enemy propaganda.”
Good morning Oui. Isn’t this the saddest thing?
Let’s have a song – I always liked The Doors
What have we been doing for the last forty years?
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Are born on the ashes and the ruins of war!
It’s so much easier by realizing the wealth of the modern Western world, to make earth a better place for all its beings. Starting today, not tomorrow. That’s why my vote is shifting towards Obama. The choice is mostly between the establishment of Washington’s beltway, Democrats and Republicans alike, or someone these folks call “naive”, a newcomer with bright new ideas and no burden of agreed “conventions”.
BTW my thoughts went back to Barry ‘Nuclear’ Goldwater, now a mainstream policy accepted by Clinton et al. Yes, we haven’t come a long way since then.
The senator’s efforts to bring an Indian firm to Buffalo, which yielded ‘about 10’ jobs, illustrates the bind she faces.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."The response of the punditocracy to Obama’s remarks causes me to have the best opinion of him that I have yet had. I have been highly skeptical of him in general, the main reason being the white establishment’s enthusiasm for him because he is not an “uppity” black.
I think Cockburn hits the nail on the head on this:
Alas, we don’t have politicians with such a great sense of irony any more.
Ugh. Thinking out loud. About the use of nuclear weapons. That does not inspire my confidence. You cannot unspeak a word. You cannot unfire a weapon.
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Sen. John Edwards speaking
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.".
BUFFALO, N.Y. (LAtimes) July 30 — To many labor unions and high-tech workers, the Indian giant Tata Consultancy Services is a serious threat — a company that has helped move U.S. jobs to India while sending thousands of foreign workers on temporary visas to the United States.
So when Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) came to this struggling city to announce some good news, her choice of partners was something of a surprise.
Joining Tata Consultancy’s chief executive at a downtown hotel, Clinton announced that the company would open a software development office in Buffalo and form a research partnership with a local university. Tata told a newspaper that it might hire as many as 200 people.
The 2003 announcement had clear benefits for the senator and the company: Tata received good press, and Clinton burnished her credentials as a champion for New York’s depressed upstate region.
But less noticed was how the event signaled that Clinton, who portrays herself as a fighter for American workers, had aligned herself with Indian American business leaders and Indian companies feared by the labor movement.
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The Tata deal shows the difficulty of proving concrete benefits to U.S. workers from the visa system. Since 2003, the year its Buffalo office opened, Tata and its affiliates have sought permission to bring more than 1,600 foreign high-tech workers to the state, including at least 495 to the upstate region and 45 to Buffalo, according to government data. Tata has brought additional workers into the country under a second visa program whose numbers have not been disclosed.
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Among Indian American activists, Clinton’s work with Tata has been seen as a sign of her independence from outsourcing skeptics within her party — and a break from the Democrats’ 2004 presidential nominee, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, who lambasted “Benedict Arnold CEOs” for shipping jobs overseas.
The senator’s efforts to bring an Indian firm to Buffalo, which yielded ‘about 10’ jobs, illustrates the bind she faces.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."My impression is that Hillary is well rehearsed, but that Obama is the more intelligent candidate here. Saying you will never use battlefield nuclear weapons is in my mind taking a stand on them, and saying that America will never use nuclear weapons means never use them first, but it also implies that the world must be denuclearized, and that further treaties must be struck with foreign nations like Russia to make these weapons obsolete. They never had more than deterrent significance anyway, but in the hands of radicals, they could cause great loss of life and havoc.
Nuclear weapons have never been an option. They were suicidal and no more.
My impression is that Hillary is well rehearsed, but that Obama is the more intelligent candidate here. Saying you will never use battlefield nuclear weapons is in my mind taking a stand on them, and saying that America will never use nuclear weapons means never use them first, but it also implies that the world must be denuclearized, and that further treaties must be struck with foreign nations like Russia to make these weapons obsolete. They never had more than deterrent significance anyway, but in the hands of radicals, they could cause great loss of life and havoc.
Nuclear weapons have never been an option. They were suicidal and no more.