http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,200353,00.htmlBush Critics Want Tougher U.S. Approach to Iran
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But others say these critics, defined as members of the "neoconservative" wing of the Republican Party and the base of President Bush's foreign policy support, lost their credibility when they pushed for a war against Iraq that has so far been marred by increased sectarian violence and an ongoing insurgency that has killed more than 2,500 U.S. soldiers and thousands more Iraqi civilians.
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“These people don’t have the foggiest of the Middle East,” Tony Sullivan, an Arabist and chief Middle East correspondent for Strategic Forecasting Inc., a private intelligence consulting agency, said of the hawks.
Striking Iran “would be the greatest threat to the defense and promotion of U.S. national interests that I could think of,” Sullivan said. While Bush could “eviscerate" Syria, “Iran has enormous proxies in Iraq, the Gulf oil fields … Iran is in a position to explode the entire Middle East the first time a bomb drops.”
“People made that same argument with Afghanistan and Iraq. It didn’t happen,” countered Rubin.
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Pena warned that it is naive to think hawkish conservative voices are only on the outside of the administration, trying to push it toward a more aggressive foreign policy in the Middle East. Rather, the administration is using its supporters to whip up this sentiment while it plays out the diplomatic card in the United Nations.
"It's just what happened in Iraq — first, you get AEI and the media to start beating the drums" for war, said Pena.
"I think the fact that the voices are getting a little louder is an indication of where the administration is likely to move."