Video: U.S. ambassador to UN won’t say Iranian regime is illegitimate
posted at 4:05 pm on July 1, 2009 by Allahpundit
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Why won’t she say it? Because, and I quote, “The political situation in Iran is for the Iranians to work out internally.” Now, based on that statement alone, what’s the painfully obvious follow-up question? Right: Why that principle doesn’t also apply to Honduras. Reliable O-bot Andrea Mitchell never asks, of course, choosing to toss a softball instead about America’s defense of Zelaya to which Rice replies, amazingly, “A coup is a coup.” Well, no — the whole point of the double standard between Honduras and Iran is that a coup isn’t a coup when acknowledging it would force Obama into a confrontation he doesn’t want. In fact, Iran’s rigging of the election was a vastly more egregious coup than what went down in Honduras given the unified legislative, judicial, and military support for ousting Zelaya. The fact that she can sit here and make two statements like that with a straight face in the span of minutes is proof either of amazing cognitive dissonance or a willingness to lie bordering on the Orwellian. And based on the leaks coming out of the State Department about Hillary begging Obama to get tougher with Iran, it sounds like not everyone in the administration’s real happy about it.
Incidentally, amid possible photographic evidence of what a fraud the election was and Basij threats to have Mousavi arrested and prosecuted, not only Mousavi himself but fellow candidate Mehdi Karroubi are openly calling Ahmadinejad’s government “illegitimate”. Like it or not, The One’s going to end up having to pick a side here and siding with the regime simply isn’t viable politically. The only question is when he’ll throw in with Mousavi. Tick tock.
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I don’t actually believe that Rice is a philosophical Marxist. I think she’s a phony, an idiot, and got her PhD by staying in school long enough that the academy was afraid she would sue them if they didn’t grant her one.
She’s not bright enough to light up a closet.
Jaibones on July 1, 2009 at 4:56 PM
Obama was the Manchurian Candidate and is now the Manchurian President. Intentionally destroying our country. Siding with terrorist regimes. Failing to support our friends in all hemispheres. Destroying our businesses and industry. Changing our energy, health and tax policy to make us a third world nation. Destroying our currency. On top of that, he has severe “Daddy” issues… abandoned by a Marxist father that had multiple wives. Instead of writing a book dedicated to the people that actually cared for him, he (or William Ayres?) writes for the approval of a dead father that probably didn’t even know or care who he was.
We’re screwed….
CC
CapedConservative on July 1, 2009 at 4:57 PM
I concur, fully.
progressoverpeace on July 1, 2009 at 4:57 PM
Its only six months in and i am so sick of this administration — from top to bottom, everyone and every thing about it.
johnsteele on July 1, 2009 at 4:58 PM
And the fact that he is makes it very simple to comment on his administration.
thomasaur on July 1, 2009 at 5:00 PM
He’s a real hollow man
Playing to his hollow fans
Making all his hollow plans
Doesn’t have an American point of view
Knows just lots of destructive things he wants to do
Isn’t he a lot like Hitler and Mussolini?
He’s as blind to justice as he can be
Just sees what he wants to see
Hollow Man can you see America at all?
MB4 on July 1, 2009 at 5:00 PM
Relax, everyone. The Administration has reached a consensus…a coup is a coup
That is all we need to know.
Captain America on July 1, 2009 at 5:01 PM
No. Never. Even when the Ostrogoths took Rome, they wanted to rule it, not damage it.
Self loathing is particular to the Western left.
theCork on July 1, 2009 at 5:03 PM
You could make the argument that every roman emperor, post republic, hated Rome. Each one became more and more about their own power and less about the people in the country.
lorien1973 on July 1, 2009 at 5:06 PM
Correct on every score, except you left out, narcissistic nincompoop.
betsyz on July 1, 2009 at 5:07 PM
Meanwhile back in Honduras…reminds me of the dissident Iranian students…
elduende on July 1, 2009 at 5:10 PM
Stanford University, B.A. in History, 1986.
Graduate:
Rhodes Scholar, New College, Oxford University, M.Phil., 1988
Oxford University, D.Phil. (Ph.D) in International Relations, 1990
Your hypothesis fails. She’s an ideologue. That doesn’t make her stupid.
ProfessorMiao on July 1, 2009 at 5:15 PM
Obama won’t throw in with Mousavi.
In the short term, Ahmadinejad and the mullahs are going to retain power. With that in mind, the Obama administration will not label them illegitimate, as – in their eyes – that might preclude cooperation with Iran.
Never mind the fact Iran’s not going to play nice, anyway, regardless of whether Obama consider them legitimate or not.
One Against Many on July 1, 2009 at 5:25 PM
Argh, many typos! Hope my gist was clear, nonetheless. Obama vainly thinks that if he doesn’t call them illegitimate, then the Iranians might be more inclined to negotiate.
Shyeah right.
One Against Many on July 1, 2009 at 5:27 PM
I can just look at the picture and tell she’s a lesbian. I haven’t even watched the video and I can tell. NOT that there’s anything wrong with being a lesbian.
Looks like the ol’ gaydar needs a tuneup. She’s married and has two kids.
ProfessorMiao on July 1, 2009 at 5:27 PM
Relax, Ms. Rice, it’s not like The Whole World Is Watching You and Barry swerve from one ditch to the other on Iran or anything.
Plenty of K-PhD types from Foggy Bottom and M Street will back you up, no doubt.
Christien on July 1, 2009 at 5:29 PM
James McGreevey was married and also had two kids.
Bishop on July 1, 2009 at 5:31 PM
This is the monkey in the wrench, the fly in the ointment, for Chavez and Obama. Will Chavez instigate an armed conflict when US troops are already “in country”?
U.S Southern Command has suspended military operations with
Honduras today until things “are clarified”. There are about 600 U.S. troops stationed in Palmerola / Enrique Soto Cano Air base, about 80 km north of Tegucigalpa.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmerola
U.S. troops in country. How inconvenient for Obama, Chavez, and Zelaya
elduende on July 1, 2009 at 5:33 PM
Just unthinking.
gh on July 1, 2009 at 5:37 PM
Susan Rice tells Laura Ingraham the Surge isn’t working, and talking about “massive strategic blunder[s]” and “stupid foreign policy.”
Heh.
Christien on July 1, 2009 at 5:38 PM
Is this the part when campaign promises to try and establish diplomatic relations with tyrants jumps up and bites you in the a$$?
scalleywag on July 1, 2009 at 5:39 PM
Hillary never should have accepted this job. Now she’s going to look as incompetent as the rest of them and there’s not a damn thing she can do about it. Great move, Hil!
scalleywag on July 1, 2009 at 5:41 PM
It might not make her stupid, but she is stupid. As to her credentials in History, Philosophy, and International Relations … please.
Back to the main post: Even Ace is spitting on allah’s silliness about “politically viable” – though Ace is using kid gloves, for some reason.
progressoverpeace on July 1, 2009 at 5:42 PM
both
blink on July 1, 2009 at 5:45 PM
Sure. A friend of mine was happily married with 3 kids, and his wife left him for another woman.
But the vast majority of younger people who are in (heterosexual) marriages with kids these days are heterosexual. I find that evidence more persuasive, if not 100% conclusive, than Southern Gent’s gaydar.
ProfessorMiao on July 1, 2009 at 5:46 PM
She certainly should not have taken it. It was a boneheaded move on Shrillary’s part.
Er .. Shrillary passed that back with that moronic ‘reset/overcharged’ nuke button – which had to be one of the dumbest diplomatic efforts in all of recorded history. It was stunning in the amount of idiocy that went into putting it all together, from the initial idea to the actual implementation. That said everything about Shrillary that anyone needs to know. That someone could screw something that stupid up that badly, with the only other nation onEarth that could physically annihilate us, was just breathtaking and chilling.
It couldn’t happen to a more deserving person.
progressoverpeace on July 1, 2009 at 5:46 PM
BTW, I wasn’t trying to be snippy with you. I was just saying that credentials in soft sciences and liberal arts are not, in and of themselves, indications of anything. There is too much subjectivity to come to any reasonable conclusion as to competence or intelligence, and the makeup of those departments, almost everywhere, is well known. Thus we are left with nothing but her words to judge her by … and they point towards serious stupidity.
progressoverpeace on July 1, 2009 at 5:51 PM
Ms. Rice, who are “the appropriate Iranian leaders” with who Barry will have direct talks?
Iran’s fradulent election’s over, ma’am, you can’t stall any more.
Christien on July 1, 2009 at 5:52 PM
I posted in response to an idiotic supposition that she had taken forever to get her doctorate and was only given it because she would have sued otherwise. Based on what? Two years is fast for a doctorate. I suppose the “counterargument” to the facts is that she threatened to sue if it took any longer.
But I’m beginning to see that an awful lot of responses to policies, ideas and actions people don’t like are “he sold secrets to the Japanese during WW2″ (about a Japanese-American who was awarded the Medal of Honor in WW2), “she’s a lesbian, I can tell” (about a woman who is married and has two children), and most often “he/she/they are stoopid”.
So tell me? Are people made stupid or intelligent by their ppolitics, or do you have to be intelligent to conservative and stupid to a democrat? And if a person changes over the coourse of their life, does their IQ change? Did Christopher Hitchens drop 20 points by voting for Obama?
ProfessorMiao on July 1, 2009 at 5:58 PM
LOL the administration is speaking with One Voice.
I’m in the middle of it, Andrea, I trump.–S.Rice
This Rice has her lesson plan memorized.
Too bad it doesn’t apply to reality.
5:00 spoken with one voice–2nd time she’s used that phrase.
maverick muse on July 1, 2009 at 6:02 PM
OK, well you might want to take my previous message with a grain of salt. But I got into a debate about definitions of ’stupid’ and ‘intelligence’ earlier today on another thread that left me very frustrated.
Trust me. You don’t have to be genius to get a PhD in ANY discipline, but a person of below-average intelligence would be incapable of it. Even in the ’soft’ disciplines.
A lot of really stupid ideas have come from people who are not lacking in intelligence. It often happens because they are blinded by their preconceptions (ideologies) and incapable of recognizing their own biases.
ProfessorMiao on July 1, 2009 at 6:04 PM
To let her off the hook requires the willing suspension of disbelief.
WWHS /what would Hillary say?
ONE VOICE
maverick muse on July 1, 2009 at 6:08 PM
By not taking a side Obama HAS taken a side.
davenp35 on July 1, 2009 at 6:14 PM
And suddenly, for the first time in MY adult life, I’m utterly ashamed of my country.
Change I just can’t believe in…
SuperCool on July 1, 2009 at 6:14 PM
It looked fine to me.
Oh, I’m well aware of that. But some disciplines are more difficult than others. Subjective disciplines can allow anything at all to pass through – and they do. There are lots of crappy math dissertations, but they have to, at least, be working mathematics. That can’t be fudged, though junk can be allowed through.
I have to strongly disagree on this, based on my experiences in academia. In fact, just about every Ph.D. in Education is below-average. Take a gander at the entry GRE’s for that field. It will curl your toes. They score lower on math than the English grads. Really.
I would rephrase this – intelligent people can have emotional handicaps that skew their thinking. A great example would be the Sec of Energy. He’s obviously extremely intelligent, but he has such emotional problems that his thinking on green energy is crazy and stupid. I don’t know if he just wants to be accepted by “the cool kids” or if he has some other pathology, but it is not his raw intelligence that is lacking.
With Rice, she just seems pretty stupid, to me.
progressoverpeace on July 1, 2009 at 6:16 PM
Some of you–too many of you–need to stop with this, “I’m ashamed of my country” and “We’re screwed” Crap
your GOVERNMENT is taking these actions–or not taking action–and I shouldn’t need to remind anyone that government is not country. This particular government is not America
I’m not Screwed because I intend to take substantive measures to prevent this government from further damage. I’ll die before I will sit back and let O-bots ’screw’ me or anyone I can about that
and yes, in a way, that was a threat–because if I die what’s mine I won’t die alone…….
Janos Hunyadi on July 1, 2009 at 6:19 PM
Little publicized fact. Thanks.
So according to Susan Rice, Obama Doctrine is sung in unison. But will One Voice intonate or remain monotone? Those with ears to hear, let them hear. This will be another occasion when the tone deaf will demand that they didn’t hear any inflection (pretense of the tree that fell and no one was there…blah, blah), so those who can and do hear a spectrum must be fabricating evidence.
maverick muse on July 1, 2009 at 6:20 PM
Janos Hunyadi, Touché !
maverick muse on July 1, 2009 at 6:22 PM
That which is UNCONSTITUTIONAL is not legitimate.
maverick muse on July 1, 2009 at 6:24 PM
Ah, I don’t consider doctorates in education to be real doctoral degrees. But you aren’t seriously suggesting that it doesn’t require at least an IQ of 90 to get a PhD, are you?
I’m also basing what I say on my experience in academia.
OK, but I think that an awful lot of liberal ideology is based on emotion. Like white or ‘colonial’ guilt, loopy ideas that everybody would be nice if we weren’t so mean to them, yadda yadda yadda.
ProfessorMiao on July 1, 2009 at 6:37 PM
One Voice–sounds like a wireless plan!
Hear yourself, NOW!, with unlimited talk!
Every time the Obama administration contradicts itself in a statement, the HA headline should be “One Voice:…”
Christien on July 1, 2009 at 6:49 PM
I love ya!
Have you read some of the stuff that passes in sociology? There are certainly some sub-90 IQs, with Ph.D.’s and tenure, in that field.
You can look into the Sokal Affair to see how bad things are the subjective disciplines.
In International Relations, I would guess that there are probably a few sub-90’s, but I’ve never read any of their academic work. All I do know is that everyone I’ve ever met who was in that sort of field was fairly stupid.
I highly doubt that The Precedent breaks 100, himself. I fgure that his SAT score probably ran somewhere around 1000 (480 Math, 520 Verbal). That’s my guess from listening to him.
progressoverpeace on July 1, 2009 at 6:50 PM
It’s nice to know that our Government is making it sooo clear that we were behind neither the “coup” nor the coup. As to which one we will allow without diplomatic gripes — well, we can certainly see that it’s the one which makes the loser bleed from the mouth, as opposed to the one which has no bloodletting at all done on the loser.
unclesmrgol on July 1, 2009 at 7:00 PM
No IQ required at all — just an ability to endure indentured servitude for two years or so, and to do so with a silent smile. Oh, I forgot — and a good master — excuse me, advisor. I know wherewith I speak.
unclesmrgol on July 1, 2009 at 7:03 PM
There’s nothing in the above CV that indicates accomplishment given the one trump card Rice holds — the free ride liberal academia gives to people of color. Is she proving herself anywhere near as capable, stripped of that crutch, as the previous Rice? I don’t thiiink sooo…
unclesmrgol on July 1, 2009 at 7:14 PM
Yeah, and I’ve read some of the stuff that passes for Mechanical Engineering, too. If you can do the experiments your doctoral supervisor tells you to do and interpret the results according to the accepted standards, it’s good enough.
I’ll take a look.
I know a number of people in International Relations and while I don’t agree with much they say, I don’t consider any of them to be unintelligent. They often make what I think are unrealistic assumptions about human nature and/or about the motives of those whose political ideologies they do not share (and sometimes those are the samething), and sometimes they ignore evidence that doesn’t fit the conclusions they seem to be predisposed to. But poor methodology and analysis isn’t the result of stupidity in their cases.
I don’t think he’s a genius, but he does have some skills that make him very powerful (in terms of his ability to get people to go along with him).
ProfessorMiao on July 1, 2009 at 7:15 PM
I know wherewith I speak, too, Unc. Did someone else write your dissertation for you?
ProfessorMiao on July 1, 2009 at 7:16 PM
Both Rices are PhDs, both are people of color. But you conclude that one Rice’s PhD reflects no accomplishment and the other’s does. Or am I misunderstanding you?
ProfessorMiao on July 1, 2009 at 7:20 PM
You are absolutely correct. I didn’t want to launch into my whole rant against many of the experimentalists … :)
Those who actually devise the experiments tend to be quite impressive, but the many doctoral students who do nothing but run them … oh boy.
progressoverpeace on July 1, 2009 at 7:24 PM
I have no respect for either of them, intellectually or any other way – though Condi seemed a little bit smarter than this Rice.
progressoverpeace on July 1, 2009 at 7:31 PM
It sounds like we could have fun with this. I’d put PhDs in business/managerial science in the same category as doctorates in education.
ProfessorMiao on July 1, 2009 at 7:33 PM
Condi was definitely better at diplospeak. But she did some things that I thought were really stupid – like forcing Hamas as an electoral party on Israel, and cramming UNSCR1307 (no.?) down Israel’s throat. Of course, in the latter case Livni was stupid enough to accept it.
But I don’t think I know enough about either of the Rice’s to judge their intelligence, particularly the newer Rice who I haven’t seen much of yet. Maybe I haven’t been looking in the right places.
ProfessorMiao on July 1, 2009 at 7:38 PM
Condi Rice was a much better National Security Adviser then Secretary of State. I think it’s hard to deal with our enemies and the career employees at State that think the U.S. sucks.
Cindy Munford on July 1, 2009 at 8:47 PM
The four horsement –er, jackasses– of the Apocolypse?
onlineanalyst on July 1, 2009 at 10:44 PM
Has li’l Kim dropped off the radar, so to speak? What’s going on with the promised fireworks over Hawaii?
onlineanalyst on July 1, 2009 at 10:45 PM
Ahmadinejad was in New York for the U.N. speeches awhile ago was he not? I am thinking that gal from Chicago (the rich banker one) who was in on Obama’s campaign bandwagon for the presidency may have coordinated some interesting deals with the Obama campaign staff on the night Ahmadinejad stayed in New York. Perhaps that is why Obama has been so recalcitrant to heed to Clintion’s desire to be more definitive with Iran’s rigged election issue and the protesters bloody aftermath. Again, I propose that Obama thru a proxy (the rich banker gal from Chicago) possibly met with Ahmadinejad and had an arrangement carved out on how to proceed after Ahmadinejad was re-elected.
.
For all appearances sake it has been observed and documented that by Obama’s own calm demeaner and acceptance of an Ahmadinejad victory suggest the theory to be closer to the truth than what some skeptics may not now accept. Obama’s life or most of it is a mystery. Is there some investigative reporter interested in going back to that hotel in New York and reviewing the itinerary of Ahmadinejad and the Obama campaign (proxy) staffer to find out how many times their paths crossed. How long were these meetings if they took place. What was discussed?
.
Could the nuclear issues been addressed in those meetings?
.
Sometimes you have to review and evaluate the past more closely to understand what is happening in a present day timeline. What we should be looking for is a “telling” moment that occurs in the future surrounding the relationship between Obama and Ahmadinejad. Let’s see if this story gets some traction.
Americannodash on July 2, 2009 at 2:33 AM
I wouldn’t go musing that about (that someone else wrote your dissertation) if I were you.
unclesmrgol on July 2, 2009 at 9:01 PM
No, you are not misunderstanding me. The first Rice has proven to me her bona-fides, both at the Rand Corporation and again at Stanford. The second Rice has proven nothing (at least not to me). It’s a total apples and oranges situation.
I’ve seen individuals “mentored” into getting their dissertations approved — up to and possibly including a substantial amount of ghost writing, followed by “softball” questions at the defense (I’ve been hit by a softball thrown by an NCAA player — hence the quotes).
My statement could not be balder than this — there are two classes of PhD’s, one class of which has earned the degree via their own hard work, and another class which has not earned the degree, but has been awarded it anyway. “Embracing Diversity” is one institutional way this happens, while another (both institutional and non-institutional) is having very wealthy parents, and a third (non-institutional) is having a close personal relationship with your advisor.
I’ve seen all three in my day.
unclesmrgol on July 2, 2009 at 9:28 PM
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