USANews版 - From Libya to Syria to Iran, Inaccuracies in Vice Presidential Debate |
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l****z
发帖数: 29846 | 1 By Patrick Goodenough
October 12, 2012
(CNSNews.com) – When it comes to foreign policy portions of Thursday night
’s debate, both Vice President Joe Biden and Republican challenger Rep.
Paul Ryan made assertions that were not strictly accurate. Among them:
IRAN
Biden: “Iran is more isolated today than when we took office. It was on the
ascendancy when we took office. It is totally isolated.”
Biden: “The ayatollah … [presumably supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei]
sees the world for the first time totally united in opposition to him
getting a nuclear weapon.”
Two months ago, Iran held the biggest international gathering it has hosted
since the 1979 Islamic revolution, a week-long summit of the Non-Aligned
Movement. Iran has been elected to chair the bloc for the next three years.
In a final communique at the summit’s conclusion, NAM leaders expressed
support for Tehran’s activities “in the field of peaceful use of nuclear
technology,” and rejected unilateral sanctions against Iran. Together, NAM
accounts for around 60 percent of the world’s independent nations.
Biden: “This is the guy [President Obama] who brought the entire world,
including Russia and China, to bring about the most devastating, most
devastating, the most devastating [sanctions] efforts on Iran …”
While the Obama administration did get Russia and China onboard for an Iran
sanctions resolution in the Security Council in June 2010, “the entire
world” did not back the measure. Of the 15 members of the council Turkey
and Brazil opposed the resolution, while Lebanon abstained.
In contrast the Bush administration was twice able to accomplish what its
successor has not – a unanimous (15-0) Security Council vote for sanctions
against Tehran over its nuclear activities. Those resolutions were passed in
Dec. 2006 and Mar. 2007. On a third occasion (Mar. 2008) the Bush
administration achieved a 14-0 vote for a sanctions resolution (Indonesia
abstained). And a fourth resolution (Sept. 2008) – which did not impose new
sanctions but reaffirmed the previous measures – also passed unanimously.
ISRAEL
Biden: “The president has met with Bibi [Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu
] a dozen times.”
Obama has met with Netanyahu nine times since taking office. The Israeli
leader reportedly requested a tenth meeting on the sidelines of the U.N.
General Assembly in New York last month, but no meeting was scheduled.
Instead Obama made his fifth appearance on the daytime television show, “
The View.”
SYRIA
Ryan: “How would we do things differently [from the Obama administration]?
We wouldn’t refer to Bashar Assad as a reformer when he’s killing his own
civilians with his Russian-provided weapons.”
On March 27, 2011 – two weeks after the Syrian crackdown on dissent began -
- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in an interview drew a distinction
between Assad and his late father and predecessor, Hafez el-Assad: “There’
s a different leader in Syria now. Many of the members of Congress of both
parties who have gone to Syria in recent months have said they believe he’s
a reformer.”
Clinton herself did not call Assad a reformer. Her comments may have been
veiled criticism aimed at lawmakers like Senate Foreign Relations Committee
chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.), who had met with Assad at least six times,
most recently in Nov. 2010.
Still, in May 2011 Clinton did raise eyebrows with comments suggesting that
Assad could still embrace reform.
“We are pushing hard for the government of Syria to live up to its own
stated commitment to reforms,” she told an Italian television station. When
the interviewer drew a comparison with Libya, Clinton said the Syrians “
have an opportunity still to bring about a reform agenda. Nobody believed [
Libyan leader Muammar] Gaddafi would do that. People do believe there is a
possible path forward with Syria.”
Biden: (asked why the logic regarding acting to prevent massacres in Libya
did not apply to Syria): “It’s a different country. It is five times as
large geographically, it has one-fifth the population, that is Libya, one-
fifth the population, five times as large geographically.”
Libya, which is slightly bigger than Alaska according to the CIA World
Factbook, is nine times bigger than Syria, which is a little larger than
North Dakota. Libya’s population is a quarter of the size of Syria’s.
(Biden initially appeared to have fumbled the data here completely,
prompting former House Speaker Newt Gingrich to tweet that the vice
president was “absurdly wrong” on this point. A closer reading of a
convoluted sentence – Biden’s addition of the phrase “that is Libya” –
suggests that the inaccuracy was not as egregious as it first appeared.)
LIBYA
Ryan, speaking about the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi:
“It took the president two weeks to acknowledge that this was a terrorist
attack.”
On September 18, one week after the attack, Obama used the words “
extremists and terrorists” to describe those who attacked the consulate and
other U.S. missions. It would have been easy to miss, however: The
president did not use the phrase in an Oval Office statement or at a White
House press conference, but on CBS’ “The Late Show.”
“Here’s what happened,” Obama told David Letterman. “We had a video that
was released by somebody who lives here, sort of a shadowy character – an
extremely offensive video directed at Mohammed and Islam, making fun of the
prophet Mohammed. And so, this caused great offense in much of the Muslim
world. But what also happened was extremists and terrorists used this as an
excuse to attack a variety of our embassies, including the one, the
consulate in Libya.”
Biden: “We weren’t told they wanted more security there [at U.S. missions
in Libya]. We did not know they wanted more security again.”
Last week House Oversight Committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.)
and Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) in a letter to Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton listed a string of attacks and threats in Benghazi in recent months,
and claimed that the administration had turned down “repeated requests”
from the U.S. mission in Libya for more security.
At a House Oversight Committee hearing this week, administration officials
confirmed that requests had been received from U.S. diplomats for more
security in Benghazi. Deputy assistant secretary for diplomatic security
Charlene Lamb told lawmakers she had not supported the requests.
AFGHANISTAN
Biden: “There have been more than two dozen cases of green-on-blue where
Americans have been killed.”
Fifty-two International Security Assistance Force members have been killed
in 36 insider, or so called “green-on-blue,” attacks this year alone.
According to statistics compiled by the New Delhi- based Institute for
Conflict Management, 116 coalition fatalities in 69 such incidents have been
recorded since the beginning of 2009. | P*********0
发帖数: 4321 | 2 尼玛RYAN被抓了个现行。反对STIMULUS, 但是又BEG FOR STIMULUS.
茶袋子们。 |
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