When even notorious totalitarians are more logical and sane than Republicans
by digby
This piece by James Fallows about an on the record discussion between President Obama and a number of journalists about the Iran deal is a must-read. I remain a little bit stunned that the Republicans are so far down the rabbit hole that they are eager to start WWIII, but that's what we're dealing with.
This struck me as the most salient observation although it's all quite revealing:
Obama is clearly so familiar with these arguments that he was able to present them rapid-fire and as if each were a discrete paragraph in a legal brief. (At other times he spoke with great, pause-filled deliberation, marking his way through the sentence word by word.) And most paragraphs in that brief seemed to end, their arguments don’t hold up or, follow the logic or, it doesn’t make sense or, I don’t think you’ll find the weakness in my logic. You’ll see something similar if you read through his AU speech.
The real-world context for Obama’s certainty on these points is his knowledge that in the rest of the world, this agreement is not controversial at all.
There is practically no other big strategic point on which the U.S., Russia, and China all agree—but they held together on this deal. (“I was surprised that Russia was able to compartmentalize the Iran issue, in light of the severe tensions that we have over Ukraine,” Obama said.) The French, Germans, and British stayed together too, even though they don’t always see eye-to-eye with America on nuclear issues. High-stakes measures don’t often get through the UN Security Council on a 15-0 vote; this deal did.
Seriously. The fact that the administration was able to get all of these countries together for this deal says volumes. That our own conservative party is out of sync on such an important issue also says volumes. And what it says is frightening.
Oh, and Chuck Schumer announced that he's going to oppose the deal. Can someone please explain how a Democratic Senator who would do such a thing can possibly be minority leader? I don't get it.
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