New Intelligence Debunks Bush Arguments on Iran Threat, Calls Dem Presidential Candidates'...

New Intelligence Debunks Bush Arguments on Iran Threat, Calls Dem Presidential
Candidates' Judgment Into Question

WASHINGTON, Dec. 3, /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today's report by U.S.
intelligence agencies that Iran -- contrary to previous claims -- ended its
nuclear weapons program in 2003 "is proof positive that this pro-war
administration has been manipulating intelligence and that the Presidential
candidates' all-options-are-on-the-table posture with respect to Iran reflects
their inability to recognize when they're being duped -- again."
So said Democratic Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, the only
Democratic candidate who voted against the Iraq war authorization in 2002 and
the only candidate who voted against every supplemental appropriation since.
Kucinich is also the only candidate who has warned, for months, that the
President has been setting the stage for a possible war with Iran, facilitated
by the approval and acquiescence of the Democrat-controlled Congress.
"The President and Vice President have been beating the war drums, and the
House and the Senate have been dancing to that beat," Kucinich said. "Iran is
a war crime in motion, and the Congress and the Presidential candidates either
can't or won't recognize that."
And, "whatever feeble fall-back statements that the top-polling Democratic
Presidential candidates -- Clinton, Obama, and Edwards -- make today, all
three have repeatedly said that all options are on the table with respect to
Iran," Kucinich pointed out.
"All options," Kucinich said, "include everything from tactical nukes to
air strikes to incursions and invasion by U.S. ground troops who are already
over-stretched in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"We've already lost almost 4,000 brave men and women to a war they should
never have been sent to, and now, the White House, with the collaboration of
the Congress, is preparing to open a new front based on intelligence that has
been proven wrong."
"The threat to peace and the facilitation of another war rests with those
who bow to the President's personal and political agenda for an expanded war.
They allowed themselves to be deceived and fooled five years ago, and they
have fallen into that same foolish trap today. The people of this nation
deserve better than pawns of George Bush."
In view of the new U.S. intelligence report, Kucinich said he would demand
that the other candidates explain their susceptibility to Bush's claims of
Iranian nuclear threats. "They were wrong five years ago on Iraq. They were
wrong this year and Iran, and, heaven help us if they reach the Oval Office
and they're wrong again," Kucinich said.
He said that his own intelligence analysis in 2002 clearly refuted the
Administration's claims about the threat that Iraq posed and its alleged
stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. Kucinich's analysis of recent
independent reports, including those from the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA) led him to the conclusion that Iran is no more a threat to U.S.
national security than Iraq was.
"Why can't Senators Clinton, Obama, and Edwards recognize that their
threatening statements and actions against Iran are not only naive and
foolhardy, they are also diplomatically and militarily provocative? Our own
intelligence reports have proven them wrong."
"Whatever those candidates say today, remember what they said before: Iran
must be stopped at all cost. The fact that Iran stopped pursuing nuclear
weaponry four years ago is more than an inconvenient revelation for those
candidates. It's an indictment of their judgment and their qualifications to
lead this nation."
Website: www.dennis4president.com
SOURCE Kucinich for President 2008

Washington, D.C., Sharon Manitta, +1-202-506-6683, Sharon.manitta@kucinich.us;
or National HQ, Andy Juniewicz, +1-216-409-8992, ajuniewicz@aol.com