(Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call File Photo)
Posted on 01/29/2014 6:35:45 AM PST by SoConPubbie
(Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call File Photo)
Sen. Ted Cruz said after the State of the Union address that President Barack Obama’s Iran policy could lead to a nuclear weapon being detonated over a major U.S. city.
“I thought that was one of the most dangerous things in the entire speech,” Cruz said of Obama’s commitment to veto new Iran sanctions as talks continue with the international community. “What I fear is that we’re making the mistakes of the past — the same mistakes the Clinton administration made with North Korea. With North Korea, we relaxed the sanctions in exchange for amorphous promises, and the billions that North Korea received in relaxed sanctions, they used to develop nuclear weapons.
“The risk is unacceptable. When you have the leaders of a nation who have said, among other things, they intend to drive Israel into the sea and wipe them off the face of the map — if Iran acquires a nuclear weapon, the risk is unacceptable that that weapon will be detonated over the skies of Tel Aviv or New York or Los Angeles,” Cruz said. “The results could be hundreds of thousands of innocent lives lost.”
That kind of rhetoric will get attention, with Cruz explaining his case about how the North Korean regime controlling nuclear weapons is less of a threat than Iran.
“What makes this much, much more dangerous than North Korea is, at the end of the day, Kim Jong Un wants to stay in power more than anything else, and for someone that wants to stay in power, deterrence is possible,” Cruz argued, saying the same may not be true of the Iranian leadership.
Cruz did find some areas of agreements with the president; he agreed with Obama on “streamlining red tape and reducing regulations.” But he did go on to mention that the president had “used that rhetoric before.” Cruz also mentioned a program Obama discussed: myRA, which, the president said, was “a new way for working Americans to start their own retirement savings.”
Obama described the program as a new savings bond that would encourage Americans to build a nest egg.
“I am a passionate supporter of anything that enables people to save on their own, to have assets that they own, that they control, that they can bequest to their kids,” Cruz said. “And so, depending on the details, that could be something that he could find a lot of support.”
Cruz was holding court with a collection of reporters in Statuary Hall long after most of his Senate colleagues had departed. Cruz also spoke with a large number of national and regional TV crews.
Asked what one word he would use to describe the speech, Cruz said: “disappointing.” Not surprisingly, he criticized the way the president spoke about health care and economic policy.
“Throughout the entire of the hour-plus-long speech there was no acknowledgment that the Obama economic policies are not working, that they have produced the lowest labor force participation since 1978, that millions of Americans have lost their jobs, have been forced into part-time work, have lost their health insurance,” Cruz said.
Put me on!
Um, no, the irrational Iranians are not our friends, so they wouldn’t do something that would improve America, at least I don’t think they would.
Oh, completely agree, anything “plugged in” is toast. Disconnected devices might be spared in such homes, might. Like I said, I’m still reading about it.
In that movie in Post 58, scroll ahead to 1:20:00 for the explosion in Charleston Harbor.
Not being a nuclear engineer, I’m still thinking that a ground-based explosion would be pretty nasty, too. Either way, I’d want to be 300-400 miles away, upwind, thankyouverymuch.
Sounds like that old Bob Newhart fake phone call when he was the president calling Moscow to apologize/warn that we had accidentally launched a nuke at them. Then he tells Nikita we’d like to make it up to you-—why don’t you take out Chicago? Nikita says that would make us two-up on the Russians.———Chicago still could use some re-development also.
I think the clock is counting down for NYC unless Israel takes out Iran’s capability.
This site has gone mad with fear of Iran when it is China that is our main threat.
Why would China want to wipe out their best customer?
Ted, hang on a minute...
New York or Los Angeles??
Maybe we can compromise on this one issue??
heheheh
Only lefties are commenting when I went there
Hey. They are not building that big navy and asserting control over Asia to take on France. Customer? Maybe they are thinking how we do it - we bomb and then rebuild. Make even more money.
I don’t see it.
They may well take over via intimidation but not by destruction.
The Chinese aren’t religious fanatics and they got a taste of capitalism. The Iranian government on the other hand has been lying about nuclear weapons from the beginning.
Please add me to the list.
“The Iranians do not have intercontinental missile capability”
But they do have shipping capability and Long Beach and other ports are vulnerable.
“and a nuclear attack on U.S. cities would result in the end of Iran”
I’m not too sure about that. Wish I could be. With the big zero, democRATs, massive retaliation was never an option and they never would respond in kind.
As I see it, the big zero and democRATS would respond by imposing leaky sactions while whining to the UN, eventually getting some sort of strongly worded demarche. . .at best we could hope they would invade Iran followed quickly by pulling-out and then sending billions of dollars in aid to Iran for re-building.
Wash DC Air National Guard was up.
From take-off at Dulles to the Pentagon is mere minutes.
Physically impossible to react in time to stop it.
If we had a president with balls. . . .
Agreed; I too think “something” is going to happen and, if Iran can’t get an ICBM from the NORKs or ChiComms, they’ll sail a ship right into a major US city’s harbor and detonate it.
End of thread hi-jack.
Have a nice day.
Oh please.
This is ridiculous on it’s face. He’s crawling to the neocons and AIPAC with this crapola. We had a decade of this cynical fear mongering and it got us a dead GOP and a police state.
This is very disappointing. But, not surprising (sigh).
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.