January 05, 2009 MSNBC Keith Olbermann

December 22, 2008 MSNBC HARDBALL

Gareth Porter discusses Obama's possible Iran options with The Real News Network.

Veteran IPS investigative reporter Gareth Porter recently spent 12 days in Iran, interviewing Iranian leadership figures. He discussed with them their expectations of the Obama administration, the geopolitical situation in the region and their own hopes for Iran. Gareth has written a series of articles for IPS exploring his findings, but I also got a chance to ask him some questions in amongst his busy schedule. Perhaps the most important impressions he came away from Iran with are that most people there truly believe that their nation's nuclear program is a peaceful one and that "the Iranian leadership is prepared to enter into full-scale serious negotiations on the full range of issues with the United States, provided that it gets signals from the Obama administration that it intends to break with key elements of the Bush administration’s policy."

Here is that interview, in full.

Cernig: We often hear that the Iranian people love America even if their rulers do not. Does your experience agree with this?

Gareth Porter: Certainly people in Tehran are very friendly to Americans on a personal level. I think the viewpoint about “America” is much more variegated, however, depending on political views about both domestic politics in Iran and U.S. policy.

C: We also hear that Iran's rulers use opposition to America and the West as a patriotic lever to stay in power. Is this true, and how does the Bush administration's policy affect Iranian feelings about their leaders?

GP: There is no doubt that President Ahmadinejad has exploited nationalism and popular perceptions of U.S. and Western aggressiveness toward Iran – especially over the nuclear issue – as part of his appeal to his base of practicing Muslims in smaller cities and in the rural areas. That appeal does not work very well in Tehran and other larger cities, however. As for the Islamic regime more generally, I do not have the impression that it depends on hostility toward the West to remain in power. Certainly there have been times (e.g., the early to mid-1990s) when the regime was consciously seeking to improve relations with the West over a considerable period of time, and that strategy was evidently adopted in the belief that the economic benefits of a reduction in tensions would benefit the regime rather than harm it.

C:

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December 18, 2008 News Corp

December 16, 2008 BBC World

December 02, 2008 ABC News

The Preznit, out working on that Legacy Thing, was on ABC with Charles Gibson last night, and had this revealing exchange:

Gibson: You've always said there's no do-overs as president. If you had one --

Bush: The biggest regret of all the presidency has to have been the intelligence failure in Iraq. A lot of people put their reputations on the line and said, you know ... the weapons of mass destruction is a reason to remove Saddam Hussein. It wasn't just people in my administration, and um ... You know, that's not a do-over, but I wish the intelligence had been different, I guess.

Gibson: If the intelligence had been right, would there have been an Iraq war?

Bush: If he had had weapons of mass destruction, would there have been a war? Absolutely.

Gibson: No, if you had known he didn't.

Bush: Oh, I see what you're saying. Uh ... You know, that's an interesting question. That is a do-over I can't do. It's hard for me to speculate.

David N: As always with Bush, the Buck Stops Over There, Or There -- Anywhere But Here.

It obviously never crossed Bush's mind to consider the possibility that there weren't WMD in Iraq -- which, as we now know, was a lot of the reason the intelligence he received was getting so skewed. Indeed, it's obvious he'd probably have simply ignored that intelligence even if it had clearly warned there were no WMD.

Meanwhile, guys like Richard Clarke were warning him he shouldn't even go into Iraq if he was serious about combating terrorism.

Clearly, he wasn't. He was just intent on kicking Saddam's ass, regardless of the price paid.

And that's why, contra Karl Rove, he is forever doomed to be known as the Worst. President. Ever.

Adam Serwer at TAP and Greg Sargent at TPM have more on Bush's actual record regarding pre-invasion intelligence on Iraq.

November 13, 2008 PBS News Hour

Part 1

Part 2

November 10, 2008 News Corp

Part 1

Part 2

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