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
