Yes, I’m late again, and yes, I forgot Open Thread Thursday. Like Jib, I blame RSS feeds for the death of the blogging star…

Seriously, my neck has put me in a house of pain all week, so if you mistakenly hit that video (and……

This is a nation led by a man who thinks it is God’s destiny that he wipes Israel off the map, anyone remember that? What are you going to negotiate? That he agrees to kill only half the Jews in Israel??

This is a nation that supplies Hezbollah, a known terrorist organization. What I don’t understand is if it’s ok to negotiate with Iran, who has just as much blood on their hands as Hezbollah, why won’t Obama negotiate with Hezbollah???? What’s the difference?

Well, I generally trust people with 20 years more experience than me in such matters. I have no idea what your experience is in foreign policy, but if I had to choose between your view and Powell/Kissinger/Albright/Baker/Christopher, I would probably side with them.

WTH are you talking about, alchemist? Did you not read what I wrote? I didn’t come up with this opinion out of thin air. I READ the opinions of other foreign policy heavyweights and made up my own mind. Why did you distort what I wrote to make it sound like I had no basis for my opinion other than my biases? Here is what I wrote, again, this time with emphasis added:

“What makes you think I haven’t researched the issue, weighed the pros and cons already and made up my own mind on the issue? Why can’t you give me YOUR opinion instead of someone else’s? Why should I give their opinion any more weight than I do the other foreign policy heavyweights who agree that it’s not a good idea to meet UNCONDITIONALLY with any despot?”

I’ve given you the benefit of the doubt in other arguments, alchemist, but not this time. I didn’t ask you to trust MY (apparently to you unresearched) opinion over the opinions of Albright, etc, but instead told you that I had based my opinion on doing my own research and reading what other fp heavyweights (and others who know fp well) have to say about the issue. You deliberately distorted my argument, and you should know better.

I would probably side with them.

Only proving just how gullable you are Alchemist. – Lorica

Doesn’t mean they’re right and you’re wrong. There are certainly other foreign policy advisers who don’t agree. But it does mean that you can believe in negotiations and not be …. ‘naive’.

The only person I might, just maybe listen to out of that group, if I were President, would be just maybe Colin Powell. But since he did nothing and allowed poor Scooter Libby to take the fall for his boy, I probably wouldn’t listen to him either. I lost ALL respect for Colin after it was reported that he stood silent while an innocent man took the fall for something his office did. – Lorica

I think you should talk to these guys too. They obviously do not know what they are talking about.

As they say, comedy is born of tragedy…