http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/5/15/14913/5301/320/516310 Huge McCain Blunder: Says Reagan Didn't Negotiate With Iran
Look at what John McCain, Mr. Foreign Policy Experience, said today while agreeing with Bush's repulsive remarks in Israel:
“Yes, there have been appeasers in the past, and the president is exactly right, and one of them is Neville Chamberlain,'’ Mr. McCain told reporters on his campaign bus after a speech in Columbus, Ohio. “I believe that it’s not an accident that our hostages came home from Iran when President Reagan was president of the United States. He didn’t sit down in a negotiation with the religious extremists in Iran, he made it very clear that those hostages were coming home.'’
The Obama campaign and we in the liberal blogosphere need to jump on these comments. Once again, McCain has demonstrated a complete lack of knowledge about foreign policy and American history. First he got confused over Sunnis and Shiites, now this.
McCain seems to be forgetting something kind of important that happened during the Reagan administration.
It's called the Iran-Contra Scandal.
I think John McCain's "experience" doesn't add up to much if he thinks Reagan didn't negotiate with Iran. Even the diarist points out who needs to get on this blunder:
John McCain was in Congress during the 1980s, in fact he was moved up to the Senate in 1986, so surely he couldn't have forgotten about this. Iran-Contra was the biggest scandal of the Reagan administration. They traded arms to Iran in the hopes that the Iranians and Hezbollah would release U.S. hostages. John Kerry, who was one of the lead Senate investigators into Iran-Contra, should be the go-to man for the Obama campaign on this.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/5/15/14913/5301/320/516310Please though Kerry staffers: the blogosphere, anyway, thinks this is HUGE and that Kerry would be a great go to person on how it all went down and why McCain really screwed up here.