crossposted from February 23rd, 2007 diary on Securing America
http://securingamerica.com/...
Yesterday my Tom DeLay crony Congressman, John Culberson hosted a town hall meeting at Rice University.
Remembering that several weeks before the Iraq War he had held a town hall meeting to talk up that war, I was expecting him to use this meeting to talk up Iran.
Instead it was the usual divide and conquer that he hosted on an issue that is local in nature and yet which he has monopolized for political purposes to get votes...local rail and it's route.
He did however take questions on anything we wanted to talk about and I got the chance to challenge Mr. Culberson on his stand vis a vis Iran.
I prefaced my question on Iran by reminding him that during the Q&A for his town hall meeting in late 2002, I had pointed out that CIA Director George Tenet had said in congressional testimony that he didn't know whether or not Saddam Hussein had WMDs but believed that Iraq was well-contained and would not use any weapons he might have unless we invaded and then any available weapons would be used against our troops.
I reminded Culberson that Iraq was a strategic blunder of monumental proportions and asked if he would pledge to stand up to George W Bush on Iran because there are ships heading toward the Strait of Hormuz and we are in danger of another war.
Culberson at first said that we don't need another war. Then he bobbed and weaved saying that Ahmadinejad threatened us and we can't tolerate that. I reminded him that Wes Clark said that one person does not make a country and that Iran is a multi-cultural country. I pointed out that General Clark said that regional diplomacy was called for. He agreed with that.
I thanked him for his politeness and reminded him that 4 years ago when I stood up to challenge the wisdom of the looming Iraq War he had said "It doesn't matter what you say, we're going to war."
Mr. Culberson apologized for how he spoke 4 years ago.
Four years ago there was no record of Mr. Culberson's statements. This time there were at least two newspaper reporters and a video camera.
Culberson went on to state that President Bush listens to his generals. At this point I interrupted him to say that was disingenuous and that Bush fired the generals who disagreed with him, like Eric Shinseki. Someone pointed out that Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld fired the generals.
I didn't hope to persuade Culberson but to alert people in the crowd of 200 or so that the threat of war in Iran was real in case they were not aware of that.
There was applause from several in the audience who were sympathetic to the points I was trying to make.
One lady afterwards asked me to run for office. People thanked me.
So, although I wish I had been more effective at articulating the risks we face, I hope that some people will start to worry about Iran.