Democracy Arsenal: Did McCain just change his position on Iran?

[BurtWorm]

McCain either seriously lied or seriously fucked up talking about how much his dearest old pal Henry Kissinger's position on Iran agrees with his own during the debate--or he has flopped on yet another position, according to democracyarsenal.org:

http://www.democracyarsenal.org/2008/09/the-mccain-kiss.html

John McCain and Barack Obama got into an argument tonight over Henry Kissinger's position on Iran. During the debate McCain said Obama's position was not the same as Kissinger's. McCain said that Kissinger “said that there could be secretary-level and lower level meetings. I've always encouraged them.” This is a correct characterization of Kissinger's position. And you could say that this represents a slight difference between Barack Obama and Henry Kissinger. But McCain saying that "he has always" encouraged talks with Iran just isn't true. McCain has never supported talks with Iran at the Secretary of State level. So either McCain has massively shifted positions on Iran or he is completely misrepresenting his position on Iran.

This is McCain's position:

And the belief that somehow communications and positions and willingness to sit down and have serious negotiations need to be done in a face to face fashion as Senator Obama wants to do, which then enhances the prestige of a nation that's a sponsor of terrorists and is directly responsible for the deaths of brave young Americans, I think is an unacceptable position...

Kissinger:

"Well, I am in favor of negotiating with Iran. And one utility of negotiation is to put before Iran our vision of a Middle East, of a stable Middle East, and our notion on nuclear proliferation at a high enough level so that they have to study it. And, therefore, I actually have preferred doing it at the secretary of state level so that we -- we know we're dealing with authentic..." Sesno: "Put at a very high level right out of the box?" Kissinger: "Initially, yes. And I always believed that the best way to begin a negotiation is to tell the other side exactly what you have in mind and what you are -- what the outcome is that you're trying to achieve so that they have something that they can react to. Now, the permanent members of the Security Council, plus Japan and Germany, have all said nuclear weapons in Iran are unacceptable. They've never explained what they mean by this. So if we go into a negotiation, we ought to have a clear understanding of what is it we're trying to prevent. What is it going to do if we can't achieve what we're talking about? But I do not believe that we can make conditions for the opening of negotiations. We ought, however, to be very clear about the content of negotiations and work it out with other countries and with our own government." (CNN's "Live Event," 9/20/08)

The fact is that McCain has never said he was willing to talk to Iran at the Secretary of State level. His statement tonight either represents a massive policy shift or represents a massive misrepresentation of McCain's position.

[BurtWorm]

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