From the Scotsman (as well as other sources): Clinton: I’ll obliterate Iran if it launches nuclear attack on Israel

THE Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton warned Tehran yesterday that if she were in the White House, the United States could “totally obliterate” Iran in retaliation for a nuclear strike against Israel.

On the day of a crucial vote in her nomination battle with fellow Democrat Barack Obama, the New York senator said she wanted to make clear to Tehran what she was prepared to do as president in the hope that the warning would deter any Iranian nuclear attack against the Jewish state. “I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president, we will attack Iran (if it attacks Israel],” she told ABC’s Good Morning America programme.

“In the next ten years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them,” she said…

This is really really sick, coming from a person who wishes to be the President of the United States.

This issue first emerged during the last Democratic debate, and I thought it was sick when Ms. Clinton said it then. Now this?

The person elected as President usually tasks a rather reticent approach toward such issues. They make general statements, things like, “We will consider our options,” or “We will defend our allies,” etc. Even our current president, while engaging in a lot of rhetoric that is unfortunate, doesn’t promise actions like this.

For my part, let Israel take care of itself. Israel has nuclear weapons, and tons of military hardware provided by this country. Why should we get involved. Are we, as a county, so bent on defending a foreign land that we would initiate a nuclear holocaust on their behalf?

A 2006 census pegs Iran’s population at over 70 million, with about 10.5 million being age 15 or under. We would kill them all, either in direct nuclear hits or in the radioactive aftermath? Really? The United States would do this? This is what we want from our leaders?

Beyond the obvious meaning of obliterate, we would irradiate the Middle East – Saudi Arabia, Turkey, much of the Persian Gulf, Pakistan (they have nukes too), Armenia, and he former Soviet Republics. Do we think that Russia and Pakistan and India would say, “Ok, you’ve irradiated our populations and now they are going to die horrible deaths, but we won’t do anything about it?”

That radioactive cloud won’t stay there either. We better lay in a big supply of iodine because our sons and daughters, right here in North America, will be dying in their 20’s from bone cancer and leukemia.

Our politics are sick and sad if our leaders can casually say that they will obliterate a country – and no one calls them to account for saying it. I lived through enough of the Cold War to know that living under the specter of a nuclear holocaust was no fun. Living in Western New York meant we were target one in a dual nuclear hit. As a former member of CAP I used to take part in radioactivity monitoring exercises – to prepare for the day. In reality I would have been dead – and even as a child I knew that. No child should have to live like that.

It may take a village to raise a child, but only one crazed leader to obliterate the village.