...Ron Paul was right: people like Gingrich, Santorum and Romney are pushing us toward war ...

http://swampland.time.com/2012/02/23/the-not-so-great-debate/

The Not-So-Great Debate
By Joe Klein

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A final note: Gingrich and Romney were disgraceful and demagogic on the subject of Iran. Gingrich was earning his Adelson money, obviously, but in the process exposed himself as either uninformed or purposefully misleading. He ranted against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad–as if Ahmadinejad had any power over the Iranian military or nuclear program. He doesn’t. The Supreme Leader does. In fact, Ahmadinejad is about to lose much of the remaining, hollow power he has: allies of the Supreme Leader have banned most of Ahmadinejad’s supporters from running for re-election to the Iranian parliament in March.

Romney took up the cry against Ahmadinejad–just as John McCain did in 2008. And so you might ask yourself, why do these Republicans insist on turning a guy with no power into–excuse me, Senator Santorum–a major-league Satan? Because most people know that Ahmadinejad is a villain, a holocaust denying anti-Semite. He sounds insane. He makes it easier to argue that Iran’s leadership is a fanatic religious death cult. He might make it easier to pry some Jewish voters from their traditional liberal home in the Democratic Party. It certainly makes it easier for Gingrich to pry dollars from people like Sheldon Adelson.

But it is a phony, baseless argument. Iran has one of the worst, oppressive governments in the world–but it is a thinly veiled military dictatorship, not a religious death cult. (Most of the mullahs disdain not only Ahmadinejad, but also the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who was a decidedly undistinguished minor cleric before he chivvied his way to power.) The leaders of that dictatorship are making careful calculations about whether or not to actually go for a nuclear weapon–and it’s a tough decision: if they build a bomb, they will have deterrence against an Israeli attack and also the grudging respect, and promises of aid, that rogue states like Pakistan and North Korea have gained. But they also run the severe risk of having their economy crushed by the sanctions regime and worse, the possibility of a pre-emptive attack by Israel or the U.S. It is not impossible that the pressure Obama has organized against Iran will force the Supreme Leader to back down. But even if it doesn’t, the facts on the ground do not even vaguely represent the situation as described by Gingrich et al.

Once again, Ron Paul was right: people like Gingrich, Santorum and Romney are pushing us toward war under false pretenses. They should be ashamed of themselves.