OT: "we have it on good authority"

[der.hans]

Am 29. Sep, 2008 schwätzte Mike Schwartz so:

moin moin,

I got to hear that part of the debate. Sounded like "Who's on first?" to
me where McCain kept accusing Obama of wanting to meet with Ahmadinejad as
the first stage of negotations with Iran and Obama repeatedly said that's
not what his plan is.

McCain continuing to mis-state Obama's position does not make it Obama's
position.

Sure, Obama used the word preparation rather than pre-condition, but he
explicitly mentioned that he wants low-level negotiations first.

I don't know what Obama said in the past. I don't know what Kissinger has
said.

I understand that Kissinger wouldn't understand what Obama is saying
because English isn't Kissinger's native language and Kissinger doesn't
listen to anybody anyway :).

I don't know what McCain's excuse is.

Maybe I missed something as I was listening on the radio as I was driving
down to some beautiful camping in southern Arizona :).

I did pull up a transcript and that seems to match what I remember as I
look at the transcript for that part of the debate.

Here are two Obama quotes from the debate transcript I found.

###
Senator McCain mentioned Henry Kissinger, who's one of his advisers, who,
along with five recent secretaries of state, just said that we should meet
with Iran -- guess what -- without precondition. This is one of your own
advisers.

Now, understand what this means "without preconditions." It doesn't mean
that you invite them over for tea one day. What it means is that we don't
do what we've been doing, which is to say, "Until you agree to do exactly
what we say, we won't have direct contacts with you."

There's a difference between preconditions and preparation. Of course
we've got to do preparations, starting with low-level diplomatic talks,
and it may not work, because Iran is a rogue regime.
###

###
Look, I mean, Senator McCain keeps on using this example that suddenly the
president would just meet with somebody without doing any preparation,
without having low-level talks. Nobody's been talking about that, and
Senator McCain knows it. This is a mischaracterization of my position.
###

And here's a sentence from McCain that I didn't remember.

"And Senator Obama is parsing words when he says precondition means
preparation."

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/26/debate.mississippi.transcript/

Regardless of the particular word, Obama clearly stated he wants to start
with low-level talks. Maybe Obama said something else another time, but
Friday night he specifically mentioned low-level talks and McCain chose to
ignore it.

>   I guess this might sound "more" or 'less' cool, depending on the
> way a given reader (voter) is already leaning, in this year's
> election:
>   This is from one of the peanut gallery [reader] comments, at
> http://newsbusters.org/blogs/warner-todd-huston/2008/09/27/kissinger-says-obama-wrong-kissingers-position-debate-tonight
> :
>    "[...] I remember [an] old movie where a man went on a quiz show
> and he was asked about Einstein's theory of relativity.  He gave the
> answer and the show said it was wrong.  Einstein called in and said
> the man was right. Kissinger just called into the game show and said
> McCain is right [...]"
>   Remember, the anecdote about Einstein is not true -- (just
> interesting).  It was fictional (from an old movie).

"Kissinger, for his part, said he favored negotiations with Iran, but the
United States should spell out its objectives at the outset. And that, he
said, included a stable Middle East."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/candidates_advice
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2008-09-15-iran-talks_N.htm

Essentially the same article from two places. Objectives are things you
reach for after you start, pre-conditions are things you have in order to
start. That's how i read them anyway. I'm not saying that Obama didn't
misunderstand or misquote Kissinger.

Ah, but ABC thinks Kissinger specifically mentioned meeting with Iran
without conditions.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/09/kissinger-backs.html

And it still comes down to McCain continuously mis-stating Obama's
position and Obama trying to correct McCain. It seems that McCain's
strategy was a success since people seem to have missed Obama's
clarifications.

And once again my random quote pulls up a beauty for the particular email
:).

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/factchecking_debate_no_1.html

ciao,

der.hans
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