Romney: I Would Blockade or Bombard Iran To Prevent It From Getting Nukes

A bit of evolution in his rhetoric/positioning, but, to be fair, everyone's evolving in their rhetoric and positioning. Fred's illegals plan was a grand slam, but I assure you he did not have those thoughts this past summer.

Republican Mitt Romney said Thursday he would be willing to use a military blockade or "bombardment of some kind" to prevent Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon.

The former Massachusetts governor's comments came as the Bush administration announced new sanctions designed to isolate the government in Tehran. Romney applauded the move....

Romney, who has been advocating a hard line against Iran throughout his presidential campaign, said military action would be necessary if severe economic and diplomatic sanctions don't convince Iranian leaders to abandon pursuit of a nuclear weapon.

...

"If for some reasons they continue down their course of folly toward nuclear ambition, then I would take military action if that's available to us," Romney told a crowd of doctors and nurses during a question period that followed a health care speech.

He added: "That's an option that's on the table. And it's is not something which we'll spell out specifically. I really can't lay out exactly how that would be done, but we have a number of options from blockade to bombardment of some kind. And that's something we very much have to keep on the table, and we will ready ourselves to be able to take, because, frankly, I think it's unacceptable for Iran to have nuclear weapons."

The rest of the article is of course about the Democrats rushing to say what madness this all is.

And the media bias -- or cluelessness -- is evident here. Romney has not been particularly hardline on the Iranian question; may I suggest he's usually indicated more nuance than many other major Republican candidates in offering his policy prescriptions (which generally shied away from mention of direct military attack)?

The fact that this idiot doesn't know this -- or considered most of Romney's previous statements "hardline" -- just tells you what you need to know about our Very Professional And Scrupulously Fair media.

I'm glad Romney's gotten a little feistier on this question. Most candidates aren't really there yet, not the way I'd like them to be. A more hawkish Romney is a Romney I'm a little more comfortable with.

Thanks to polynikes, who wanted some Romney news to offset all the Fred and Rudy news. Fair enough. Romney's a hell of an executive and was a good manager for Massachusetts. I'm not really sold on him, but he's still in the hunt for my vote.

posted by Ace at 05:47 PM

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