Sending this bit from Juan Cole because it seems that people here actually don't know of this difference between the candidates.
For not the dime's worth of theorists who insist that there is no evidence of any differences between Clinton and Obama. I can't believe that I have to actually cite this evidence on a list of leftists but it does speak to the indifference to the world fate among the voters who have it in their hands.
>From Juan Cole
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/10/17/iran/index1.html
Of the four senators among the Democratic candidates, only Hillary Clinton voted for the non-binding Kyl-Lieberman resolution on Sept. 26. The Kyl-Lieberman resolution, which passed 76-to-22, with 29 Democrats voting in favor, says, "the United States should designate Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps as a foreign terrorist organization ... and place the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps on the list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists." Jim Lobe, among the best journalists covering neoconservatism in Washington, wrote that unnamed "Capitol Hill sources" told him that the resolution was crafted by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker, interviewed on "Democracy Now," concurred that the amendment was pushed by the Israel lobby.
It would be unprecedented to declare a military force of a state to be a "terrorist" organization, and illogical, since the formal definition of terrorism is that it is committed by non-state actors. It would also endanger U.S. troops, who might well be designated terrorists by some foreign governments. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said Sunday that she would not allow a similar resolution to be brought up for a vote in the House of Representatives, telling ABC's "This Week," "This has never happened before, that a Congress should determine one piece of someone's military is [a threat]." Sen. Chris Dodd voted against the resolution on the grounds that it would green-light a Bush administration attack on Iran. Sen. Joe Biden also opposed it, though he argued that it was just a resolution and could not authorize a war. Sen. Barack Obama missed the vote because it was abruptly rescheduled after he had already left on a campaign swing, but when he learned of the rescheduling he issued a statement against the resolution. Obama BLASTED Clinton's vote for the resolution as a repeat of the mistake she made when she voted in 2002 to authorize the Iraq war. (Clinton muddied the waters somewhat by backing a resolution by Virginia Sen. Jim Webb requiring that Bush seek Congressional authorization before attacking Iran.) Some analysts suggested that Clinton is already thinking past the primaries. They believe she is making her decisions on the assumption that she will face a Republican hawk in the presidential contest of 2008, and therefore has to guard against charges that she is weak on national security. According to this analysis, the other Democratic candidates, trailing her, are still playing to the party faithful, who are to the left of the general public. In short, Clinton's staffers must have read the Opinion Dynamics poll for Fox Cable News, which shows that 80 percent of the U.S. public believe that Iran's nuclear program is for weapons purposes, and 50 percent believe that the U.S. should take a tougher line with Iran (as against 31 percent who do not). About 29 percent of the sample want Bush to go ahead and attack Iran before leaving office, while a bare majority thought he should leave the problem to the next president. Some 54 percent of respondents believed that if Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had been allowed to visit the site of the Sept. 11 attacks, he would have been intent on honoring the hijackers. Since the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has been carrying out regular inspections of Iran's nuclear facilities, still cannot find good evidence for a weapons program, the overwhelming consensus to this effect in the U.S. is evidence of successful propaganda by the Bush administration and its enablers in the media. That Ahmadinejad, an Iranian Shiite who has repeatedly denounced Sunni fundamentalism and its terrorist activities, should be viewed as an al-Qaida sympathizer by the American public is a testament to how effectively he has been demonized.
Iran has not launched an aggressive war against a neighbor since 1785 and does not have a history of military expansionism. Its population is a third that of the United States and its military is small and weak. Aside from the Republican Party's long history of fear-mongering as a way to get power, throw public money to their corporate clients, and scare Americans into giving up their civil liberties, what is driving this obsession with Tehran? Candidates may be talking about Iran as an indirect and politically safer way of speaking to voters' anxieties about Iraq. As an issue in itself, Iraq contains many pitfalls. It is a quagmire about which a former commanding general in that country, Rick Sanchez, said last Friday, "There is no question that America is living a nightmare with no end." The Iraq problem is so intractable that bringing it up with voters is dangerous, since they will then ask about policy prescriptions, and most experts agree that the U.S. has no good options. Iran, in contrast, looms as a vague sort of threat on the horizon and politicians can therefore pull out of their tool kits their favorite instrument -- speaking hypothetically without committing to a particular course of action. The problem, as Chris Dodd and Barack Obama saw so clearly, is that in attempting to change the conversation to Iran, American politicians and their morbidly aggressive constituents may be vastly widening the quagmire, playing Katrina to the Middle East's New Orleans. _________________________________________________________________ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/