Amid the talk during Tuesday night's Republican presidential debate about negotiating with terrorists like al Qaeda, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) dropped a doozy on his fellow candidates: "Are you all willing to condemn Ronald Reagan for exchanging weapons for hostages out of Iran? We all know that was done." One of the candidates, former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA), quickly stepped up to defend the Gipper:
SANTORUM: That's not — Iran was a sovereign country. It was not a terrorist organization, number one.
[...] They're — they're — they're a sovereign country…
PAUL: He negotiated for hostages.
SANTORUM: There's — there's a role — we negotiated for hostages with the Soviet Union. We've negotiated with hostages, depending on the scale. But there's a difference between releasing terrorists from Guantanamo Bay in response to a terrorist demand… then — thennegotiating with other countries, where we may have an interest, and that is certainly a proper role for the United States, too.
But just the following night on Fox News, Santorum was singing a different tune. Asked by Bret Baier what President Santorum's Iran policy would be, the former senator concluded:
This government will not and cannot be negotiated with. They are radical Islamists. They are theocrats. They are mullahs who believe it is their destiny to fulfill the prophets and the 12th Imam's vision of having global control of the world for radical Shia Islam.
rest at
http://thinkprogress.org/security/2011/10/20/348783/santorum-iran-reagan-negotiate/
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