Santorum: Cure Iraq by attacking Iran

One can’t help but wonder whether what’s behind the Bush administration’s recent shift in rhetoric — redefining the war against terrorism as a new-fangled war against fascism — is a desire to attack Iran. U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum‘s appearance Sunday on “Meet the Press” suggests that could be the case. If anybody takes their cues from the White House/GOP playbook, it’s Santorum. And, on Sunday, Santorum suggested that the way to “cure” the mess in Iraq is to attack Iran. Check out the transcript here. The particularly pertinent bits are below.

So the question is, how do we, how do we cure Iraq? Focus on Iran. We need to do something about stopping the Iranians from being the central destabilizer of the Middle East.” [Note: I changed the punctuation in the first two sentences. The MTP transcript had it wrong. If you listened to Santorum, it was clear he was answering his own question.]

But understand, at the, at the heart of this war is Iran. Iran is the, is, is the problem here. Iran is the one that’s causing most of the problems in, in Iraq. It is causing most of the problems, obviously, with Israel today. It is, it is the one funding these organizations. And is the, is the country that we need to focus on in this war against Islamic fascism.”