Bomb, Bomb, Bomb

McCain's last meeting with an editorial board didn't go so well. Now Think Progress reports on an audio clip of McCain's interview with The Denver Post editorial board, where McCain recommends a hard-line approach to Iran. Read the entire story here.

Here's an extract featuring multiple administration officials and others disagreeing with McCain's recommendations.

Only after years of failure — and a strengthened and emboldened Iran — have members of Bush’s team finally recognized the need to engage Iran. In other words, McCain is now more extreme on Iran than the Bush administration:

ADM. MIKE MULLEN, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair: I would like to have a healthy dialogue with Iran…I do think engagement would offer an opportunity, certainly, to understand each other better. [6/21/08]

ROBERT GATES, Defense Secretary: We need to figure out a way to develop some leverage…and then sit down and talk with them…If there is going to be a discussion, then they need something, too. We can’t go to a discussion and be completely the demander, with them not feeling that they need anything from us. [5/14/08]

NICOLAS BURNS, Undersecretary of State for political affairs: There is a choice: confrontation or diplomacy. We prefer diplomacy and we are trying to open two diplomatic channels — on the nuclear issue and on Iraq. [5/2/07]

The call to move away from the isolationist policy McCain hopes to revive has been endorsed by five secretaries of state, including McCain adviser Henry Kissinger, as well as McCain’s own neocon foreign policy adviser Robert Kagan. McCain’s “let’s completely isolate Iran” approach makes him even more radical than President Bush, who last year said, “We can have meetings. Talking is not the problem. We can talk to Iran.”