Final-Fan said: Kasz216 said: Also Kissinger said... "Senator McCain is right. I would not recommend the next President of the United States engage in talks with Iran at the Presidential level. My views on this issue are entirely compatible with the views of my friend Senator John McCain." So... apparently Obama is the one that doesn't know jack... since that was the contention of the arguement. The President sitting down with anyone over the world. You expect his own advisor not to stretch the truth in his favor?  Obama specifically said that the talks would start at lower levels and not necessarily be with President Ahmadinejad, therefore not being "at the Presidential level", and McCain still said there was no way Kissinger agreed.   http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/09/fact-check-kiss.html According to this, I would say that perhaps McCain "did not understand" when Obama said that talks would start at lower levels and not necessarily be with President Ahmadinejad.  But his attack on "without preconditions" is totally contradictory to Kissinger's explicit statements.  And no, that was not "the contention of the argument" solely.  McCain continued to hammer the "without preconditions" line, as I recall, but feel free to prove me wrong -- I haven't reviewed the transcript yet.

However Obama said "I would meet with anyone without preconditions."

"I'm not going to meet with you until we have lower level meetings" is a precondition.

Obama said HE would meet with anybody without preconditions.

Kissinger said the government should.  It's a big difference.

Obama either misused the word precondition or he's backtracking on what he said pretending he misused the word.

I thought the fact that McCain repeatedly referred to a "fiscal crisis" and rambled on about earmarks during questions about FINANCIAL crisi is a sign that he does not, in fact know jack - about economics at least. Which is kind of what voters care about right now.

Kasz216 said: Final-Fan said: Kasz216 said: Also Kissinger said... "Senator McCain is right. I would not recommend the next President of the United States engage in talks with Iran at the Presidential level. My views on this issue are entirely compatible with the views of my friend Senator John McCain." So... apparently Obama is the one that doesn't know jack... since that was the contention of the arguement. The President sitting down with anyone over the world. You expect his own advisor not to stretch the truth in his favor?  Obama specifically said that the talks would start at lower levels and not necessarily be with President Ahmadinejad, therefore not being "at the Presidential level", and McCain still said there was no way Kissinger agreed.   http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/09/fact-check-kiss.html According to this, I would say that perhaps McCain "did not understand" when Obama said that talks would start at lower levels and not necessarily be with President Ahmadinejad.  But his attack on "without preconditions" is totally contradictory to Kissinger's explicit statements.  And no, that was not "the contention of the argument" solely.  McCain continued to hammer the "without preconditions" line, as I recall, but feel free to prove me wrong -- I haven't reviewed the transcript yet.  However Obama said "I would meet with anyone without preconditions." "I'm not going to meet with you until we have lower level meetings" is a precondition. Obama said HE would meet with anybody without preconditions. Kissinger said the government should.  It's a big difference. Obama either misused the word precondition or he's backtracking on what he said pretending he misused the word.

My response in the other thread: 

So I emphatically disagree with you on whether Obama was incorrectly using the word "precondition".  And if McCain had in mind some other meaning of the word, if such another usage even exists in diplomatic jargon (source plz?), Obama proceeded to define it for him to eliminate any potential misunderstanding and McCain STILL hammered away. 

Obama did NOT misuse the word; at WORST, he used a correct definition of the word instead of the correct definition of the word, and you still have yet to back up your claim of another usage in diplomatic jargon with anything other than pure speculation. 

Obama also said clearly that preliminary talks would be necessary.  I think it's entirely consistent with his statements to suppose that by saying that he would talk to Iran right away he meant his administration and not himself personally, although I am not an expert on Obama's positions and I eagerly await your proof to the contrary. 

preliminary talks =/= precondition

I watched the debate on CNN and after the debate Henry Kissinger emailed CNN and told them that John McCain was entirely correct with his interpretation of Henry Kissinger's position ...

HappySqurriel said: I watched the debate on CNN and after the debate Henry Kissinger emailed CNN and told them that John McCain was entirely correct with his interpretation of Henry Kissinger's position ...

Yes, I just edited that, upon reviewing the transcript and with the minor research I've done, it seems that McCain simply doesn't understand what "precondition" means.  His stated position regarding talks with Iran is consistent with both Kissinger's and Obama's, from what I can tell so far.   

He's a politician with a script written by others, what makes you think any of them know fuck all?

I'VE GOT THE TRANSCRIPT!  RELEVANT PORTION BELOW (all emphasis added by me):
[edit:  fixed link]

LEHRER: Senator, what about talking?

MCCAIN: Senator Obama twice said in debates he would sit down with Ahmadinejad, Chavez and Raul Castro without precondition. Without precondition. Here is Ahmadinenene [mispronunciation], Ahmadinejad, who is, Ahmadinejad, who is now in New York, talking about the extermination of the State of Israel, of wiping Israel off the map, and we're going to sit down, without precondition, across the table, to legitimize and give a propaganda platform to a person that is espousing the extermination of the state of Israel, and therefore then giving them more credence in the world arena and therefore saying, they've probably been doing the right thing, because you will sit down across the table from them and that will legitimize their illegal behavior.

The point is that throughout history, whether it be Ronald Reagan, who wouldn't sit down with Brezhnev, Andropov or Chernenko until Gorbachev was ready with glasnost and perestroika.

Or whether it be Nixon's trip to China, which was preceded by Henry Kissinger, many times before he went. Look, I'll sit down with anybody, but there's got to be pre-conditions. Those pre-conditions would apply that we wouldn't legitimize with a face to face meeting, a person like Ahmadinejad. Now, Senator Obama said, without preconditions.

OBAMA: So let's talk about this. First of all, Ahmadinejad is not the most powerful person in Iran. So he may not be the right person to talk to. But I reserve the right, as president of the United States to meet with anybody at a time and place of my choosing if I think it's going to keep America safe.

And I'm glad that Senator McCain brought up the history, the bipartisan history of us engaging in direct diplomacy.

Senator McCain mentioned Henry Kissinger, who's one of his advisers, who, along with five recent secretaries of state, just said that we should meet with Iran -- guess what -- without precondition. This is one of your own advisers.

Now, understand what this means "without preconditions." It doesn't mean that you invite them over for tea one day. What it means is that we don't do what we've been doing, which is to say, "Until you agree to do exactly what we say, we won't have direct contacts with you."

There's a difference between preconditions and preparation. Of course we've got to do preparations, starting with low-level diplomatic talks, and it may not work, because Iran is a rogue regime.

But I will point out that I was called naive when I suggested that we need to look at exploring contacts with Iran. And you know what? President Bush recently sent a senior ambassador, Bill Burns, to participate in talks with the Europeans around the issue of nuclear weapons.

Again, it may not work, but if it doesn't work, then we have strengthened our ability to form alliances to impose the tough sanctions that Senator McCain just mentioned.

And when we haven't done it, as in North Korea -- let me just take one more example -- in North Korea, we cut off talks. They're a member of the axis of evil. We can't deal with them.

And you know what happened? They went -- they quadrupled their nuclear capacity. They tested a nuke. They tested missiles. They pulled out of the nonproliferation agreement. And they sent nuclear secrets, potentially, to countries like Syria.

When we re-engaged -- because, again, the Bush administration reversed course on this -- then we have at least made some progress, although right now, because of the problems in North Korea, we are seeing it on shaky ground.

And -- and I just -- so I just have to make this general point that the Bush administration, some of Senator McCain's own advisers all think this is important, and Senator McCain appears resistant.

He even said the other day that he would not meet potentially with the prime minister of Spain, because he -- you know, he wasn't sure whether they were aligned with us. I mean, Spain? Spain is a NATO ally.

MCCAIN: Of course.

OBAMA: If we can't meet with our friends, I don't know how we're going to lead the world in terms of dealing with critical issues like terrorism.

MCCAIN: I'm not going to set the White House visitors schedule before I'm president of the United States. I don't even have a seal yet.

Look, Dr. Kissinger did not say that he would approve of face-to- face meetings between the president of the United States and the president -- and Ahmadinejad. He did not say that.

OBAMA: Of course not.

MCCAIN: He said that there could be secretary-level and lower level meetings. I've always encouraged them. The Iranians have met with Ambassador Crocker in Baghdad.

What Senator Obama doesn't seem to understand that if without precondition you sit down across the table from someone who has called Israel a "stinking corpse," and wants to destroy that country and wipe it off the map, you legitimize those comments.

This is dangerous. It isn't just naive; it's dangerous. And so we just have a fundamental difference of opinion.

As far as North Korea is concerned, our secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, went to North Korea. By the way, North Korea, most repressive and brutal regime probably on Earth. The average South Korean is three inches taller than the average North Korean, a huge gulag.

We don't know what the status of the dear leader's health is today, but we know this, that the North Koreans have broken every agreement that they've entered into.

And we ought to go back to a little bit of Ronald Reagan's "trust, but verify," and certainly not sit down across the table from -- without precondition, as Senator Obama said he did twice, I mean, it's just dangerous.

OBAMA: Look, I mean, Senator McCain keeps on using this example that suddenly the president would just meet with somebody without doing any preparation, without having low-level talks. Nobody's been talking about that, and Senator McCain knows it. This is a mischaracterization of my position.

When we talk about preconditions -- and Henry Kissinger did say we should have contacts without preconditions -- the idea is that we do not expect to solve every problem before we initiate talks.

And, you know, the Bush administration has come to recognize that it hasn't worked, this notion that we are simply silent when it comes to our enemies. And the notion that we would sit with Ahmadinejad and not say anything while he's spewing his nonsense and his vile comments is ridiculous. Nobody is even talking about that.

MCCAIN: So let me get this right. We sit down with Ahmadinejad, and he says, "We're going to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth," and we say, "No, you're not"? Oh, please.

OBAMA: No, let me tell...

MCCAIN: By the way, my friend, Dr. Kissinger, who's been my friend for 35 years, would be interested to hear this conversation and Senator Obama's depiction of his -- of his positions on the issue. I've known him for 35 years.

OBAMA: We will take a look.

MCCAIN: And I guarantee you he would not -- he would not say that presidential top level.

OBAMA: Nobody's talking about that.

MCCAIN: Of course he encourages and other people encourage contacts, and negotiations, and all other things. We do that all the time.

LEHRER: We're going to go to a new...

MCCAIN: And Senator Obama is parsing words when he says precondition means preparation.

OBAMA: I am not parsing words.

MCCAIN: He's parsing words, my friends.

OBAMA: I'm using the same words that your advisers use.

Please, go ahead.

LEHRER: New lead question.

I find it really interesting that McCain gave two apparently contradictory examples of preconditions:

Ronald Reagan wouldn't meet with Soviet Union officials until certain demands were met (glasnost, perestroika). This is consistent with the definition of "precondition" that I am aware of, which Obama subsequently spelled out.

Richard Nixon didn't sit down personally with the Chinese until Kissinger had done talks first. McCain didn't mention any concrete requirements here, just that Kissinger talked first. This is what Obama referred to as "preparation".

I know Kasz216 won't distort my words: Obama seems to intend to do as Nixon did.

Moving on, another thing I find interesting is that at the end McCain said that Obama said that "precondition means preparation", which is the exact opposite of what Obama was actually saying. I don't know what McCain was trying to say exactly, maybe that "precondition doesn't include preparation", which is consistent with other official usage of the word as noted in earlier posts.  [slight edit:] I think you'll agree that Kissinger's position, which follows, is much of a muchness with "without preconditions".

Just for fun, here's a couple of updates to help clarify Kissinger's position: 

"Former U.S.Secretary of State Henry Kissinger today told an audience in Washington, DC that the U.S. should negotiate with Iran "without conditions" and that the next President should begin such negotiations at a high level."
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/09/kissinger-backs.html

From another source:
Kissinger: "Well, I am in favor of negotiating with Iran. And one utility of negotiation is to put before Iran our vision of a Middle East, of a stable Middle East, and our notion on nuclear proliferation at a high enough level so that they have to study it. And, therefore, I actually have preferred doing it at the secretary of state level so that we -- we know we're dealing with authentic..."
Sesno: "Put at a very high level right out of the box?"
Kissinger: "Initially, yes. And I always believed that the best way to begin a negotiation is to tell the other side exactly what you have in mind and what you are -- what the outcome is that you're trying to achieve so that they have something that they can react to. Now, the permanent members of the Security Council, plus Japan and Germany, have all said nuclear weapons in Iran are unacceptable. They've never explained what they mean by this. So if we go into a negotiation, we ought to have a clear understanding of what is it we're trying to prevent. What is it going to do if we can't achieve what we're talking about? But I do not believe that we can make conditions for the opening of negotiations. We ought, however, to be very clear about the content of negotiations and work it out with other countries and with our own government." (CNN's "Live Event," 9/20/08)

Kasz216 said: Obama didn't want to answer it because he obviously has to cut more of his plan, and McCain isn't going to answer a question Obama wouldn't.

Both Obama and McCain didn't want to talk about what they would cut if they were president, but somehow this is Obama's fault.  If you ever want to develop your own opinion on politics, you are going to have to be more indepedent thinking than that.