Obama: Mindset Behind Iraq War Now Fueling Opposition to Iran Deal

RUSH TRANSCRIPT:

"Between now and the congressional vote in September, you are going to hear a lot of arguments against this deal, backed by tens of millions of dollars in advertising. And if the rhetoric in these ads and the accompanying commentary sounds familiar, it should. For many of the same people who argued for the war in Iraq are now making the case against the Iran nuclear deal. When I ran for president eight years ago as a candidate who opposed the decision to go to war in Iraq, I said that America did not just have to end that war. We had to end the mindset that got us there in the first place.

It was a mindset characterized by a preference for military action over diplomacy. A mindset that put a premium on unilateral U.S. Action over the painstaking work of holding international consensus -- of building international consensus. A mindset that exaggerated threats beyond what the intelligence supported. Leaders did not level with the American people about the costs of war, insisting that we could easily oppose our will on a part of the world with a profoundly different culture and history. And of course, those calling for war made themselves strong and decisive while dismissing those who disagreed as weak. Even appeasers named malevolent adversary. More than a decade later, we still live with the consequences of the decision to invade Iraq."