Sarah Palin is claiming that an unusual bid by the State Department to secure the release of American prisoners in Iran is the equivalent of President Obama coddling dictators. And it all happened on Twitter.
A bit of back story first: In July, 2009, three Americans were detained by Iranian forces near the northern border with Iraq and held on charges of espionage. One has since been released, but the other two — Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer — remain in custody and will face charges on November 6. The U.S. government calls the allegations ludicrous and has pushed for their release.
Today, Assistant Secretary of State P.J. Crowley continued that push on Twitter, in a birthday message of sorts to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In subsequent tweets, Crowley wrote: “Happy birthday President #Ahmadinejad. Celebrate by sending Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer home. What a gift that would be…. Your 54th year was full of lost opportunities. Hope in your 55th year you will open #Iran to a different relationship with the world.”
Palin ran that mild rebuke through the ‘winger machine and came up with this. “Happy B’day Ahmadinejad wish sent by US Govt. Mind boggling foreign policy: kowtow & coddle enemies; snub allies. Obama Doctrine is nonsense.”
You can draw your own conclusions about what that means about Palin’s potential foreign policy, if she were to run for President in 2012 — but she does continue to pay Iran hawk and neocon Randy Scheunemann as a consultant and ran on the ticket with a man who called, in song, for the U.S. to bomb Iran.
Brian Beutler
Brian Beutler is TPM's senior congressional reporter. Since 2009, he's led coverage of health care reform, Wall Street reform, taxes, the GOP budget, the government shutdown fight, and the debt limit fight. He can be reached at brian@talkingpointsmemo.com.
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