On Iran, that is:

Sen. Benjamin Cardin, a Democrat from Maryland, says Obama agrees with George W. Bush: “Iran’s got to stop financing terrorist activity. Iran’s got to give up its desire to become a nuclear weapons power. Its as clear as that.”

But what does Ben Cardin (D-MD) really know, anyway? After all, this is the guy who claimed the Patriot Act of 2001 “predated” his 1986 election to Congress, telling his alarmist supporters he couldn’t stop it because it was already in effect when he came to DC (never mind the fact that he actually voted to reauthorize the policy in 2006, when running for the Senate).

The AP article on Cardin’s latest claim continues by stating the absolutely false conventional wisdom that “Obama has indicated a willingness to negotiate with Iran, while Bush resisted talks.”

It’s a sad reality that there are opinion makers who are still dense enough to think that the U.S. wasn’t 100% involved, albeit behind the scenes, in the multi-year negotiations between France, Germany, and Britain and Iran over the latter’s nuclear proliferation — negotiations that went on for the majority of President Bush’s second term.

If President Obama were really serious about dealing with Iran’s nuclear proliferation and support of terrorist activity, by the way, he would be dealing with those issues directly and taking action to stop Iranian meddling in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, the West Bank, and Gaza (as well as the Persian state’s full-speed-ahead pursuit of nuclear weapons), rather than keeping blinders on and pretending those problems don’t exist while hoping against hope that the offering of a few nice words and carrots, which are utterly unappealing relative to the perceived legitimacy that comes with having nuclear weapons capability carrots, will cause the rogue regime in Tehran to suddenly straighten up fly right, and become the new best friend of the West and the “Zionist entity” on the Mediterranean coast.