* Iran Sanctions * Biden Antiwar? * Phony Nobel?

MUHAMMAD SAHIMI [email]
Sahimi is a professor at the University of Southern California and lead political columnist for the website PBS/Frontline/Tehran Bureau. While both Biden and Ryan touted the sanctions on Iran in last night's debate, Sahimi said: "The sanctions were supposed to be 'smart' and 'targeted,' but they have turned to be anything but. They have been hurting only millions of ordinary Iranians." Sahimi wrote the piece "Sanctions Will Kill Tens of Thousands of Iranians."

STEPHEN ZUNES [email]
In last night's debate, Biden referred to Ryan as "his man voting to put two wars on a credit card ... I was there. I voted against them. I said, no, we can't afford that." In fact, both Ryan and Biden voted for both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Biden voted for the Iraq war exactly ten years ago yesterday.

Zunes is professor of politics at the University of San Francisco and a contributor to Foreign Policy in Focus. He said today: "Biden was in fact more responsible than any single member in Congress for getting us into war in Iraq." Biden was chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when the Iraq war vote was taken. Zunes wrote the piece "Biden, Iraq, and Obama's Betrayal" after Biden was named Obama's running mate.

See: "Ten Years After Iraq War Vote: Will Biden and Ryan be Asked About Yes Votes and False Statements on WMDs?"

On one of the few occasions when Biden was questioned about 2002 claims that Saddam Hussein had WMDs, Biden said: "What he did with them, who knows? The real mystery is, if he, if he didn't have any of them left, why didn't he say so?" (Meet the Press, 2007) Of course in 2002, the Iraqi regime was continuously stating it had disarmed.

FREDRIK HEFFERMEHL [email]
Author of "The Nobel Peace Prize: What Nobel Really Wanted," Heffermehl, said today: "There can be no doubt that the European Union has not actively pursued the global peace order Nobel wished to support. Its ambition is to be a strong regional power, with rapid deployment forces, strong arms production and arms trade, it possesses nuclear capabilities via two countries -- it is a union for use of force, not for demilitarization of international affairs. The committee has not made the slightest effort to explain how the winner has contributed to the peace vision of Nobel." See interview with Heffermehl.