The Romney’s and the Republicans’ thirst for war seems never ending as evidenced in the article Romney, GOP howl over Obama’s remark about Hugo Chavez.

Republicans, led by Mitt Romney and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, pounced on President Barack Obama on Wednesday after he told a Miami TV anchor that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez does not pose a “serious” national security threat to the United States.
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Experts in the region, though, called Obama’s comments reasonable. Chavez is “certifiable,” with a tremendous ego fueled by the power that comes from sitting on vast oil reserves – but he’s not as dangerous as the leaders of other less friendly regimes, said Riordan Roett, the director of Latin American Studies Program at the School of Advanced International Studies at The John Hopkins University.

Even the experts go overboard when they try to seem reasonable in comparison to the Republicans.  Unless this expert means that Chavez is certifiably correct in his assessment of the United States.

We tried to assassinate the guy and yet he still sent discounted heating oil to help out our citizens that we can’t even take care of ourselves.  What is he trying to do, kill us with kindness?  How dare he!

It used to be that the party out of power did not conduct their own foreign policy during a Presidential campaign.  They recognized that such interference might damage sensitive diplomatic efforts.  I guess this all ended when Ronald Reagan negotiated with the Iranians for them to hold onto our hostages until Jimmy Carter had transferred the Presidency to Reagan.  By any definition, these negotiations of the Reagan camp should be called treason.  Then again, Democrats don’t want to make a scene.

In a pure coincidence, after writing the above, I stumbled across the article Shamir’s October Surprise Admission.

But Shamir had a startling assessment of the larger October Surprise issue. “I know about all the efforts of the Carter administration,” he said. “And, well, I read this interesting book of Gary Sick’s,” a reference to the 1991 book, October Surprise, in which former National Security Council aide Gary Sick made the case for believing the Republicans had disrupted the hostage negotiations before the 1980 election.

With the topic raised, one interviewer asked, “What do you think? Was there an October Surprise?”

“Of course, it was,” Shamir responded without hesitation. “It was.”

Admittedly, I may be suffering from confirmation bias.  There is an interesting discussion in the comment section of the article.