Jim Fine, Legislative Secretary for Foreign Policy for the Friends Committee on National Legislation’s Iraq Peace Campaign, discusses the pacifism of the Quaker faith, the defeat of the Iranian war resolution in Congress, the exaggerated Iranian threat, the need for global nuclear disarmament and to negotiations with adversaries, Ahmadinejad’s admission of the 2003 negotiations that the U.S. backed out of, Bush’s signing statements immunizing him from obeying the law stopping permanent military bases and seizing Iraq’s oil, the hawkish stance Obama will have to display to avoid Republican criticism and the groups who stand up to AIPAC.

MP3 here. (40:55)

Jim Fine, Legislative Secretary for Foreign Policy for the The Friends Committee on National Legislation’s Iraq Peace Campaign. Jim has lived in Beirut, Jerusalem, Ramallah, and, briefly, in Baghdad. For over three decades he has traveled extensively throughout the region meeting with political, social, and religious leaders and developing relationships of trust and confidence. He has served as the American Friends Service Committee’s (AFSC) International Affairs representative in the Middle East traveling to Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Palestine, and Israel. He has also worked with a Quaker high school in Ramallah, and with the Middle East Council of Churches.

Joe Cirincione, president of the Plougshares Fund, discusses developments in the Israeli bombing of an alleged nuclear reactor in Syria, the North Korean nuclear program, the Bush regime’s failure to negotiate its dismantling, the AQ Kahn nuclear secret black-market network, the Iranian nuclear energy program, what it would take for Iran to build a weapons program, the missed opportunity five years ago to become friends with them, the political structure within Iran, the foreign policies of the presidential candidates, the dismantling of the old Soviet nuclear arsenal and the necessity of a nuclear weapon free world for the survival of the species.

MP3 here. (44:04)

Joe Cirincione is President of Plougshares Fund based in Washington, DC and San Francisco and author of Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons.