We've recently discussed the Vietnam conflict, and how the LDS church backed the war, (with fewer missionary deferments available, the church made sure Romney got one, and an extra long one at that ... all while he publicly supported sending U.S. troops to Vietnam).

At least this is one area where Romney has not changed his tone. He still likes the idea of war, just so long as none of his sons participate.

Conservative mormons, especially in Utah, are also on the invade-Iran bandwagon.

Mitt Romney has shown his war-mongering hand ... again, and probably unwittingly, as is his wont.

Excerpt from news coverage:

Though John Bolton's credibility as a prominent voice on foreign policy was shredded years ago, the former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. is back -- Mitt Romney has brought Bolton as a leading campaign surrogate and advisor.

With that in mind, Bolton raised a few eyebrows this week with a Washington Times op-ed, celebrating the temporary halt to diplomatic talks with Iran. "Fortunately," he wrote, "the recently concluded Baghdad talks between Iran and the U.N. Security Council's five permanent members and Germany (P-5+1) produced no substantive agreement."[end first excerpt]

Link:http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/06/07/12105573-bolton-celebrates-diplomatic-failure-with-iran

WTF? It is not a good thing when talks produce "no substantive agreement" -- unless you are looking for excuses to go to war.

Joe Kleinof Time magazine wrote about the Bolton/Mitt love fest. Excerpt:

The idea that Mitt Romney would associate himself with this thoughtless goofball is as feckless as his embrace of Donald Trump, and considerably more dangerous. Romney has taken flak, rightly, from Republican realists for his overly aggressive, ill-informed foreign policy statements. He is making a fool of himself on the issues most central to the commander-in-chief function of the presidency. He needs to ditch John Bolton, and fast.

Link: http://swampland.time.com/2012/06/06/road-trip-day-6-a-few-political-notes/

Is Bolton a mormon?

Bolton may be an undercover mormon.

Way too much facial hair.

I can't see that any POTUS will initiate a war, much less an invasion of Iran.

the sanctions appear to be having some effect (NPR).

as much as the military people are geared to conflicts & attempting to resolve them... I don't see it.

I don't think anyone understood foresaw this problem before WW II.

Impossible to say what Romney would do were he POTUS, but he did give us a clue when he spoke about Syria. He thought that we should have taken more "aggressive" steps to oust Assad. By that, I think he meant troops on the ground.

Romney gives us another clue when he adds the clownshoe Bolton to his foreign policy team. Bolton thinks we should invade Iran. He is as certain of that as he is that day will follow night.

All black and white, no gray, no nuance, no real understanding of all the issues.

Bolton was too extreme for George Bush. And that tells you something right there. He's not too extreme for Romney. Romney has bad taste in advisors, and/or he has a hyper-developed mormon tendency to think he can do no wrong and therefore if he likes someone, well then that someone must have been sent to him by God.

On the other hand, Romney may be both more stupid and more extreme than we thought. He hangs out with Trump and the birther crowd, he has a fundraiser in a building rife with Hitler memorabilia, and he hires war-monger Bolton.

Link for fundraising with Hitler story: http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com/2012/06/churchill-roosevelt-and-hitler-oh-my-welcome-to-texas-mitt-romney.html/

Excerpt from an article by Michael Hirsh:

If Mitt Romney plans to make even a slight move toward the middle in the general election, campaigning with John Bolton is not a great way to do it. Bolton, a key foreign-policy advisor to Romney, created a stir recently by appearing to rejoice in an op-ed in The Washington Times that talks between Iran and the U.S. and the "P5 plus one"--the U.N. Security Council members and Germany - had "produced no substantive agreement." Bolton said any talks with Iran were merely "a well-oiled trap" and declared that President Obama had become "increasingly a bystander" in Iran's development of a nuclear weapon (despite the disclosure that Obama has authorized aggressive cyber-attacks on Iran's nuclear facilities).

Link: http://decoded.nationaljournal.com/2012/06/john-bolton-too-far-right-even.php

Mormon leaders have supported war before. See this reference to President Hinckley giving a GC talk supporting the Iraq war:
http://timesandseasons.org/index.php/2007/03/mormonism-and-war/

More backup for the fact that more than 70% of Utah mormons supported the Iraq war.

http://www.sltrib.com/ci_3449282

More proof of not just the usual politician's casual way with facts, but of a peculiarly mormon blindness to the facts (coupled with an inability to issue correction when proven wrong).

Excerpts below are from another readers comments (not mine):

Time and again, he shows not only that he [Romney] simply does not know what the hell he's talking about, but, even more dangerously, he's confident that, by virtue of his magic CEO powers, he's an expert on these things and needs no additional information and advice.

I'm talking about stuff like his ridiculous editorial about the START treaty:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/05/AR2010070502657.html

His frequent pronouncements that a Romney Administration would give Israel the kind of carte blanche support in attacking Iran that Kaiser Wilhelm gave Austria Hungary in the summer of 1914.

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/feb/24/opinion/la-ed-iran-20120224

His shockingly, yet impenetrably, ignorant--in strictly military terms--pronouncements on the size of the Navy and the Air Force:

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/jan/18/mitt-romney/mitt-romney-says-us-navy-smallest-1917-air-force-s/