Bush Blasts Obama; Obama, Top Dems Respond

President Bush today strongly supported Israel and seemed to offer a stiff rebuke on negotiating with terrorists to Senator Obama and Former President Carter.

Speaking to Israel's Parliament, the Knesset, during part of Israel's 60th anniversary, President Bush said the U.S. won't negotiate with terrorists or abandon Israel, and the Palestinian people some day ``will have the homeland they have long dreamed of.''

In what sounded like direct criticism of Senator Obama, who said he would meet with leaders Bush calls terrorists, and President Carter who recently met with leaders from Hamas, President Bush said, ``Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along."

President Bush said, ``We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: `Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is -- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."

President Carter has been widely critized by many for holding talks with Hamas.  The Bush Administration considers Hamas a terror group that it refuses to deal directly with. President Carter has not responded to Mr. Bush's remarks as of this writing.

But Senator Obama did respond with a statement.

"It is sad that President Bush would use a speech to the Knesset on the 60th anniversary of Israel's independence to launch a false political attack," Obama said in the statement his aides distributed. "George Bush knows that I have never supported engagement with terrorists, and the president's extraordinary politicization of foreign policy and the politics of fear do nothing to secure the American people or our stalwart ally Israel."

The White House said Bush's comment wasn't a reference to Senator Obama.

John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, said Obama was showing "naivete and inexperience and lack of judgment" in his willingness to meet with U.S. foes.

Senator McCain added: "This does bring up an issue that we will be discussing with the American people, and that is, why does Barack Obama, Senator Obama, want to sit down with a state sponsor of terrorism?"

Senator Joe Biden (D-DE), said, "This is bullshit, this is malarkey. This is outrageous, for the president of the United States to go to a foreign country, to sit in the Knesset . . . and make this kind of ridiculous statement."

As the War on Terror began after September 11, 2001, President Bush dubbed what he considered terror leaders as part of an "Axis of Evil" that the U.S. would not deal with directly.

In his longest and most complex explanation of his foreign policy goals on "60 Minutes" in February 2007, Senator Obama responded to the question "Would you talk to Iran or Syria?" this way: 

OBAMA: "Yes. I think that the notion that this administration has -- that not talking to our enemies is effective punishment -- is wrong. It flies in the face of our experiences during the Cold War. Ronald Reagan understood that it may be an evil empire, but it's worthwhile for us to periodically meet to see are there areas of common interest. And most importantly, those conversations allow the possibility that our ideas and our values gain greater exposure in these countries. The fact of the matter is that Iran currently is governed by an oppressive regime, one that I think is a threat to the region and to our allies, but there are a lot of people in Iran who potentially would like to be part of this broader community of nations. For us not to be in a conversation with them doesn't make sense. Now I don't think that that conversation should be conditioned on our accepting their support of terrorism or their building nuclear capacity and potentially sparking an arms race in the Middle East, any more than our conversations with the Kremlin presumed that we approved of their aggression around the world. You know, we can have a robust strategy of blocking and containing aggressive actions by hostile or rogue states, but still open up the possibility that over time those relationships may evolve and they may change. And there may be opportunities for us to resolve some of our differences, not all of them, but some of them in a constructive way."