Iran dominates GOP contenders' debate

The Republican presidential contenders met in a debate on foreign policy Saturday with the question of Iran atop the agenda.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said as president he?d order covert operations to stop the Iranian regime from building nuclear weapons, with options including ?taking out their scientists? and ?breaking the regime and bringing it down.??

And he added, ?all of it (is) deniable,? that is, he as president would deny that the United States was behind the operations.

The U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, issued a report Tuesday in which it said Iran appeared to have worked on designing a nuclear bomb.

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney said President Barack Obama?s policy toward Iran was his ?greatest failing, from a foreign policy standpoint.?

Romney said he work to impose ?crippling sanctions? on Iran and would work for regime change. And he said he would be willing to take military action to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons.

Video: Iran remains defiant over nuclear program (on this page)

?If we re-elect Barack Obama, Iran will have a nuclear weapon. And if you elect Mitt Romney, Iran will not have a nuclear weapon," the former Massachusetts governor declared.

Former Godfather's Pizza CEO Herman Cain said he would provide support to the opposition in Iran to help overthrow the current regime.

All the talk of confrontation with Iran prompted Rep. Ron Paul of Texas to warn against ?war propaganda that went on against Iraq? and led to the 2003 American invasion of Iraq.

Paul said if a president wanted to go to war, he would need to abide by the Constitution and do it ?the old-fashioned way? by asking Congress to declare war.

Paul also clashed on the issue of torture with Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota.

Bachmann said she supported the use of waterboarding suspected terrorists to extract information.

But Paul said waterboarding was torture and that torture is ?un-American,? ?uncivilized,? as well as illegal, immoral and impractical ? since, Paul argued, torture doesn?t yield useful information from terrorist suspects.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry said that each new fiscal year, all foreign aid should start at zero and that he would re-consider aid to every country, including Israel.

The debate among the Republican presidential hopefuls came at a time when opinion polls reveal that Americans give President Obama a good rating for his handling of foreign policy.

In the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released last week, while only 40 percent of poll respondents approved of Obama?s handling of the economy, 52 percent approved of his handling of foreign policy.

And 71 percent of poll respondents said Obama?s decision to withdraw all American combat troops from Iraq by the end of December is the right decision.

Former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and former ambassador to China Jon Huntsman also participated in the debate, which was broadcast and livestreamed by CBS News.

? 2011 msnbc.com

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45271673/ns/politics/

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