“Being incoherent is a problem,” John Bolton said last night of Rand Paul’s column on what he’d do about Iran’s nuclear program.







Rand Paul wrote a column yesterday called Where I stand on containing Iran, defending his foreign policy positions with regard to Iran and aligning himself with former President Ronald Reagan. But John Bolton said he found the column as incoherent as the remark that led to the article:

Being incoherent is a problem and that’s what his op-ed was and that’s what the remark that originally provoked it was. He was asked about what to do about Iran’s nuclear weapons program and he couldn’t quite get it out whether he really wants to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons or how he intends to do it or what he intends to say about it.

Bolton goes on to say that the strategic ambiguity that Paul used in defending himself is really about being ambiguous on what your methods are, but that as president you should be crystal clear in telling your adversaries exactly what is and isn’t acceptable and then letting them guess what you are going to do about it. It’s not an excuse for incoherence.

Rand Paul praised Reagan several times in the article and that’s where Bolton was fiercest in his criticism of Paul, especially having worked for Reagan himself: