he cast of pro-war Republican candidates again argued for aggressive sanctions and pre-emptive strikes on Iran in Thursday’s Republican Presidential debate. But the real battle was between Rep. Ron Paul on the one side and Rep. Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum on the other.

Ron Paul argued that jumping the gun on Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program would lead America down the road to another bloody, expensive war.

“To me the greatest danger is that we will have a president that will overreact, and we will soon bomb Iran,” he said. “We ought to really sit back and think, not jump the gun and believe that we are going to be attacked. That’s how we got into that useless war in Iraq and lost so much.”

He went on to say it makes more sense to stop threatening Iran in our rhetoric and our policies and open up a diplomatic engagement.