Actually I slightly shortened the subject line from the actual headline of the story published in "The Hill" on April 18t. The full title is:
"Dems divided over Webb’s proposal requiring approval for attacking Iran"
And acutally what I wanted to say in the title to this blog post, which I decided to bury here in the text instead, was "WTF!!!" rather than "Huh?!?".
How the hell can we be divided over this? Didn't the Democratic Party learn anything from the original IWR vote? According to "The Hill" at the time of publication, of the current announced Democratic candidates for President only Edwards and Biden had commented on and fully support Webb on this. The House Democratic Caucus forced Pelosi to remove language from the Iraq War funding legislation that would have forced Bush to come to Congress before war with Iran. Note this quote from this (linked below) story in "The Hill":
"Democrats hailed the Iraq withdrawal language attached to the emergency supplemental as a signal of a newly assertive Congress, even though the House removed a mandate for authorization of attacks on Iran from early drafts of the bill."
Rather than just getting steamed over McCain singing "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, Iran" we need to be organizing against conflict with Iran now. Democrats are wavoring on this one. The leadership against rushing into another war, this time with Iran, is coming from America's veterans. I've said it before, and I'll say it again ( and no doubt will again say so in the future): Please visit and support:
And thank you General Wes Clark and VoteVets.org for being way out in front on this issue, as usual.
So anyway here is some more from that story in "The Hill:
"Dems divided over Webb’s proposal requiring approval for attacking Iran
By Elana Schor
April 18, 2007
http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/dems-divided-over-webbs-proposal-requiring-approval-for-attacking-iran-2007-04-17.html
"Supporters of requiring President Bush to secure congressional approval for any preemptive strike on Iran are regrouping for a new push, presaging a difficult vote for Democratic leaders and presidential hopefuls alike...
...There is no hand-tying here. We’re not taking options off the table,” Webb spokeswoman Jessica Smith said. “He offered this piece of legislation to restore the proper balance between the executive and legislative branch. This is a bill to empower Congress.”
For many Democratic base voters, Webb’s Iran language is also a litmus test for presidential candidates. White House assertions that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is tied to Iraqi insurgent groups makes opposition to a possible war with Iran as crucial as opposition to the Iraq war for Democrats running in 2008.
Tom Andrews, the former Democratic lawmaker now leading the anti-war group Win Without War, said the party’s White House hopefuls should see Webb’s plan as a no-brainer.
“The idea that you could not support prohibiting a military strike, given the conditions that are on … certainly raises serious questions in our community,” Andrews said...
...Iran’s recent saber-rattling detention of a British naval crew, which ended in the soldiers’ safe release, appears to have sparked less escalation than expected between Bush and Ahmadinejad. But pro-Israel stalwarts such as Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) see any curb on U.S. action against Iran as a potential handcuff in Iraq...
...The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Washington’s most influential pro-Israel lobbying group, held its capital policy conference just after the House removed Iran authorization language from its version of the supplemental. AIPAC Executive Director Howard Kohr told members there that any legislative attempt to limit U.S. options in Iran would be harmful and signal weakness."
Think war with Iran isn't worth worrying about yet? Here is Noam Chompsky writing about the risk of, and likely consequences of, U.S. military action against Iran:
What If Iran Had Invaded Mexico?
Noam Chomsky
April 06, 2007
..."The Iran Effect"
The results of an attack on Iran could be horrendous. After all, according to a recent study of "the Iraq effect" by terrorism specialists Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank, using government and Rand Corporation data, the Iraq invasion has already led to a seven-fold increase in terror. The "Iran effect" would probably be far more severe and long-lasting. British military historian Corelli Barnett speaks for many when he warns that "an attack on Iran would effectively launch World War III."
What are the plans of the increasingly desperate clique that narrowly holds political power in the U.S.? We cannot know. Such state planning is, of course, kept secret in the interests of "security." Review of the declassified record reveals that there is considerable merit in that claim—though only if we understand "security" to mean the security of the Bush administration against their domestic enemy, the population in whose name they act.
Even if the White House clique is not planning war, naval deployments, support for secessionist movements and acts of terror within Iran, and other provocations could easily lead to an accidental war. Congressional resolutions would not provide much of a barrier. They invariably permit "national security" exemptions, opening holes wide enough for the several aircraft-carrier battle groups soon to be in the Persian Gulf to pass through—as long as an unscrupulous leadership issues proclamations of doom (as Condoleezza Rice did with those "mushroom clouds" over American cities back in 2002). And the concocting of the sorts of incidents that "justify" such attacks is a familiar practice. Even the worst monsters feel the need for such justification and adopt the device: Hitler's defense of innocent Germany from the "wild terror" of the Poles in 1939, after they had rejected his wise and generous proposals for peace, is but one example.
The most effective barrier to a White House decision to launch a war is the kind of organized popular opposition that frightened the political-military leadership enough in 1968 that they were reluctant to send more troops to Vietnam—fearing, we learned from the Pentagon Papers , that they might need them for civil-disorder control.
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/04/06/what_if_iran_had_invaded_mexico.php
Think that Iran can't possibly take direct threats against it from the U.S. and our allies seriously with America bogged down in Iraq? How do you think talk like this is sitting in Tehran right about now?
ISRAEL: Former Mossad head says kill Ahmadinejad
http://www.jewish.com/main.asp?FromHome=1&TypeID=1&ArticleID=742&SectionID=2&SubSectionID=2
The Jerusalem Post (jpost.com)
4/18/2007 3:41:00 PM
Western countries must unite in an effort to assassinate Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, former Head of Mossad Meir Amit said on Wednesday night.
"Even though in the past I have been opposed to assassinating Arab leaders, this case if different because it alone is the center of the nuclear issue," Amit told the weekly "Kfar Chabad" magazine set be published on Thursday.
Amit said he did not perceive an existential danger to Israel following Iran's' nuclear development - "but that is only on condition that we do something about it."
