Wednesday, September 26, 2007

House passes suicidal measure

By Libby

Okay, I've had it. The House has clearly lost its collective mind. Yesterday they passed an insane measure.
The US House of Representatives aimed a sharp jab at Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Tuesday, slapping new energy sanctions on Tehran, and branding its Revolutionary Guard a terrorist group.

A measure targeting the elite military corps and the lucrative Iranian energy sector sailed through the House by 397 votes to 16, hours before Ahmadinejad's speech to the United Nations General Assembly.

It "calls on the State Department to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard as a "foreign terrorist organization" and therefore open the corps and affiliated companies to economic sanctions." The reasoning behind the bill is precious.
Its top sponsor, veteran Democratic chairman of the House Foreign Affairs committee, Tom Lantos, said the bill was needed because Iran's denials of a nuclear weapons program could not be believed.

"I wish that we could take Ahmadinejad at his word, but we obviously cannot," Lantos said.

"This is the same man who yesterday said, 'Our people are the freest in the world, and there are no homosexuals in Iran.'"

As opposed to our president who sailed into Australia a couple of weeks and announced we're "kicking ass" in Iraq?
US military officials and lawmakers have accused the Guards of arming Shiite militias in Iraq, and supplying sophisticated roadside bombs that kill US soldiers in the war-torn nation.

Those would be the same officials and lawmakers that assured us Saddam had WMDs and not only refused to listen to Han Blix and the UN inspection teams but also worked overtime to discredit and marginalize Blix's work in order to sell their fake case to invade Iraq? If there's a fool born every minute, they all seem to end up in the House.

On a brighter note, Webb spoke out against an Iran amendment in the Senate. He cuts to the heart of the matter.
“At best, it’s a deliberate attempt to divert attention from a failed diplomatic policy,” said Webb. “At worst, it could be read as a backdoor method of gaining Congressional validation for military action, without one hearing and without serious debate.”

The good news is, the latest word is the amendment will be revised before a vote is taken. It better be significantly revised before our so-called representatives hand Bush another free ticket to catastrophe. If Bush uses this for another pre-emptive strike, they aren't going to be able to wring their hands and say they were fooled by bad intelligence again when it turns out all these allegations are lies and obfuscations.

Congress may be willing to play the fool for Bush and Cheney, but the people won't be fooled again. There will no point in supporting the Democratic party if they're simply going to pave the way for the Bush adminstration's reckless ride to oblivion.

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