Democrats looking for a war
by digby
I had hoped that the fight within the Senate Democratic caucus over the Iran sanctions and the nuclear talks was a good cop bad cop kabuki dance, but according to this article it's for real. Which is pretty shocking:
In a blistering monologue, the Democratic senator from New Jersey let loose on two Obama administration officials, telling them exactly what he thought about their resistance to his plan for new sanctions on Iran. He had modified his proposal to make it a bit softer, he said at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing in December 2011, only for the administration to “vitiate” his amendment.
The result, he said with typical bite, “really undermines, certainly as it relates to this member, your relationship with me for the future.”
Two years later, Menendez is now the chairman of the committee, and he is once again clashing with the administration on Iran, this time as a vocal skeptic on one of President Barack Obama’s most significant foreign policy breakthroughs—an interim deal to slow Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Only now Menendez has a more prominent platform for his aggressive approach, even as the White House again tries to dissuade him.
Working with 25 lawmakers from both parties, Menendez on Thursday rolled out a new round of provisional sanctions on Iran (set to take effect if talks fail), despite stern warnings from the White House and Secretary of State John Kerry—Menendez’s predecessor as the Foreign Relations chairman—that such steps could undermine negotiations aimed at reaching a long-term deal to stall Tehran’s march toward nuclear weaponry.
There are 15 Democrats backing this outrageous nonsense. This Huffington Post article names them and asks the obvious question: where's the anti-war left? Most of the Senators on the list are the usual suspects but there are a couple with big ambitions, Kirsten Gillibrand in particular. She might want to think about the woman who had the senate seat before her and how her vote for the Iraq war affected her presidential prospects.
And everyone needs to think about this:
A senior Obama administration official [told] The Huffington Post that Senate action makes it "far more likely that we'll be left only with a military option" regarding Iran.