by Jim Lobe

Just four days before 14,000 members arrive for AIPAC’s annual policy conference and a keynote by none other than Bibi Netanyahu himself, the group appears at sea, tossed between Republicans eager to do the Likud leader’s bidding and embarrass President Barack Obama on the one hand and the [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Jim Lobe

Just four days before 14,000 members arrive for AIPAC’s annual policy conference and a keynote by none other than Bibi Netanyahu himself, the group appears at sea, tossed between Republicans eager to do the Likud leader’s bidding and embarrass President Barack Obama on the one hand and the administration and leading Democratic lawmakers who believe that any new sanctions legislation will likely sabotage the ongoing negotiations with Iran and bring the country closer to another Mideast war.

The latest move is predictably coming from the Republican side, which seems determined to find a new legislative vehicle for the stalled Kirk-Menendez (“Wag the Dog”) sanctions bill. They apparently intend to propose — and try to force a vote on — an alternative to a military veterans’ bill (S. 1982) put forward by Sen. Bernie Sanders. The alternative, sponsored by North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr, reportedly includes most of the Kirk-Menendez provisions. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell made clear Wednesday that the Republican stratagem was very much linked to the AIPAC conference when he made yet another appeal to Majority Leader Harry Reid to permit a vote on sanctions legislation. Here’s what he said on the floor:

Now I know many active Members of AIPAC — the Majority Leader mentioned AIPAC — they want to have this vote. They’ll be coming to Washington next week from all over the country. I’ll bet you, Mr. President, this is a vote they want to have.

So far, however, it appears that Reid and the Democrats are standing firm against the move, as the caucus tweeted in response to McConnell:

Please do not inject the Iran sanctions issue into a debate on how we can improve the lives of veterans. #Veterans pic.twitter.com/8ZBCmmXp3M

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) February 26, 2014

They quickly marshalled strong support from key veterans groups, including the American Legion, whose National Commander, Daniel Dellinger, put out the following statement:

Iran is a serious issue that Congress needs to address, but it cannot be tied to S. 1982, which is extremely important as our nation prepares to welcome millions of U.S. military servicemen and women home from war. This comprehensive bill aims to help veterans find good jobs, get the health care they need and make in-state tuition rates applicable to all who are using their GI Bill benefits. This legislation is about supporting veterans, pure and simple. The Senate can debate various aspects of it, and that’s understandable, but it cannot lose focus on the matter at hand: helping military personnel make the transition to veteran life and ensuring that those who served their nation in uniform receive the benefits they earned and deserve. We can deal with Iran – or any other issue unrelated specifically to veterans – with separate legislation.

The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) quickly followed suit with its director, Paul Rieckhoff tweeting that Iran sanctions were “not relevant” to the bill and suggesting that the Republican maneuver was another example of “gridlock” in Washington. Later in the day, Reid himself tweeted:

The @iava and @AmericanLegion are right: We should keep vets bill focused on vets. Republicans are trying to divert attention from this.

— Senator Harry Reid (@SenatorReid) February 26, 2014

The question, of course, is where is AIPAC in all this? I sent an email query to the group’s spokesman, Marshall Wittman, around noon but had received no reply as of late Wednesday night, suggesting either that the organization had not yet formed an opinion or simply preferred not to comment, a rather striking possibility given the proximity of its policy conference which will end with all of the attendees fanning out across Capitol Hill to lobby their lawmakers on a range of priorities, no doubt beginning with Iran. As the delegates will have just heard a no-doubt hawkish exhortation from Netanyahu himself Tuesday morning and the Burr alternative may be the only pending Iran-related measure that reflects his views, what marching orders will AIPAC offer its legions? Moreover, given the strong Democratic opposition to date, lobbying in favor of Burr will make AIPAC’s claim to bipartisanship appear ever more hollow. And while that may be the direction in which some of the group’s biggest donors would like to take it, such a move would risk further alienating its largely Democratic base.

AIPAC’s two top leaders sought last weekend to clarify its position in an op-ed in the New York Times entitled “Don’t Let Up on Iran,” which, in addition to misstating a number of facts, succeeded only in muddying the waters by noting, “Earlier this month, we agreed with Mr. Menendez on delaying a vote in the Senate, but we remain committed to the bill’s passage.” What that means at this point, however, is anybody’s guess. Do they think that what they agreed to delay just two weeks ago should now be voted on despite the stronger opposition among Democrats? Not clear, not clear at all.  It would seem that the flailing I referred to a couple of weeks ago continues.

Meanwhile, two likely Republican president candidates, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, made clear Wednesday they have no reservations about supporting new sanctions or, for that matter, war if it comes to that. Both senators suggested that if Iran obtained a bomb, it might very well transfer it to Venezuela. (Shades of pre-Iraq war hype.) “They both hate us,” declared Cruz. Meanwhile, Cruz’s fellow-Texan, Pastor John Hagee has scheduled his big annual Christians United for Israel (CUFI) conference in Washington for July 21-22; that is, two days after the expiration of the six-month Joint Plan of Action (JPA) negotiated between Iran and the P5+1 (the U.S., Britain, France, China and Russia plus Germany), which, however, can be extended by another six months by agreement of the parties. If, as anticipated, such an extension will be agreed, AIPAC will be joined by its Christian Zionist brothers and sisters in a major new push for sanctions.

Photo: Senator and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky speaking at CPAC 2011 in Washington, D.C. Credit: Gage Skidmore

by Jim Lobe

Ed Levine, an arms control specialist who worked for both Republican and Democratic senators for 20 years on the Intelligence Committee and another ten on the Foreign Relations Committee, has written a detailed and devastating analysis of S. 1881, the Kirk-Menendez bill, for the Center for [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Jim Lobe

Ed Levine, an arms control specialist who worked for both Republican and Democratic senators for 20 years on the Intelligence Committee and another ten on the Foreign Relations Committee, has written a detailed and devastating analysis of S. 1881, the Kirk-Menendez bill, for the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation on whose advisory board he currently serves. We have reproduced it below, but it makes clear that, contrary to claims by the bill’s Democratic co-sponsors, the Iran Nuclear Weapon Free Act of 2013 is designed to torpedo the Nov. 24 “first step” nuclear agreement between Iran and the P5+1. Passage of the bill, Levine concludes, would “leave the United States closer to a Hobson’s choice between going to war with Iran and accepting Iran as an eventual nuclear weapons state.”

Indeed, it’s quite clear from Sen. Mark Kirk’s reaction (as well as those of other Republicans, including that of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor) to the implementation accord between the P5+1 that the entire purpose of the bill is to derail the Nov. 24 agreement, as opposed to acting as a “diplomatic insurance policy” to ensure that its terms are fulfilled, as Sen. Menendez argued last week in the Washington Post. Indeed, Senate Republicans, all but two of whom have co-sponsored the bill, are clearly doing the bidding of AIPAC and Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu in trying to subvert the Nov. 24 agreement, while the 16 Democratic senators who have signed as co-sponsors have insisted that the bill is intended to support that accord. One would think the very partisan difference in the understanding of the intent of the bill would lead some of these 16 Democrats to reconsider their support. That may well be beginning to happen anyway as a result of Sunday’s successful conclusion of the implementation accord, as pointed out in this report by Reuters. But the difference in intent will probably make it easier for the White House to keep the majority of Democrats from breaking ranks.

As of now, the bill has 59 co-sponsors, but the magic number is 67 — a veto-proof majority. While Senate staffers close to AIPAC claimed anonymously last week that they had that many, and at least ten more, committed “yes” votes if the bill came to the floor, the combination of Sunday’s implementation agreement and the clarity of purpose shown by Kirk and Cantor in their reactions to the accord probably diminishes the chances of their reaching that goal. Moreover, unless they get at least half a dozen more Democrats to co-sponsor, Majority Leader Harry Reid is considered unlikely to schedule a vote and almost certainly not before the Presidents’ Day recess in mid-February in any case. And if even a few current Democratic co-sponsors decide to drop their support, the bill may never see the light of day. (AIPAC’s annual Policy Conference here in Washington is March 2-4.)

This is Levine’s analysis:

S.1881, the “Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act of 2013,” will undercut President Obama’s efforts to obtain a comprehensive solution to Iran’s nuclear activities. To the extent that it removes the diplomatic option, moreover, it will leave the United States closer to a Hobson’s choice between going to war with Iran and accepting Iran as an eventual nuclear weapons state.

Supporters of the bill, which was introduced on December 19 by Senators Menendez (D-NJ) and Kirk (R-IL), claim that enactment of it would not impede the E3+3 (AKA the P5+1) negotiations with Iran, but the text of Title III of the bill manifestly contradicts such claims. Specifically:

• Section 301(a)(2)(I) requires the President to certify, in order to suspend application of the new sanctions, that “Iran has not conducted any tests for ballistic missiles with a range exceeding 500 kilometers.” While this objective may be consistent with a UN Security Council resolution, it moves the goalposts by making the new sanctions contingent not just on Iran’s nuclear activities, but also on its missile programs. This paragraph also does not specify a time period (although the requirement in section 301(a)(1) for a certification every 30 days might imply one), so Iran’s past missile tests beyond 500 km might make it impossible for the President ever to make this certification.
• Section 301(a)(2)(H) requires the President also to certify that “Iran has not directly, or through a proxy, supported, financed, planned, or otherwise carried out an act of terrorism against the United States or United States persons or property anywhere in the world.” Once again, there is no time period specified, so Iran’s past support of terrorism might make it impossible for the President ever to make this certification. Even if a time period were clear, however, this language would mean that if, say, Hezbollah were to explode a bomb outside a U.S. firm’s office in Beirut, the sanctions would go into effect (because Iran gives financial and other support to Hezbollah) even if Iran’s nuclear activities and negotiations were completely in good faith. So, once again, the goalposts are being moved.
• Section 301(a)(2)(F) requires the President to certify that the United States seeks an agreement “that will dismantle Iran’s illicit nuclear infrastructure.” But while Iran may agree in the end to dismantle some of its nuclear infrastructure, there is no realistic chance that it will dismantle all of its uranium enrichment capability. In order for the President to make this certification, therefore, he will have to argue either that “you didn’t say all of Iran’s illicit nuclear infrastructure” (although that is clearly the bill’s intent) or that “if the negotiators agree to allow some level of nuclear enrichment in Iran, then the facilities are no longer illicit” (which begins to sound like statements by Richard Nixon or the Queen of Hearts).
• Section 301(a)(3), regarding a suspension of sanctions beyond 180 days, adds the requirement that an agreement be imminent under which “Iran will…dismantle its illicit nuclear infrastructure…and other capabilities critical to the production of nuclear weapons.” This raises the same concerns as does the paragraph just noted, plus the new question of what those “other capabilities” might be. At a minimum, such ill-defined requirements invite future partisan attacks on the President.
• Section 301(a)(4) reimposes previously suspended sanctions if the President does not make the required certifications. This paragraph applies not only to the sanctions mandated by this bill, but also to “[a]ny sanctions deferred, waived, or otherwise suspended by the President pursuant to the Joint Plan of Action or any agreement to implement the Joint Plan of Action.” Thus, it moves the goalposts even for the modest sanctions relief that the United States is currently providing to Iran. To the extent that the currently-provided sanctions relief relates to sanctions imposed pursuant to the President’s own powers, moreover, section 301(a)(4) may run afoul of the separation of powers under the United States Constitution.
• Section 301(b) allows the President to suspend the bill’s sanctions annually after a final agreement is reached with Iran, but only if a resolution of disapproval of the agreement is not enacted pursuant to section 301(c). The primary effect of this insertion of Congress into the negotiating process will be to cast doubt upon the ability of the United States to implement any agreement that the E3+3 reaches with Iran. The provision is also unnecessary, as most of the sanctions relief that would be sought in a final agreement would require statutory changes anyway.
• Section 301(b)(1) imposes a certification requirement to suspend the bill’s new sanctions after a final agreement with Iran has been reached, even if a resolution of disapproval has been defeated. This certification requirement imposes maximalist demands upon the E3+3 negotiators. Paragraph (A) requires that the agreement include dismantlement of Iran’s “enrichment and reprocessing capabilities and facilities, the heavy water reactor and production plant at Arak, and any nuclear weapon components and technology.” How one dismantles technology is left to the imagination. Paragraph (B) requires that Iran come “into compliance with all United Nations Security Council resolutions related to Iran’s nuclear program,” which would require its suspension, at least, of all uranium enrichment. In all likelihood, however, the complete suspension of enrichment either will be impossible to achieve through diplomacy or will be achieved only for a short time before Iran is permitted to resume an agreed level of enrichment of an agreed quantity of uranium under international verification. Paragraph (C) requires that all the IAEA’s issues regarding past or present Iranian nuclear activities be resolved – an objective that the United States and its allies surely share, but that may prove difficult to achieve even if the other objectives are realized. Paragraph (D) requires “continuous, around the clock, on-site inspection…of all suspect facilities in Iran,” which would likely be inordinately expensive and unnecessary, and might also impose safety hazards.

Taken as a whole, these requirements, however desirable in theory, build a bridge too far for the E3+3 to reach. If they are enacted, all parties to the negotiations will interpret them as barring the United States from implementing the sanctions relief proposed in any feasible agreement. Rather than buttressing the U.S. position in the negotiations, therefore, they will bring an end to those negotiations. Worse yet, they will create large fissures in the E3+3 coalition that has imposed international sanctions on Iran. Thus, even though the bill purports to support sanctions, it may well result in the collapse of many of them.

It is in that context that one should read the sense of Congress, in section 2(b)(5) of the bill, that if Israel is compelled to take military action against Iran’s nuclear weapon program, the United States should provide “military support” to Israel. While such support could be limited to intelligence and arms sales, there would be great pressure for the United States to take a more active military role. So this bill, by its many steps to close the window for diplomacy with Iran, could end the international sanctions regime and lead either to a nuclear-armed Iran or to a war in which U.S. armed forces might well be active participants. 

In what can only be considered a pretty substantial defeat for Bibi Netanyahu, neo-conservatives, and the mainstream Israel lobby here, lobby-led efforts in both houses of Congress to enact some form of new sanctions legislation or resolutions designed to undermine the Geneva nuclear deal before the Christmas recess collapsed over the [...]]]> by Jim Lobe

In what can only be considered a pretty substantial defeat for Bibi Netanyahu, neo-conservatives, and the mainstream Israel lobby here, lobby-led efforts in both houses of Congress to enact some form of new sanctions legislation or resolutions designed to undermine the Geneva nuclear deal before the Christmas recess collapsed over the last 24 hours. The Cable blog at foreignpolicy.com has most of the essentials, including a copy of the resolution that Majority Leader Eric Cantor was working with Steny Hoyer to co-sponsor and pass before the House adjourns Friday here.

“Mr. Hoyer believes Congress has the right to express its views on what should be included in a final agreement, but that the timing was not right to move forward this week,” Hoyer’s spokesperson, Stephanie Young, told reporters in a statement.

On the Senate side, heavy lobbying by the administration, pressure from other leading Democrats, and grassroots efforts by national peace groups apparently dissuaded Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Robert Menendez, who until today appeared determined to pass new sanctions legislation before the Senate goes home at the end of next week, from co-sponsoring a bill with Mark Kirk which, at the very least, would have imposed new sanctions after the six-month term of the Geneva accord between Iran and the P5+1 unless Obama certified that  negotiators were close to final agreement.

“I know I have a been a proponent of pursuing additional sanctions prospectively and in a timeframe beyond the scope of the six-month period of negotiations,” Menendez told reporters. “But I am beginning to think, based upon all of this, maybe what the Senate needs to do is define the end game, at least what it finds as acceptable.”

AIPAC and other leading Israel lobby groups believed since the Geneva deal was sealed that several Congressional avenues were available to undermine, if not kill the deal in its crib before the Christmas break. One was quickly pushing sanctions legislation passed overwhelmingly last July by the House through the Senate Banking Committee and get it quickly to the floor. But the committee chairman, Tim Johnson, ruled  out that path earlier this week when he joined other key Democrats, including Armed Services Committee Chair Carl Levin and Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein, in concluding that now was not the time for new sanctions of any kind. A second channel was to tack on a sanctions amendment to the 2014 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), but Levin and the ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee, James Inhofe, made clear already last week they determined to move it through pronto with a minimum of fuss.

A final avenue, which is theoretically still open, was for Menendez and Kirk to introduce their own stand-alone bill on the floor at some moment before the Senate adjourns next week. It appears that the lobby’s strategy was to try to get a Cantor-Hoyer resolution passed by a large margin in the House and thus put additional pressure on the Senate to at least act on a Menendez-Kirk bill, a move that would have put Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who controls the calendar, in a very serious quandary. Reid, almost invariably a reliable supporter of the Israel lobby’s positions, also believes in loyalty to a Democratic president and party discipline. Reid could well have indicated his support for Obama, thus signalling to Menendez that forcing the issue could prove very destructive to Democratic unity. But Hoyer’s decision to desert Cantor — apparently communicated to the Majority Leader Thursday morning — clearly foiled the lobby’s strategy of using the House and its Republican majority as a lever to move  Reid and the Senate.

In any event, the lobby’s failure to get any sanctions legislation through before the end of the year marks a significant setback for it, the neo-conservatives, and Netanyahu who, in clear defiance of repeated appeals by the administration, never backed off his public calls for more sanctions.  In some respects, this marks the third defeat in a row for the neo-cons and the more right-wing leadership of the lobby. They opposed Hagel’s nomination and lost; they supported Obama’s efforts to line up Congressional support for attacking Syria and lost. And they tried hard — much harder than in the Syria case — to get new sanctions legislation before the Geneva deal gathers serious momentum (as it may very likely do by the time Congress reconvenes, primarily through unilateral actions by Iran) and lost.

Moreover, they lost even when they backed off their maximum positions. At the outset, they were pushing for the Senate to pass the House sanctions bill, which was approved by a 400-20 margin. When they realized that was a non-starter, they began pushing for prospective sanctions; that is, those that would automatically take effect if Iran failed to comply with the deal or when the six-month term of the deal ended without a final agreement. Then they fell back to prospective sanctions after six months that would take effect only if Obama acquiesced. But even that couldn’t get sufficient Democratic traction. Their failure demonstrates once again that if a president is determined to win against the lobby — and Obama’s remarks at the Saban Center’s conference last weekend made clear that he was both determined and actually knowledgeable about the subject — he can win.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that the battle is over. Far from it. Beginning next month and for at least the following five, neo-conservatives and AIPAC — and their supporters in Congress — will do everything they can to get new sanctions and/or other legislation designed to sabotage the current deal or a final agreement that falls short of Netanyahu’s demands. You can be sure, for example, that January will see the introduction of legislation (see Menendez’s statement above) that will lay out the conditions of an “acceptable” final accord that are guaranteed to be unacceptable to Iran (such as insisting on an end to all uranium enrichment as a condition to lifting major financial or oil sanctions). The administration will find itself in a constant battle to fend off these initiatives and must be prepared to fight as hard as it has in the last three weeks — and it has fought very hard indeed — to prevent Congress from killing prospects for ending 35 years of hostility between Washington and Tehran. It won’t be easy.

Meanwhile, it’s worth noting that the latest Congressional budget deal provides three times the amount of money — $284 million — that the administration had requested for funding joint U.S.-Israel defense cooperation in 2014. That’s in addition to the $3.1 billion a year that Israel receives in U.S. military assistance.

by Jim Lobe

Eli and Ali have rendered a great service — and a must-read – by disclosing the contents of a private briefing by Illinois Republican Sen. Mark Kirk on the Iran nuclear negotiations he gave to invited supporters Monday. If any additional evidence were needed to show that Kirk, who [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Jim Lobe

Eli and Ali have rendered a great service — and a must-read – by disclosing the contents of a private briefing by Illinois Republican Sen. Mark Kirk on the Iran nuclear negotiations he gave to invited supporters Monday. If any additional evidence were needed to show that Kirk, who is leading the Republican charge in the Senate to impose new economic sanctions against Iran and thereby scuttle the ongoing Geneva process, serves as Bibi Netanyahu’s biggest advocate in Congress, this article would seem to provide a lot. Just as people used to call my former senator, Henry “Scoop” Jackson “the senator from Boeing,” so it seems that Kirk has made himself the senator from AIPAC.

Kirk, whose voting record on domestic and civil-rights issues suggests that he’s one of the last of a dying breed of “moderate” Republicans, has long carried water for the right-wing leadership of the Israel lobby, spearheading anti-Iran, anti-Palestinian and pro-Israel resolutions and legislation throughout his nearly 15-year career in Congress. His identification with the policies and apocalyptic worldview of Netanyahu and hard-line U.S. neo-conservatives — he has taken to comparing the Obama administration with Neville Chamberlain and the Geneva talks with Munich, respectively — has been a source of some bewilderment to many observers. After all, theologically, he’s offered no obvious signs of Christian Zionism of the kind that believes the the “ingathering” of the Jews in Israel and the reconstruction of the Temple in Jerusalem will trigger the Second Coming of Jesus.

Of course, his claim that he is “totally dedicated to the survival of the State of Israel in the 21st century,” as he put it in his briefing, may be completely sincere, although, like many senior Israeli national-security officials, including Netanyahu’s hawkish former defense minister, Ehud Barak, most analysts find it very difficult to take seriously the notion that Iran, even if it obtains nuclear weapons, represents an “existential” threat to Israel. His strident advocacy for Israel’s positions may also have to do with the fact that he has surrounded himself with staffers who have been associated with AIPAC and with even more hard-line pro-Israel groups, like Daniel Pipes‘ Middle East Forum, as suggested in this post by Annie Robbins published by Mondoweiss last year while Kirk was pushing legislation designed to slash funding for Palestinian refugees even as he was in the relatively early stages of recovery from the devastating stroke that he suffered in early 2012.

Yet another — and by no means inconsistent — explanation may lie in the tangible rewards he has received for his steadfast support for Israel, at least insofar as campaign finance is concerned. If you look at the Center for Responsive Politics’ “opensecrets” website on the biggest recipients of campaign cash from pro-Israel public actions committees — most of them closely associated with AIPAC in one way or another (although the list also includes J Street) — you’ll find that Kirk has been a major — perhaps the biggest — beneficiary of their largesse. In the 2010 election cycle, when Kirk took Obama’s old seat, the otherwise moderate Illinois Republican ran far ahead of the pack, with nearly $640,000 in contributions — more than twice the harvest of the next-ranking recipient, Majority Leader Harry Reid (who, incidentally, bowed to the White House’s wishes by putting off a vote on Kirk’s diplomacy-killing amendment to the defense bill this week but announced Thursday that he was inclined to support it or something like it when the Senate returns from its Thanksgiving recess Dec 9). Here’s the Center’s list of top Congressional recipients of pro-Israel PACs for the 2010 election cycle compiled earlier this year.

Indeed, virtually throughout his Congressional career, Kirk was a clear favorite of the lobby.

Although he didn’t make the top 20 list in 2000, the year he first ran for Congress, he soared to the number 3 spot with nearly $100,000 in pro-Israel PAC contributions in his first re-election campaign in 2002, just behind Nevada’s Shelley Berkeley and former Majority Leader Dick Gephardt. In 2004, he fell to number 4, behind three Democrats, but still garnered $130,000 in contributions. And then, in the 2006 election cycle, he hauled in $315,000 in campaign cash, second only to Maryland Democrat Ben Cardin.

In the 2008 cycle, he reached the pinnacle by topping the House list with a whopping $444,531. That was about two-and-a-half times more than the runner-up, the current majority leader and the only Jewish Republican in the House, Eric Cantor ($172,740). For all 468 Congressional races that year, Sen. Norm Coleman, the sole Jewish Republican senator at the time, was the only candidate who outpaced Kirk, a House member with more or less average seniority. According to the Center’s statistics, in the ten years that Kirk served in the House, he received more money from pro-Israel PACs than any other House member.

And then, of course, he pulled in by far the biggest take ever from these same sources in 2010 when he ran for the Senate.

It seems they’ve been getting their money’s worth.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) blocked a vote on this year’s defense budget authorization act because of provisions in the bill that the Obama administration says will tie its hands when dealing with terrorism suspects. Reid explained his impending move on the Senate floor [...]]]> Reposted by arrangement with Think Progress

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) blocked a vote on this year’s defense budget authorization act because of provisions in the bill that the Obama administration says will tie its hands when dealing with terrorism suspects. Reid explained his impending move on the Senate floor Monday before issuing a letter Tuesday to the Democratic chairman and ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee. On the floor Monday, Reid said:

But I also say, Mr. President, in its present form, I’m going to have some difficulty bringing this bill to the floor. It contains provisions relating to the detention of terrorism suspects that in the words of national security adviser John Brennan would be, and I quote, “disastrous. It would tie the hands of our counterterrorism professionals by eliminating tools and authorities that have been absolutely essential to their success.”

To show you how extremely important it is that we do something about these provisions in this bill that are just wrong, both the Judiciary Committee in the Senate and the Intelligence Committee in the Senate have asked for hearings on this provision in this bill.

Watch the video:

In a September speech, Brennan, a deputy national security adviser, decried any “rigid, inflexible approach” to terrorism that would stop the Obama administration from taking its “practical, flexible, results-driven approach that maximizes our intelligence collection and preserves our ability to prosecute dangerous individuals.”

A day after his floor comments, Reid sent a letter the Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) and Ranking Member John McCain (R-AZ) informing them that he didn’t intend to bring the National Defense Authorization Act to the floor until it was stripped of the detention provisions. In the letter, Reid objected to:

[T]he authorization of indefinite detention in section 1031, the requirement for mandatory military custody of terrorism suspects in Section 1032, and the stringent restrictions on transfer of detainees in Section 1033. [...]

I strongly believe that we must maintain the capability and flexibility to effectively apply the full range of tools at our disposal to combat terrorism. This includes the use of our criminal justice system, which has accumulated an impressive record of success in bringing terrorists to justice.

In his floor speech, Reid cited a compromise over last year’s National Defense Authorization Act, which originally included a repeal of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy on gays in the military. Republicans filibustered the authorization and Democrats relented, taking the DADT repeal out of the bill and agreeing to put it forward later as a separate vote. Reid asked that McCain take the same approach to the terrorism detention provisions in this year’s authorization.

By Tom Engelhardt

Reprinted with permission of TomDispatch.com

By now, it seems as if everybody and his brother has joined the debt-ceiling imbroglio in Washington, perhaps the strangest homespun drama of our time.  It’s as if Washington’s leading political players, aided and abetted [...]]]> Lowering America’s War Ceiling?
Imperial Psychosis on Display

By Tom Engelhardt

Reprinted with permission of TomDispatch.com

By now, it seems as if everybody and his brother has joined the debt-ceiling imbroglio in Washington, perhaps the strangest homespun drama of our time.  It’s as if Washington’s leading political players, aided and abetted by the media’s love of the horserace, had eaten LSD-laced brownies, then gone on stage before an audience of millions to enact a psychotic spectacle of American decline.

And yet, among the dramatis personae we’ve been watching, there are clearly missing actors.  They happen to be out of town, part of a traveling roadshow.  When it comes to their production, however, there has, of late, been little publicity, few reviewers, and only the most modest media attention.  Moreover, unlike the scenery-chewing divas in Washington, these actors have simply been going about their business as if nothing out of the ordinary were happening.

On July 25th, for instance, while John Boehner raced around the Capitol desperately pressing Republican House members for votes on a debt-ceiling bill that Harry Reid was calling dead-on-arrival in the Senate, America’s new ambassador to Afghanistan, Ryan Crocker, took his oath of office in distant Kabul.  According to the New York Times, he then gave a short speech “warning” that “Western powers needed to ‘proceed carefully’” and emphasized that when it came to the war, there would “be no rush for the exits.”

If, in Washington, people were rushing for those exits, no chance of that in Kabul almost a decade into America’s second Afghan War.  There, the air strikes, night raids, assassinations, roadside bombs, and soldier and civilian deaths, we are assured, will continue to 2014 and beyond.  In a war in which every gallon of gas used by a fuel-guzzling U.S. military costs $400 to $800 to import, time is no object and — despite the panic in Washington over debt payments — neither evidently is cost.

In Iraq, meanwhile, in year eight of America’s armed involvement, U.S. officials are still wangling to keep significant numbers of American troops stationed there beyond an agreed end-of-2011 withdrawal date.  And the State Department is preparing to hire a small army of 5,000-odd armed mercenaries (with their own mini-air force) to keep the American “mission” in that country humming along to the tune of billions of dollars.

In Libya, the American/NATO war effort, once imagined as a brief spasm of shock-‘n’-awe firepower that would oust autocrat Muammar Gaddafi in a nanosecond, is now in its fifth month with neither an end nor a serious reassessment in sight, and no mention of costs there either.  In Yemen and Somalia, the drones, CIA and military, are being sent in, and special operations forces built up, while in the region a new base is being constructed and older ones expanded in the never-ending war against al-Qaeda, its affiliates, wannabes, and any other nasties around. (At the same time, the Obama administration is leaking information that the original al-Qaeda teeters at the edge of defeat, even as it intensifies the CIA’s drone war in the Pakistani tribal borderlands.)  And further expansion of the war on terror — watch out, al-Qaeda in North Africa! — seems to be a given.

Meanwhile back in Washington — not, mind you, the Washington of the debt-ceiling crisis, but the war capital on the banks of the Potomac — national security spending still seems to be on an upward trajectory.  At $526 billion (without the costs of the Afghan and Iraq wars added in), the 2011 Pentagon budget is, as Lawrence Korb, former assistant secretary of defense under President Ronald Reagan, has written, “in real or inflation adjusted dollars… higher than at any time since World War II, including the Korean and Vietnam Wars and the height of the Reagan buildup.”  The 2012 Pentagon budget is presently slated to go even higher.

Senator John McCain recently raised the question of Pentagon spending in tight times with General Martin Dempsey, the newly nominated chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  He asked about a plan proposed by President Obama to cut $400 billion in Pentagon funds over twelve years, as well as proposals kicking around Congress for cutting up to $800 billion over the same period.

General Dempsey replied, “I haven’t been asked to look at that number. But I have looked and we are looking at $400 billion.  Based on the difficulty of achieving the $400 billion cut, I believe achieving $800 billion would be extraordinarily difficult and very high risk.”

In little of the reporting on this was it apparent that Obama’s $400 billion in Pentagon “cuts” are not cuts at all — not unless you consider an obese person, who continues eating at the same level but reduces his dreams of ever grander future repasts, to be on a diet.  The “cuts” in the White House proposal, that is, will only be from projected future Pentagon growth rates.  Nor were the “savings” of up to one trillion dollars over a decade being projected by Senator Harry Reid as part of his deficit-reduction plan cuts either, not in the usual sense anyway.  They are expected savings based largely on the prospective winding down of America’s wars and, like so much funny money, could evaporate with the morning dew. (In his last minute deal with John Boehner, President Obama’s Pentagon “savings” have, in fact, been reduced to a provisional $350 billion over 10 years.)

So here’s a question at a moment when financial mania has Washington by the throat: How would you define the state of mind of our war-makers, who are carrying on as if trillion-dollar wars were an American birthright, as if the only sensible role for the United States was to eternally police the planet, and as if garrisoning U.S. troops, corporate mercenaries, and special operations forces in scores and scores of countries was the essence of life as it should be lived on this planet?

When I was kid, I used to be fascinated by a series of ads filled with visual absurdities, in which, for instance, five-legged cows floated through clouds.  Each ad’s tagline went something like: What’s wrong with this picture?

So imagine two worlds, both centered in Washington.  In one, they’re heading for the exits, America’s credit rating is in danger of being downgraded, jobs are disappearing, infrastructure is eroding, homeownership levels are falling rapidly, foreclosures are sky-high, times are bad, and even the president admits that the political system designated to make things better is “dysfunctional”; in the other, the exits are there, but there’s no rush to use them, not with those global ramparts to be guarded, those wars to be fought, and a massive national security complex — larger than anything ever imagined when the U.S. still faced a nuclear-armed superpower enemy — to feed and cultivate.

Now tell me: What’s wrong with this picture?

Two worlds, two productions, one over-the-top and raising fears of bankruptcy, the other steady as she goes — and (so it seems) never the twain shall meet.  And yet look again and those two worlds will fuse before your eyes, those two Washingtons will meld into a single capital city.  Then it will be clearer that the actors at center stage and those traveling in the provinces are putting on linked parts of a single performance. The financial problems of one will turn out to be inextricably linked to the other; the lack of an effective stimulus package in the first connected to the endless series of stimulus packages — all that failed “nation-building” in the imperium — in the second.

Like some Roman god, it turns out that schizophrenic Washington has two faces, each reflecting a different aspect of American decline.  In one, everybody can spot the madness.  In the other, it’s less evident, even though untold American treasure — literally trillions of dollars communities here desperately need — has been poured into a series of wars, conflicts, and war preparations without a victory, or even a significant success on the horizon.  (Greeted as if World War II had been won, the killing of Osama bin Laden should have been a reminder of the success of the Global War on Terror for a man with few “troops” and relatively modest amounts of money who somehow managed to land Washington in a financial and military quagmire.)

One American world, one Washington, is devouring the other.  Think of this as the half-hidden psychodrama of this American moment.

Put another way, for months Americans have been focused on raising that debt ceiling, as onscreen countdown clocks ticked away to disaster.  In the process, few have asked the obvious question: Isn’t it time to lower America’s war ceiling?

Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The End of Victory Culture, runs the Nation Institute’s TomDispatch.com. His latest book is The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s (Haymarket Books).

Copyright 2011 Tom Engelhardt