Unless you happen to live in Virginia or New York, right now Hillary Clinton is doing more than both of your U.S. Senators to prevent the Bush Administration from attacking Iran.
How does that make you feel?
On October 1, Senator Clinton took a step that no other Senator had taken since March, despite repeated appeals from peace activists to do so: she co-sponsored Senator Webb's bill, S.759 - "A bill to prohibit the use of funds for military operations in Iran." The bill seeks to prevent President Bush from attacking Iran without explicit Congressional authorization. As you can see from following the above link to Thomas, Senator Webb's bill, seven months after it was introduced, just has one co-sponsor - Hillary Clinton.
There are four sitting Democratic Senators running for President. All of them say the President cannot attack Iran without Congressional authorization. How come Obama, Biden, and Dodd haven't signed on to Webb's bill?
How come Senator Byrd and Senator Sanders - who each have introduced resolutions affirming that the President cannot attack Iran (or any nation, in the Byrd resolution) without Congressional authorization - have not co-sponsored the Webb bill?
How about the other 17 Senators (not counting Webb, Byrd, Sanders, Biden, Dodd) who voted against the ramp-up-the-conflict-with-Iran Kyl-Lieberman amendment? Why haven't they signed on as co-sponsors of the Webb bill?
Supporters of Biden and Dodd may counter that they voted against the Kyl-Lieberman amendment, so they have made clear their position. Supporters of Obama may counter that although he missed the vote, he clearly opposed the Kyl-Lieberman amendment.
But why, then, is it so much trouble for these Senators to take the simple act of signing on to the Webb bill?
Others may say: Hillary only did this to cover herself from criticism for voting for the Kyl-Lieberman amendment. So? Let other offenders so cover themselves, like Senators Durbin, Dorgan, Feinstein, Lautenberg, Mikulski, Reed, Reid, Rockefeller, Schumer, Stabenow, and Whitehouse. If Hillary can do it, why not these?
Durbin's office has said: the Webb bill is redundant, because under the Constitution the President cannot attack Iran without Congressional authorization.
You mean to tell me, Senator Durbin, that you have never co-sponsored or voted for any bill or resolution that reaffirmed or was "redundant" with existing U.S. law?
The exceptions named by Webb when introducing the bill: "First, military operations or activities that would directly repel an attack launched from within the territory of Iran. Second, those activities that would directly thwart an imminent attack that would be launched from Iran. Third, military operations or activities that would be in hot pursuit of forces engaged outside the territory of Iran who thereafter would enter Iran." The first exception makes sense, but the second and third pave the way for another pre-emptive strike, and/or a phony cross-border raid to use as an excuse t kick off the next for-profit Crusade.
So HRC's co-sponsorship is another form of posturing and not a serious attempt to stop the invasion of Iran which she already voted for. We are not fooled by this empty gesture.
A person of principle (like the kind that would make a good president) would be pulling out all the stops to prevent another war in the middle east, especially one which will, quite likely, snowball into the end of civilisation. And yes, that includes America. Used to anyway.
Hillary's list of things where she wants it both ways...
- Iran
- Iraq
- torture
- the Constitution
- nukes
- NAFTA
- CAFTA
- progressivism
- corporatism
- Michigans primary
- health insurance
- lobbyist money
... I'm sure there's a lot more, but I'm bored and disgusted.
Hillary 's rimary concern is winning.........
when she becomes President, we will learn if she is just being Prudent or a political coward.
wait and see
She couldn't take a clear, principled position on anything if her life depended on it.
My goal is to get people to ask their Senators to co-sponsor the Webb bill.
Why did it take 7 months to become Webb's only co-sponsor?
Does this have anything to do with the uproar over signing Kyl-Lieberman?
http://webb.senate.gov/newsroom/record.cfm?id=271432
What shall we say of the 98 Senators who have not yet done so?
Signing a do-nothing bill, a non-binding resolution as it were accomplishes (multiple choice):
1) nothing
2) less than nothing
Nice try. Did she promise you the Tony Snow Job?
Its shameless to portray her Johnny-come-lately support of Webb's bill as proving she's against attacking Iran. She has made her position perfectly clear: She believes that the President should have complete say-so over whether attacks occur or not, as a part of his
Executive Powers. This is one of the reasons she still gives for her vote on AUMF in 2002.
The other Senators don't have a need for symbolic gestures after Hillary joined Joe Lieberman and the other war mongering asses in supporting his idiotic resolution in the first place. Naming a military unit as a "terrorist organization" already gives Bush the authority to attack under the language of the AUMF. Senator Webb tried to tell Hillary this before she joined in with the neo-cons, yet again, on another march toward military conflict with another nation that poses no imminent threat to our well-being.
I wonder how we would have felt if the Soviets had had troops in Canada and Mexico at the same time. This is what we look like to Iran, with our military sitting on both their eastern and western borders.
If she's going to occupy the Oval office, I want to be sure she accepts the Constitutional limits on it and the required oversight that has been so lacking. Without that, we're just in for the same old s---.
(My opinion isn't limited to HRC, it applies to all the canidates.)