Posted on 09/25/2007 11:12:13 AM PDT by MNJohnnie
WASHINGTON (AP) - Congress signaled its disapproval of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with a vote Tuesday to tighten sanctions against his government and a call to designate his army a terrorist group.
The swift rebuke was a rare display of bipartisan cooperation in a Congress bitterly divided on the Iraq war. It reflected lawmakers' long-standing nervousness about Tehran's intentions in the region, particularly toward Israel—a sentiment fueled by the pro-Israeli lobby whose influence reaches across party lines in Congress.
"Iran faces a choice between a very big carrot and a very sharp stick," said Rep. Tom Lantos, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. "It is my hope that they will take the carrot. But today, we are putting the stick in place."
The House passed, by a 397-16 vote, a proposal by Lantos, D-Calif., aimed at blocking foreign investment in Iran, in particular its lucrative energy sector. The bill would specifically bar the president from waiving U.S. sanctions.
Current law imposes sanctions against any foreign company that invests $20 million or more in Iran's energy industry, although the U.S. has waived or ignored sanction laws in exchange for European support on nonproliferation issues.
In the Senate, Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., and Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., proposed a nonbinding resolution urging the State Department to label Iran's military—the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps—a terrorist organization.
The Bush administration had already been planning to blacklist a unit within the Revolutionary Guard, subjecting part of the vast military operation to financial sanctions.
The legislative push came a day after Ahmadinejad defended Holocaust revisionists, questioned who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks and declared homosexuals didn't exist in Iran in a tense question-and- answer session at Columbia University.
The Iranian president planned to speak Tuesday at the U.N. General Assembly.
Lantos' bill was expected to draw criticism from U.S. allies in Europe. During a visit to Washington last week, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner told lawmakers that France opposes any U.S. legislation that would target European countries operating in Iran. He argued that such sanctions could undermine cooperation on dealing with Iran.
Uh huh...
You speak sanity?
Harry Truman, Democrat, launched on Japan. I'm sure that would have been opposed by some Republicans as well just as some opposed the OSS and our entry into WW2.
The fact that Ron Paul wants to blind our intelligence community should be a reason to vote him out of Congress, not to elect him CIC.
You speak dem? LANTOS!!!!! Has nothing to do with Ron Paul.....
Surely you don't count yourself among them. You answer a post of mine that wasn't addressed to you, and call me an idiot when you have no clue to the context of my post. If anything is an example of irrationality, that is.
And you want suggest someone else is irrational? BWAAAAAAHAAAAAAAA!
Wow, and you asked if I knew what the thread was about...
Sheesh...
Just the House. Here are the people who voted against it
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2007/roll895.xml
—— NAYS 16 -—
Abercrombie
Baldwin
Bartlett (MD)
Blumenauer
Conyers
Ellison
Flake
Gilchrest
Hinchey
Lee
McDermott
Miller, George
Moore (WI)
Olver
Paul
Stark
And I apologized and you accepted.....get your alt off ejonesie22 off line.....we’re not all stupid here
He deserves to be purged and here's a quote from him telling you exactly why:
"The war in Iraq was sold to us with false information. The area is more dangerous now than when we entered it. We destroyed a regime hated by our direct enemies, the jihadists, and created thousands of new recruits for them.", Ron Paul
He's a liar. Saddam Hussein gave sancturay to the worst of the worst islamic terrorists. Prior to our invasion he had given sanctuary to this diverse crew:
Abu Nidal, al Zarqawi and Abu Abbas. Abbas was directly responsible for the death of Leon Klinghoffer, an American Jew aborad the Achille Lauro.
Ron Paul is a liar, no better than any lying leftist.
Direct and to the point.
Many long for direct and simply stated facts via politics. (without popping a vein in doing so)
Explain this then.
Article 1 Section 8 US Constitution.
To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;
Now want to try and explain to me why Dr Paul voted against a bill imposing stricter sanctions on Iran?
Any conservative Republican who will still vote for Ron Paul after this latest demonstration of his moonbattish lunacy deserves exactly what he or she will get for casting that vote.
Which is absolutely nothing, because Paul has nothing but nothing to offer his cultish followers except more nothing.
You are a stone cold trip dude...
“proposed legislation making Detroit a sanctuary city for illegal aliens”
Even the illegals don’t want to live there!
Shocking! /s
One more time little girl, you want to debate or disrupt?
Well, I will give you an answer. It would have been a very easy thing to do for a “normal” politician and he would vote along with most of the rest of the house. I doubt if Ron Paul was given any speaking time to discuss his reasons for his no vote on this bill, so I can only make an educated guess as to his reasons for opposing it.
First, lets talk about what it doesn’t mean. Does it mean he supports the annihilation of Israel, No. Does it mean that he supports Amajadien’s (sp?) Holocaust Denial, No. Does it mean that he doesn’t support our troops as there is evidence that some IED’s are coming from Iran, No.
I suggest that everyone go back an read post 100 in this thread to get a better idea of why Ron Paul voted as he did on this resolution. Although it was posted as a negative to Ron Paul, it shows his type of thinking on this issue which I think is positive.
This is from Irving Kristols definition of a neo conservative.
“Finally, for a great power, the “national interest” is not a geographical term, except for fairly prosaic matters like trade and environmental regulation. A smaller nation might appropriately feel that its national interest begins and ends at its borders, so that its foreign policy is almost always in a defensive mode. A larger nation has more extensive interests. And large nations, whose identity is ideological, like the Soviet Union of yesteryear and the United States of today, inevitably have ideological interests in addition to more material concerns. Barring extraordinary events, the United States will always feel obliged to defend, if possible, a democratic nation under attack from nondemocratic forces, external or internal. That is why it was in our national interest to come to the defense of France and Britain in World War II. That is why we feel it necessary to defend Israel today, when its survival is threatened. No complicated geopolitical calculations of national interest are necessary.”
Now, that type of thinking might have been alright when you were a kid watching cowboy movies where the guy in the white hat always won, no matter what the odds. But as we got older, we only defended things that affect us much more personally. I would also point out that most Americans did not think it was in our best interests to come to the aid of France and Britain in World War II, even after Pearl Harbor we didn’t declare war on Germany. Germany declared war on us, which brought us into the European Theater.
The other part that bothers me is this: “the United States will always feel obliged to defend, if possible, a democratic nation under attack from nondemocratic forces, external or internal.” IOW, we should get involved with civil wars with in countries. Now whether or not you believe we have been neoconned, you must admit that neocons have a major voice in our foreign policies.
Israel has 100-200 nuclear bombs and would certainly use them if it thought it’s existence was threatened.
I have also read that the IED’s coming in from Iran are not from the government of Iran, but from a force in the western part of Iran, which the Iranian central government has very little control over.
Flake totally lives up to his name.
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