| Attack Iran Amendment |
|
URGE SENATORS BOXER & FEINSTEIN TO REJECT SENATOR JOE LIEBERMAN'S ATTACK IRAN AMENDMENT TO THE DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION BILL. from the text of the bill: (4) to support the prudent and calibrated use of all instruments of nited States national power in Iraq, including diplomatic, economic, ntelligence, and military instruments, ... Contact Information:Senator Barbara Boxer Phone: 202-224-3553 SoCal District Offices: Los Angeles: 213-894-5000 San Bernadino: 909-888-8525 San Diego: 619-239-3884 Contact via Webform Senator Dianne Feinstein Phone: 202-224-3841 SoCal District Offices: Los Angeles: 310-914-7300 San Diego: 619-231-9712 Contact via Webform A vote on the amendment to the defense authorization bill could come as early as Tuesday, September 25th. From /The Pen/ ... Here is the language from the Lieberman/Kyle amendment: (3) that it should be the policy of the United States to combat, contain, and roll back the violent activities and destabilizing influence inside Iraq of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, its foreign facilitators such as Lebanese Hezbollah, and its indigenous Iraqi proxies; (4) to support the prudent and calibrated use of all instruments of United States national power in Iraq, including diplomatic, economic, intelligence, and military instruments, in support of the policy described in paragraph (3) with respect to the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its proxies. The policy of the U.S should be to "combat" Iran with "all" "military instruments"?!? You can be absolutely certain that those are the only words Dick Cheney and George Bush will see or care about. We need every warm body we can muster to call and email their senators RIGHT NOW, before they pull another fast one and sneak this one through in the dead of the night. Call them toll free at 800 828-0498, 800 614 2803 or 866 340 9281, and the submit the action form below to make sure your message gets through. http://www.usalone.com/no_iran_war_declaration.php From SoCal Grassroots ... Senator Joe Lieberman seemed to be seized by an aberrant moment of lunacy last week when he pressed General Petraeus for an attack on Iran. Unfortunately, that lunacy proved to be more than one aberrant moment. Just before the weekend he introduced an amendment to the Defense Authorization Act to authorize exactly that. No, we are not kidding. He has, along with Senators Jon Kyl and Norm Coleman, drafted language that any impartial observer would interpret as a DECLARATION OF WAR against Iran, and he is pressing for a vote as fast as possible. (Links to the amendment text can be found here - click on "Page: S11911" to read the text, under SA 3017. Due to frequent changes, links to the text itself can expire rather quickly.) ** Contact Senator Boxer and Senator Feinstein to vote No on Amendment 3017 and stop this insanity now! From the Council for a Livable World ... TALKING POINTS ON THE KYL/LIEBERMAN AMENDMENT _THE AMENDMENT COULD WIND UP BEING ANOTHER IN A LONG LINE OF BLANK CHECKS PROVIDED TO THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH IN THE MOLD OF THE GULF OF TONKIN RESOLUTION AND THE AUTHORIZATION TO USE FORCE IN IRAQ._ It endorses the “use of all instruments of United States national power in Iraq,” including military. While it calls for “prudent and calibrated” measures, the loophole is big enough to drive an aircraft carrier or a fleet of planes through. _PROVOCATIVE MEASURES SUCH AS THE KYL-LIEBERMAN AMENDMENT CAN LEAD TO A TIT-FOR-TAT ESCALATION RESULTING IN MILITARY CONFRONTATION BETWEEN THE US AND IRAN_. There are no good military options for solving our disagreements with Iran. Military action would only result in disastrous and unintended consequences for U.S. and Israeli interests. If we have learned nothing else from Iraq, it is that there are limitations to the use of military force. _RATHER THAN ESCALATING TENSIONS, THE U.S. SHOULD PURSUE SMART, TOUGH-MINDED DIALOGUE AND DIPLOMACY_, which are far more likely than force to produce a satisfactory resolution in the case of Iran. _IRAN__’S GAINS IN IRAQ ARE LARGELY DUE TO THE BUSH INVASION OF IRAQ._ As Peter Galbraith recently wrote in the New York Review of Books, /“George W. Bush had from the first facilitated the very event he warned would be a disastrous consequence of a US withdrawal from Iraq: the takeover of a large part of the country by an Iranian-backed militia . . . Since 2005, Iraq's Shiite-led government has concluded numerous economic, political, and military agreements with Iran. The most important would link the two countries' strategic oil reserves by building a pipeline from southern Iraq to Iran, while another commits Iran to providing extensive military assistance to the Iraqi government.”/ _THE KYL-LIEBERMAN AMENDMENT IS A RESOLUTION BASED ALMOST ENTIRELY ON FALSE PREMISES._ The resolution only quotes questionable and unsubstantiated assertions provided by the U.S. military about Iranian involvement in Iraq. Though General Petraeus first embraced the official line in his written Congressional testimony that Iran is using its elite "Quds force" in Iraq to mold the Shiites into a proxy force to fight U.S. troops, he later contradicted himself in answering a question from Rep. Hunter when he said that that the Quds force had been withdrawn from Iraq. General Petraeus said: “ The Quds Force itself we believe, by [and] d] large, those individuals have been pulled out of the country, as have the Lebanese Hezbollah trainers that were being used to augment that activity.” _THE U.S. HAS NOT CAPTURED OR EVEN IDENTIFIED A SINGLE IRANIAN OFFICIAL IN IRAQ WHO HAS BEEN WORKING ON THE TRANSFER OF WEAPONS TO IRAQIS_ despite the fact that the U.S. military command has arrested and interrogated a number of alleged leaders of the Iraqi network that is alleged to have been created by the Quds force. On July 6, Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, commander of U.S. operations south of Baghdad, in response to a question said that his troops had not captured "anybody that we can tie to Iran".[1] During a press briefing on July 2, U.S .command spokesman Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner also contradicted himself when he said that the Iranians had left the training of Shiite militias in Iraq to Hezbollah, because Hezbollah could "do things that perhaps they didn't want to have to do themselves /in terms of interacting directly with special groups/".[2] In another public statement, General Petraeus denied that Iran had anything to do with the attacks on US forces in Kerbala. _SENIOR OFFICIALS IN THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION WHO WISH TO DEMONSTRATE US RESOLVE AGAINST IRAN ARE PRESSURING FOR TARGETING THE QUDS FORCE IN IRAQ_. According to an in-depth account of the origins of the plan by the Washington Post's Dafna Linzer published January 26, 2007, “The wide-ranging plan has several influential skeptics in the intelligence community, at the State Department and at the Defense Department who said that they worry it could push the growing conflict between Tehran and Washington into the center of a chaotic Iraq war.”[3] |
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|