Truthdigger of the Week: Rep. Dennis Kucinich
As the year draws to a close, the U.S. government risks repeating the costly mistakes of the recent past by ratcheting up tensions with Iran, emphasizing risky sanctions over diplomatic negotiations and making fact-challenged claims about Iran’s nuclear program. Good thing Rep. Dennis Kucinich is on Capitol Hill to call Congress on its deadly war addiction. For his willingness to make a stand against almost all of his congressional cohorts and his refusal to accept shoddy arguments and distressingly repetitive rationalizations for entering into yet another precarious foreign entanglement, we salute Congressman Kucinich as the last Truthdigger of the Week for 2011.
It’s alarming how short our nation’s collective memory, not to mention its attention span, can be when it comes to missing signs of the manipulation of information during the lead-in stages of conflicts with other nations. Rep. Kucinich called in Friday with a history lesson and an update on the debate he brought to the floor of the House about why we shouldn’t listen to the building drumbeat of war with Iran that seems to hold most of Washington in its thrall.
First, a little background. Two bills have made the legislative rounds proposing sanctions against Iran in the last year: The Iran, North Korea and Syria Nonproliferation Act (H.R. 2105) and the Iran Threat Reduction Act (H.R. 1905). On Dec. 14, H.R. 1905 passed with only 11 members of the House, including Kucinich, opposing the bill. Minutes later, H.R. 2105 also passed, and this time only two congressmen—Kucinich and California Rep. Pete Stark—voted against it.
“We actually warned members about this,” Kucinich said Friday. “We sent out letters to members of Congress, and I went to the floor to speak against it.” But Kucinich’s arguments were shot down from both sides of the political aisle, as his colleagues seemed eager to accept the predominant rhetoric claiming that Iran was dead set on developing its own nuclear weapon and that imposing tough sanctions is the most effective way to thwart the threat from Tehran.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/truthdigger_of_the_week_rep_dennis_kucinich_20111230/
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