Reply #20: more here....

[leftchick]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/10/18/103532/98


Hillary vs. Pelosi on Iran
by Paul Hogarth
Thu Oct 18, 2007 at 07:42:07 AM PDT

I wrote this for today's Beyond Chron.

While Hillary Clinton tries to spin herself out of the fact that she gave George Bush the green light to invade Iran, Nancy Pelosi has worked to put the brakes on this reckless adventure. The House Speaker said she will not let the Kyl-Lieberman Resolution come to a vote on the House floor, pointing out the unprecedented move of declaring a whole foreign army a “terrorist organization.” Once again, the first woman Speaker and (possibly) the first woman President are on opposite sides of the neo-con agenda – like in 2002, when Senator Clinton voted for the Iraq War Resolution while Pelosi rallied her House colleagues against it. While history has proven Pelosi right, AIPAC and the neo-con cabal are bracing for another pre-emptive War with Iran – a larger country than Iraq whose U.S. occupation would create even worse consequences.

* Paul Hogarth's diary :: ::
*

Under fire from her rivals for the presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton has in recent weeks argued that she only voted for Kyl-Lieberman after some of the more extreme language was removed. The Resolution as passed, said Clinton, gives the United States “leverage when we negotiate with Iran” – who she says is improperly meddling with our occupation of Iraq.

But while Kyl-Lieberman in its original form was more bellicose, the fact remains that Clinton voted (a) to declare the Iranian army a “terrorist organization,” which (b) allows the President to pursue them in accordance with the existing “War on Terror.” With Bush in the White House, that’s way too much leeway for the Senate to give.

If the Iranian army is now a “terrorist” organization, how does this help our negotiating leverage with Iran? Isn’t it a recognized policy not to negotiate with terrorists? Wouldn’t this further antagonize Iran who we are told repeatedly is itching for a fight?

But on October 14th, Pelosi said on ABC’s “This Week” that she would not allow Kyl-Lieberman to come to a vote on the House floor because of how unprecedented the Senate’s action was. “It has never happened before that a Congress should determine one piece of someone’s military a threat,” said Pelosi. “If a problem to us and our troops in Iraq, we should deal with it in Iraq.”

Like Kyl-Lieberman, the Iraq War Resolution of 2002 had no historic precedent