On Wednesday July 11, 2007, Senate Dems unanimously voted for Joe Lieberman’s amendment (SA 2073 – H.R. 1585) to the Defense Appropriations bill. While seemingly innocuous, I believe the Dems were wrong to support an amendment that clearly could be used to justify an attack on Iran. The amendment is essentially a requirement that the commander of forces in Iraq and the US Ambassador to Iraq report to the Congress on Iran’s support of attacks on coalition forces in Iraq. Contrary to how it was described at Think Progress, the amendment did not “censure Iran.” However, the amendment is disturbing and should have been rejected because it essentially asserts that Congress has found that Iran is at war with the United States.
The bottom line is that, at this point, Dems should reject any proposal that could conceivably be used by this administration and its neocon allies in and outside the Administration and the Congress to justify an attack on Iran. There are several reasons why Dems should have voted against this amendment (or at the very least prevented a vote from occurring):
1. As Dover Bitch wrote at Hullabaloo, consider the source. Does anyone believe that after he has already declared that the US needs to use force against Iran, that Mr. Lieberman simply wants a fact-based report on Iranian activities in Iraq? The simple fact that Lieberman proposed the amendment should raise red flags about how it might be used.
2. There are grave and serious indications that members of this administration have been and are still hell-bent on attacking Iran.
* Exhibit A: Seymour Hersh, Scott Ritter, and others have reported and attempted to document the fact that the U.S. is already at war with Iran and is conducting covert operations inside the country and engaging in other activities to destabilize the regime.
* Exhibit B: The Guardian newspaper reported that the U.S. offered to take one of several military actions against Iran in response to the detention of 15 British soldiers back in March of this year.
* Exhibit C: More recently, the Guardian reported that Cheney is pressuring Bush and other administration officials to take military action against Iran and quoted a “well-placed” Washington source as saying that: “Bush is not going to leave office with Iran still in limbo.”
* Exhibit D: We know that the administration previously sought the authority to attack Iran in the 2002 authorization to use force in Iraq.
3. The Democrats must not have learned the lesson of the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force, which the Bush administration has used as a justification for Guatanamo, torture, and anything else it wants to do in the name of the global war on terror. Clearly, this administration is willing to use whatever it can to justify the actions it wants to take. In this instance, Bush would not even have to argue that the amendment "authorized" taking military action against Iran, he could simply point to the findings section as evidence that Iran is taking killing members of the U.S. armed forces as a justification for attacking Iran and could paint all the Democrats as having agreed to this fact by their unanimous support for the amendment.
4. It is important to note the questionable validity of the “findings” to which the Senate Dems agreed as fact. There have been conflicting reports and statements about the quality of the evidence and the level of confidence that the U.S has about reports of Iran’s involvement in attacks on U.S. soldiers in Iraq. To concede that the government of Iran is sponsoring attacks on U.S. forces without better intelligence is potentially dangerous. Most disturbingly, however, the findings in support of the amendment, and specifically those citing the explicit knowledge and tacit support of the highest levels of the Iranian government, are from Brig. Gen. Kevin J. Bergner. Via sourcewatch we learn:
Kevin J. Bergner was named February 3, 2006, by President George W. Bush as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Iraq. Brigadier General Bergner recently served as Deputy Director of Political-Military Affairs (Middle East) at the Department of Defense. He received his bachelor's degree from Trinity University and his master's degree from City University of New York.
Berger left the White House and became spokesman for the U.S. military in Iraq in early June, giving every indication that his statements on the role of Iran in attacking U.S. forces in Iraq come from the White House.
So what could the Dems have been thinking?
It is possible that they assumed that the amendment was a transparent call for up-to-date information on Iran’s actions and intentions with regards to Iraq. However, such an assumption clearly gives too much credit to Lieberman and most Senate Republicans who would not shy away from an attack on Iran, and it is extremely dangerous for all the reasons cited above.
Quite possibly, they feared more Republican attacks on their national security credentials and repeated claims that they are so weak on defense that they would not even authorize reports on Iranian attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq. If this is the case, it would be awfully lame that they could be so fearful and that they would find it too tough to fight off such criticism over a vote on this amendment.
Perhaps they figured that Bush is likely to do whatever he wants to with regards to an attack on Iran and that whatever justification he could find in this amendment would be irrelevant. Or perhaps they took solace in the section of the amendment that declared that “Nothing in this section shall be construed to authorize or otherwise speak to the use of Armed Forces against Iran.” The former is too cynical and the latter to naïve to even contemplate.
Finally, I guess it is not out of the question that Dems voted for the amendment because they plan to use section (C), which requires that the report also include information on counter-strategy and US efforts to counter Iran, as a means of exposing any clandestine U.S. operations inside Iran as a means of preventing an attack on the country. That couldn’t be it, could it?
