Tuesday, October 02, 2007

Senator Clinton Signs Onto Webb Bill

On October 1, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) signed on to Senator Jim Webb's (D-VA) bill, S. 759, barring funding for military action against Iran without approval from Congress. The gesture is seen in large part as a response for her vote to endorse the Kyl-Lieberman amendment to the Fiscal Year 2008 Defense Authorization bill. Senator Clinton was the only Democratic presidential candidate to endorse Kyl-Lieberman amendment and she was pressed on her vote during last week's debate in New Hampshire.

"I continue to support and advocate for a policy of entering into talks with Iran, because robust diplomacy is a prerequisite to achieving our aims," Clinton said in a statement. "I also support strong economic sanctions against Iran, including designating the Iranian Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization, to improve our leverage with the Iranian regime."

Senator Clinton still does not seem to understand that sanctions only undermine diplomacy with Iran and designating the Islamic Revolutionarly Guard Corps a terrorist organization will only undermine US security interests.

1 comment:

robertr9 said...

It's my understanding that designating the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization also has the effect of authorizing the president to attack the Guard and/or Iran for "harboring" the Guard, without further Congressional authorization. Designating the Guard as a terrorist organization thus vitiates action to prohibit military action against Iran without Congressional authorization. If this were merely "having it both ways" that would be bad enough, but I think the effect of taking the two positions is that the harm done by designating the Guard as terrorist trumps any good the requirement of further authorization might otherwise do.