Cute, bandwidth-sucking .gif notwithstanding, Paul very clearly signed for his own reasons, and elucidated them to Matt Lauer. Paul actively wants to steer the country away from confrontation with Iran at least as much as the President claims to.
So, again, another complaint that someone was mean to the President (i.e. didn't swallow his load) and that therefore amounts to disrespect.
No. By signing a letter with the intent to kill the negotiations (regardless of that Rand says about "strengthening the presidents hand"), makes confrontation the more likely outcome (had the letter had its desired effect) Care to explain how such a letter would strengthen the presidents hand? Did you even read it? They are outright saying that any deal signed with Obama will not be worth the paper it is signed on, as congress or the next president can kill it at the stroke of a pen (lol they're not even being suttle about it). Rand is grasping for straws. He probably knows he f.ucked up
i.e. that there would be a NECESSARY PREREQUISITE that the President has virtually no control over. i.e. Paul really, really doesn't want confrontation, wants to weaken sanctions, and wants to prevent the US Administration from entering a deal that Congress can scupper.
LOL. He didn't have to sign to say "Lookie here Iran, there are 46 other simpletons who are hardliners so you'd better make a deal that these other 46 like, otherwise they'll reject it". He could have just let the other 46 sign it and Iran would know that there are at least 46 idiots in Congress. If you sign a letter, this is generally understood to mean that you agree with the contents. And it is extremely embarrassing to sign a letter purporting to tell someone else about how things work in your country, only to get a letter back teaching you how things work not just in your country but also in the world around you.
I'm too young to have seen this before. Imagine Reagan negotiating with a country along with the P5+1.. The Democratic Congress pens a letter to the leadership of this country, telling them that they should NOT trust the agreement and that the next President will just trash it with the "stroke of a pen". Keep in mind that this is a agreement with 3 CLOSE NATO allies (UK, France, Germany). NOT just between Obama and IRI. IF Cotton didn't serve in the US military, I would say what we did was *borderline* treacherous. But calling treason is too far considering the Logan Act has really never been implemented. He weakened the US negotiating position. Cotton's concerns should have been addressed to the WH DISCREETLY.
Nah. I was trying to think of a Republican President negotiating with a foreign adversary along with our allies. I do agree that Paul wants to steer the country away from confrontation with Iran. I assume this is his way of satisfying his base. IF he runs for President in 2016.
No that isn't it at all and I am surprised that you are so cavlier in thinking that the office of the President doesn't deserve the respect of congress enough to speak to him behind closed doors or through the appropriate committees instead of an open letter to the other side. I can only imagine the source of amusement this congress is to the rest of the World.
I hope no one listens to this guy: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...112eb0-c725-11e4-a199-6cb5e63819d2_story.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Muravchik What a journey: socialist to Democrat to neocon to crackpot.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-31960926 "according to the security services the gunmen had originally planned to attack parliament. ... the gunmen began killing tourists after being repelled by police at the parliament."
Yes, if only we had let Qadaffi kill more of his own people, all these problems could have been avoided.
The point is that there's no good answer for regimes held together at the point of a gun. Either you leave them in place to be repressive regimes or you let them disintegrate into the ethnic differences those regimes are containing.
Saddam wasn't actively murdering his people on a large scale at the time, nor is Libya comparable to Iraq; Iraq was a reasonably stable regime that wasn't an international threat after the first Gulf War - it had been neutered. We only moved on Qadaffi once he started killing people fighting against him, not while he was simply in power. It's not a good comparison. The better comparison is Assad, but all it shows is that we learned out lesson, to the detriment of what's left of Syria, possibly.
True saddam wasn't actively killing his people at the time, he last wiped out people en masse shortly after Desert Storm. I am not by any means saying we should have gone into the second Iraq war. My view is we traded one evil for another. As for Syria, It isn't for the US to resolve the problem, that issue really should have fallen to the Arab League.