[Peace-discuss] Lieberman-Kyl DEFANGED?

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Two paragraphs from Glenn Greenwald's comment.]


...At the beginning of this year, when the Democrats took over Congress, 
it would have been unthinkable -- truly -- to imagine the Congress 
expressly authorizing the use of military force against Iran. It was 
always certainly a strong possibility that the administration would find 
a way to provoke a war with Iran and then argue that they need no 
further authorization on the ground that the current Iraq AUMF 
implicitly authorizes them to defend our mission by attacking Iran. If 
that happened, it was and remains easy to imagine the Democratic 
Congress standing by doing nothing to stop them. But at least earlier in 
the year, the idea that Congress would vote to authorize force in Iran 
was unthinkable.

But after the events of the last few months, nothing is unthinkable when 
it comes to acts of accommodation by this Congress. And the fact that 
they lined up so passively, really so willingly this week to vote for 
the Lieberman-Kyl Amendment (with more Democrats in favor than against 
and only two GOP "no" votes) -- even in the face of Jim Webb's strident 
warnings that categorizing Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp as "a 
foreign terrorist organization" could "be read as tantamount to a 
declaration of war" -- makes clear that not only would Congress never 
actively stop a military strike against Iran if the administration 
wanted that, it is highly likely that they would affirmatively vote to 
authorize it. Given their behavior on Iran this week, just fathom how 
much more in line they would be in the midst of a massive 
right-wing-noise-machine P.R. campaign and media frenzy over the need to 
march to war with Iran...


The rest is at 
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/09/28/military_iran/index.html