Joe Lieberman along with McCain, Kyl, Graham, and Coleman, offered up an amendment to the Defense Authorization Act, confronting the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran over its proxy attacks on American soldiers in Iraq, and it passed with a vote of 97-0.
Roll call can be found here.
Statement of purpose: To require a report on support provided by the Government of Iran for attacks against coalition forces in Iraq.
Liebermans statement from his site (linked above)
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Senators Lieberman, McCain, Kyl, Graham, and Coleman today introduced a bipartisan amendment to the Defense Authorization Act, confronting the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran over its proxy attacks on American soldiers in Iraq.
The amendment details the publicly available evidence put forward over the past year by General David Petraeus, commanding general of Multi-National Force Iraq, and others about Iran’s violent and destabilizing activities in Iraq.
The amendment states that “the murder of members of the United States Armed Forces by a foreign government or its agents is an intolerable act of hostility against the United States,” and demands the government of Iran “take immediate action” to end all forms of support it is providing to Iraqi militias and insurgents. The amendment also mandates a regular report on Iran’s anti-coalition activity in Iraq.
“For many months, our military commanders and diplomats have warned us that the Iranian government has been training, equipping, arming, and funding proxies in Iraq who are murdering our troops,” said Senator Lieberman. “This amendment is a common sense, common ground statement of the Senate to Tehran: we know what you are doing, and you must stop.”
“American officials attest that the government in Teheran seeks to bleed the United States and render unsuccessful our efforts to bring about a stable and self-governing in Iraq,” said Senator McCain. “This amendment will send a clear signal: Iran’s activities in Iraq are wrong, and they must end immediately.”
“The Iranians are attempting to thwart our policies in the Middle East by actively supporting terrorists who are killing our troops in Iraq,” said Senator Kyl. “It is time we acknowledge this hostility against us, and this amendment tells the Iranians we will not tolerate any actions which threaten our troops or allies.”
“The evidence is increasingly clear the Iranian government is working to destabilize the Iraqi government,” said Senator Graham. “It is long past time for Congress to speak out about this destructive behavior by Iran. We need one voice, and I expect it will be a unified bipartisan voice, speaking out and condemning these actions by the Iranian government.”
“The United States will not tolerate Iran’s hostile attempts to sabotage our efforts in the Middle East region,” said Senator Coleman. “On my last trip to Iraq, our Minnesota troops in Southern Iraq showed me Iranian-made explosives that were used against them on convoy missions. This crucial amendment makes it clear to the Iranian government, and any other government in the region that seeks to harm our soldiers, that providing any form of support to Iraqi insurgents will not be tolerated and must cease immediately.”
The text of the actual amendment should be here, when they actually get it up on the site. (That link will be changed if it ends up being put up at a different URL)
Needless to say, the far left liberals do not even need to see the actual text, they are already throwing a hissy fit, here is an example of some of the comments coming from Firedoglake:
P J Evans says:
July 11th, 2007 at 2:31 pm
Cr*p.
We’re going to have to lose the Democrats in Congress, all of them, because they’re too f*cking stupid something to figure out what’s going on without someone reading the bills to them very slowly, and explaining all the words to them as they go along.
We’ll need a new party name, too, because they’ve done to ‘Democratic’ what the GOoPers have done to ‘Republican’: turned it into a joke of an brand for a product that should be named ‘Acme’.
How can they claim to be representing us, when they can’t even read the bill and figure out where it’s going, before they vote on it, and they don’t listen to us, when we tell them what we’re seeing and hearing out here in the real world?
This next one is good too:
selise says:
June 26th, 2007 at 5:19 pm
h.con.r.21 background here, here, and here.
lots of good stuff in the links.
bottom line - virtually the entire house of representatives (only 2 “no” votes - kucinich and paul) voted to ask the UN security council to charge ahmadinejad with “violating the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and United Nations Charter” based on basically his calling for the genocide of israelis and because “Iran has aggressively pursued a clandestine effort to arm itself with nuclear weapons”.
only problem is that the first is a lie (mistranslations) and there is not evidence for the second (see IAEA).
when kucinich tried to enter into the congressional record the correct translation, he was prevented from doing so.
so, now we have a document that bush can point to (after bombing iran) and say - “see, even the dems know that the iranian leader is a genocidal maniac pursuing nuclear weapons.”
how could my D congress critters be so dumb?
That is representative of what I am seeing on the liberal blogs right now and I am sure more will come.
There has been ample evidence that Iran is directly responsible for killing U.S. Soldiers, which is why this bill passed with not a single vote against the amendment, but the liberals cannot see passed their hatred to understand this.
More to come as reactions come in, which I assure you, they will.
[Update] 7/12/07- Iran will have crossed the "nuclear threshold" by 2009.
.