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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Krowbar who wrote (59153)	10/14/1999 7:43:00 PM
From: jlallen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

So nuclear science is static then? How absurd! Screw safety and efficacy, eh? This vote is about national security, nothing more, nothing less and its a bad deal. JLA

To: Krowbar who wrote (59153)	10/15/1999 10:33:00 AM
From: Zoltan!	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

>>This was nothing but a shameful, politically motivated vote. Yes, by Clinton and the Dems - and it backfired famously on them. The best minds were against the treaty and Clinton could never overcome that. Clinton is already responsible for India's tests which came after he sold missile technology to his benefactors, the Chinese, for campaign cash. October 15, 1999 Clinton Tests Treaty For Partisan Fallout By PAUL A. GIGOT In the end Dick Cheney and Henry Kissinger had more credibility than President Clinton. The former GOP defense secretary called Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott Wednesday to tell him he was right to reject an unverifiable nuclear test-ban treaty. The former secretary of state chimed in the same day with a three-page letter of opposition agreeing with North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms. Mr. Clinton finally called, too, just two hours before the vote, asking Mr. Lott to pull the treaty. Mr. Clinton lost, as did the treaty, with only 48 senators in support, 19 votes short of the two-thirds needed for ratification. The magnitude of the rout has induced one of those periodic fits of collective Beltway hysteria. Normally sober reporters are making comparisons to the Treaty of Versailles, diplomats are wailing and gnashing their teeth, Democrats are hauling out their clichés about the "right wing." Don't believe a word of it. This salutary vote was about restoring a bipartisan foreign policy, not breaking up one that didn't exist. The vote wasn't about a right-wing vendetta but about reining in a president who has shown disdain for the Senate. Sooner or later lying catches up with any president, even this one. "It sends a message that the Senate will not be a rubber stamp and that our negotiators can be tougher," says Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl, who worked for seven months behind the scenes to educate his colleagues about the treaty. "In the long run, this will be very helpful." Like most large defeats, this one was building momentum for a long time. One of its seeds was planted by Mr. Clinton's habit of sneering at the treaty rights of the Senate. In 1997, during the chemical-weapons treaty debate, he promised Foreign Relations Chairman Helms that he'd submit his ABM treaty with Russia to the Senate. He never did. To give headlines to Al Gore, Mr. Clinton also signed the Kyoto global-warming pact, but he won't submit that for ratification either. Political promises unkept are future promises unbelieved. The White House set up this treaty ratification as a partisan riff. It watched with approval as North Dakota's Byron Dorgan, Typhoid Mary to most Republicans, demanded a vote day-after-day on the Senate floor. NSC adviser Sandy Berger signed off in late September on this brow-beating strategy in a meeting with Democratic senators. Mr. Clinton's assertion yesterday that the treaty debate "came as a complete surprise to us" was completely false. But even after he knew the votes were against him, the president refused to accept a gracious exit. Mr. Helms offered Mr. Clinton the chance to withdraw the treaty without a vote, so long as he promised in writing not to bring it back during his presidency. Republicans didn't want to be sandbagged with it during an election year. Mr. Clinton first refused even to ask for a withdrawal. Later he asked for it verbally, and finally he asked in writing. But through Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle he still demanded the right to recall the treaty under "unforeseen circumstances." Another president--Harry Truman--would have received the benefit of that doubt. But Republicans feared it was just one more loophole Mr. Clinton would exploit on the flimsiest pretense. On Tuesday night, Mr. Lott brought the loophole language to a meeting with Sens. Helms and Kyl, Georgia's Paul Coverdell and Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma. They unanimously rejected it. Mr. Clinton didn't even bother to call Mr. Lott himself until the next day, the first time an administration official other than Mr. Berger had talked to the GOP leader about the treaty. "Had he called Lott a week earlier he could have had it withdrawn," Mr. Kyl says. Mr. Clinton's furious spin now is that a few "irresponsible" and "isolationist" Republicans are to blame for his humiliation. Those fanatics apparently include Mr. Kissinger, the father of American arms control. They also must include Indiana's Richard Lugar, who has never met an arms-control treaty he didn't like--until this one. Ever faithful to his own narcissism, Mr. Clinton can't accept that any of his opponents act in good faith. Mr. Clinton's gasket-blowing press conference yesterday showed that his only response to a setback is payback. When one of his judicial nominees was rejected last week, his understated response was to accuse 54 senators of racism. His scripted rage suggests he plans to help Al Gore against Bill Bradley and the Republicans by using the same Congress-bashing strategy he used in 1995-96. One difference this time is that foreign policy and defense have long been GOP strengths. Republicans complained in 1992 and 1996 when they weren't an election issue. The fact that only one of the 17 GOP senators up for re-election in 2000--Vermont's nominal Republican Jim Jeffords--voted for the test-ban treaty shows how small a political danger they think this is. interactive.wsj.com If Mr. Gore does raise the subject, he'll also have to talk about the epidemic of nuclear and missile proliferation by North Korea, China and Russia during the last seven years. By all means, let's have a debate.

To: Krowbar who wrote (59153)	10/15/1999 7:42:00 PM
From: Ish	Respond to of 108807

<< Now other countries can work toward that goal. This was nothing but a shameful, politically motivated vote. >> From what I've read they very countries we worry about aren't going with the treaty. Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, India, China who has a new long range missile thanks to Clinton. North Korea who has a new long range missile/nuke thanks to Clinton. Yep, politically motivated. We gotta let ours rot while they improve theirs. You want to be the weakest country? It was a unilateral treaty, start to finish. Christ, it was signed in '96. How come not one of the 11 democrats on the committee ever attended a meeting? It was all fluff.