Cheney, Pelosi Speak at AIPAC; Democrats Remove Barrier to Iran Attack

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CARAH ONG
Ong is Iran Policy Analyst at the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation. She said today: “Rep. Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic leadership decided to pull language from the supplemental appropriations bill which stated that no funds may be authorized for military operations in or related to Iran unless specifically authorized by the Congress.

The move, she noted, “coincides with AIPAC’s annual conference, which Pelosi addressed on Tuesday. It also follows Vice President Dick Cheney’s address to the AIPAC annual conference on Monday, during which he pleaded with AIPAC to ‘rein in anti-war Democrats.’ …

“It’s not too late to re-insert the [Iran] language into the supplemental appropriations bill.”
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ROBERT NAIMAN
National coordinator of Just Foreign Policy, Naiman wrote the recent piece “Round to AIPAC on Iran Provision — But the Fat Lady Is Just Warming Up,” available here.
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KAREN KWIATKOWSKI
Available for a limited number of interviews, Kwiatkowski is a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel and worked until the spring of 2003 in the Pentagon’s office of Near East/South Asia and Special Plans. She said: “The Cheney speech to AIPAC — reassuring militant right wingers in Israel and neoconservatives … in Washington that America is leaning forward on Iran … gives us a clear window into the administration’s thinking. …

“Cheney exhorts Congress to remember 9-11 and damns it for failing to subsume its every decision to the maintenance of the administration’s cultural mythology of that day. He rails at the idea of time limits in Iraq, and suggests that debate in Washington on the role, objectives and cost of our militarism in the Middle East is counterproductive and allows the ‘enemy’ to ‘watch the clock and wait us out.’

“But it is Cheney — not al Qaeda — who is watching the clock now. This former Secretary of Defense understands only too well that the deployment of two battle groups in the Persian Gulf, and the onset of this year’s ‘spring offensive’ in Afghanistan, both point to a ticking clock — second generation ‘shock and awe’ forces require many months of planning, and a massive logistics tail to support even a short-lived coordinated attack [on Iran]. … Iran is back on the table, and the House warning language on Iran stricken.”
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167


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