In office for a couple of months, young freshman Senator Tom Cotton (AR-R) wrote an open letter to the leaders of Iran, saying that any nuclear agreement they sign with the current administration won’t be worth a bucket of warm spit in two years when the Tea Party takes over the White House. That’s misleading, but 46 other GOP senators signed on anyway, some of them older guys who really don’t know what they’re signing. These political pen pals are being hailed as … traitors, reckless, dumb, dangerous and irresponsible, trolls, saboteurs, and so on.
Secretaries of State past and present denounced the letter as a dangerous political stunt. Iran blew it off, but there’s been a strong, substantial public backlash in the USA. Now the GOP letter writers claim it was all a joke, that they were just being “cheeky.” After all, what’s more fun than jeopardizing a critical nuclear weapons agreement?
UPDATES:
This summer,first-term Arkansas Congressman Tom Cotton, running for the Senate, received a $700,000 ad buy from the PAC of the so-called “Emergency Committee for Israel,” (ECI), a pro-war organization set up by William Kristol and Gary Bauer. Last-known address for ECI is the same Hill townhouse as the old ‘Committee for the Liberation of Iraq’office; and Mr. Kristol was also on the board of that. Oh, and William Kristol is editor of the Weekly Standard, which promoted political unknown Tom Cotton for House in the 2012 campaign, then for the Senate in 2014, and is floating trial balloons about the 2016 national ticket.
Another example of Mr. Cotton’s subtle foreign policy views is seen in one of his last actions in the House of Representatives, when he called for the United States to provide Israel with heavy bombers and “bunker buster” super bombs for a strike on Iran.
More:
“The Republicans’ Latest Iran Ploy Is Brazen, Borderline Unconstitutional, and Totally Predictable,” Joshua Keating, Slate
“How Different Countries Involved in the Iranian Nuclear Negotiations Reported on That GOP Letter,” Francie Diep, Pacific Standard
“Amateur Hour,” Fred Kaplan, Slate
“An Open Letter to 47 Republican Senators of the United States of America from Iran’s Hard-Liners,” William Saletan, Slate
“Iran Offers to Mediate Talks Between Republicans and Obama,” Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker
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Tags: "Tea Party", Arkansas, brats, diplomacy, foreign affairs, foreign policy, GOP, Iran, nuclear energy, open letter, politics, Republicans, Tom cotton, treaties, weapons
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