- Hillary Clinton was either misinformed or economical
with the truth in Wednesday night's debate when she responded to my challenge
to her by saying the Senate's resolution earlier in the day on Iran was
designed to permit economic sanctions against individual members of the
Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.
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- She and her staff should know the United Nations Security
Council on March 24 already slapped economic sanctions on individual Guard
Members. Like the Red Army in China, Iran allows Guard commanders to own
and run private companies. Security Council Resolution 1747, which the
United States voted for, froze financial assets held outside Iran on the
seven military commanders, including General Mohammad Baqer Zolqadr and
six other admirals and generals.
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- I know of no law dictating the State Department must
first designate individuals or groups as terrorists? before sanctions can
be imposed on them. Dozens of countries have been under U.S. unilateral
sanctions that are not designated as terrorist. The U.S. first imposed
sanctions on Iran in 1979 over the hostages, not terrorism. The only possible
purpose of the Senate resolution asking the State Department to designate
the Revolutionary Guards a terrorist organization? is to set it up for
military attack in George Bush's war on terror.?
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- As Virginia senator Jim Webb valiantly said in the Senate,
the United States has never before designated the military services of
a sovereign state a terrorist group. Indeed, though there is international
dispute over the definition of terrorism, there is little disagreement
on the legal point that terrorists are non-state actors? who target civilians,
i.e., never members of a government. Governments can be guilty of war crimes,
but not terrorism. And the resolution talks about attacks on American troops,
not civilians.
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- The hypocrisy of Hillary and the 75 other senators who
called for more unilateral sanctions on Iran, was exposed Monday by German
Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier who said, according to Spiegel
Magazine, that American companies are violating existing U.S. sanctions
by surreptitiously doing business with Iran through front companies in
Dubai.
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- Joe Lieberman wrote the resolution authorizing the invasion
of Iraq that was passed with Democratic support on October 11, 2002. Lieberman's
new resolution setting up a Bush-Cheney invasion of Iran passed by 76 to
22 with Democratic backing on September 26, 2007. These are two dates that
will live in infamy in the 21st century. Led by Senator Clinton, it was
another sad day for the Senate and for Senate Democrats, who were elected
to the majority in November in order to end a war, not start a new one.
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- Mike Gravel is a former US Senator from Alaska and is
currently running for the Democratic Nomination for President.
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