146.5 - Update: GOPpers still trying to push Iran sanctions bill

Update: GOPpers still trying to push Iran sanctions bill

Some weeks ago, I denounced a bill in the Senate that proposed to move the goalposts on negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, a bill that would like result in a breakdown of the negotiations.

Those negotiations, as I've noted several times, amount to a group of mostly Western nations bullying Iran over its nuclear program, bullying which if it were directed against us, political leaders would denounce as the grossest affront to our national interests and rights and sovereignty and would provoke daily calls for war. No matter; we are sort of between the proverbial rock and hard place in that the failure of the negotiations would significantly increase the odds of a military attack on Iran. So the success of those negotiations is clearly the better or more precisely less bad option available.

So it was good news when, as I noted last week, the move to pass the bill stalled to where even the rabidly pro-Israel American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, gave up on pushing it and said it's better to wait and see what happens with the negotiations.

But apparently, some people do not want to give peace a chance.

Forty-two senators, all GOPpers, signed a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid demanding that he allow a floor vote on the Iran sanctions bill.

If he doesn’t, the Daily Beast says, they are planning to make his life miserable by using every parliamentary trick in the book to raise the issue over and over again, perhaps even to the point of filibustering every other piece of legislation, demanding a vote as the price for letting anything else at all happen.

So let's see: The White House says the bill will blow up the negotiations. Iran says the bill will blow up the negotiations. AIPAC says "there should not be a vote at this time on the measure." Bob Menendez, one of the original sponsors, now says diplomacy should have time to work. But the GOPpers don't care.

I don't know if this is because they actually actively want a war with Iran - although some, such as John "bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran" McCain give every indication of wanting just that - or because they just figure passing the bill will embarrass Obama and damn the consequences. One way or the other, they are either bloodthirsty warmongers or amazingly stupid.

Sources:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/05/gop-will-force-reid-to-save-obama-s-iran-policy-over-and-over-again.html
http://thehill.com/blogs/global-affairs/middle-east-north-africa/197722-aipac-breaks-with-gop-on-iran-sanctions