Betcha You Didn’t Have a Clue! Bushco Strikes in Secret

2 Comments

1. 

   chocolate ink on October 7, 2006 at 3:59 pm

   Thanks for that link…I was just wondering the other day about treaties we had signed and what that status was under bush.  Isn’t it also true that only Congress can debate and unsign us from any international treaty?  Not that that makes any difference to bush.

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     Arcturus on October 7, 2006 at 5:27 pm

     well, one small piece of good news is that the the nuclear materials deal Bush agreed to w/ India has NOT been ratified by the Senate:

     Last weekend, the US Senate dealt a frustrating blow to the nuclear hopes of New Delhi by formally going into a recess without voting for a bill that would have empowered President George W. Bush to consummate the “deal” conceived in July 2005. It was a case of “so near, yet so far” for India’s camp of nuclear nationalism.

     The bill, which was claimed to enjoy bipartisan support in the US Congress, had already passed muster in the House of Representatives. Just another push through the Senate, and the deed would have been done. India would have made history as the first non-signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to become the beneficiary of overt “civilian nuclear cooperation” with the US.

     It would then have become one of the P6 or the new set of six nuclear powers to insist on non-proliferation by the rest of the world. New Delhi had already started rehearsing for the role. It has been urging North Korea and Iran to respect their duties under the treaty, which India has always denounced as blatantly discriminatory.
     . . .
     The claimed bipartisan base of the bill crumbled suddenly on September 30. The Democrats, apparently reveling until then as players of the second fiddle to the Republicans in the matter, came up with a flurry of amendments to the bill. The move made impossible the bill’s passage through the prescribed “unanimous consent” procedure.   link