Iran nuclear deal signed in Geneva

I'm prepared for a straight line vote against it but if not one Republican can see how good a deal this is, I'll be just a bit more jaded about politics.

Then you must not consider me either fair or honest. Were I in that position, I would not need to be stroked to do my job.

Shouldn't they be able to vote, debate, research an issue without the President giving them a foot rub?

You are saying that President Obama is not campaigning for the agreement because it is in his best interest?

Not sure where your anger is here

To deal with the Iran threat I would not, as Israel’s leader, be pressuring U.S. Jews to go against their own government to try to scuttle the deal — when I have no credible alternative.

This deal sharply reduces Iran’s bomb-making uranium stockpile for 15 years, and pushes Iran’s ability to break out with a nuclear weapon from three months — where it is now — to a year. I’d be very confident that if I can keep Iran one year away from a bomb for 15 years, during that time Israel’s defense technologists will develop many more ways to detect and eliminate any kind of Iranian breakout.

And I’d recognize that if my lobbyists in Washington actually succeeded in getting Congress to scrap this deal, the result wouldn’t be a better deal. It would be no deal, so Iran would remain three months from a bomb — and with no intrusive inspectors, with collapsing sanctions and Israel, not Iran, diplomatically isolated.

A handful of politicians have publicly repented for their 2002 vote to authorize the Iraq War, but few as forcefully as Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC) did last week.

“I did not do what I should have done to read and find out whether Bush was telling us the truth about Saddam being responsible for 9/11 and having weapons of mass destruction,” Jones said during an interview on The Tyler Cralle Show.

“Because I did not do my job then,” Jones continued, “I helped kill 4,000 Americans, and I will go to my grave regretting that.”

According to the Huffington Post, 4,486 American servicemembers died in Operation Iraqi Freedom. When including non-Americans, that death toll rises to nearly 500,000.

Jones was one of 297 congressman and 77 senators who voted to authorize the Iraq War in October 2002. He was such a staunch supporter, initially, that he led the effort to rename french fries as “freedom fries” in congressional cafeterias after France came out in opposition to the war.

However, by 2005, Jones was one of the first GOPers to recant his earlier support for the war, blaming faulty intelligence and demanding that the Bush administration apologize. The North Carolina congressman has been one of the war’s fiercest critics in Congress since.

Jones’ recent comments came as he weighs a congressional resolution to support or oppose the Iranian nuclear deal. The ten-term congressman said he was currently undecided, but drew a link between the Iran vote and the Iraq vote he now regrets, telling Cralle that “I’m gonna make my decision before I go back [from the August recess] but I’m gonna carefully, because I did not do what I should have done” in 2002.

Most politicians are unable to muster the level of candor that Jones showed. For example, GOP presidential hopeful Jeb Bush said in May that, knowing what he knows now, he still would have authorized the Iraq War. A few days later, he reconsidered and declared “I would not have gone into Iraq,” but now argues that the real mistake was Obama’s decision to end the war in 2011.

Washington (AFP) - More than 300 American rabbis wrote members of Congress Monday urging them to support the international nuclear deal with Iran, signalling the US Jewish community is split over the historic but controversial accord.

The religious leaders come from across the spectrum, but hail overwhelmingly from Judaism's Conservative and Reform streams as well as other progressive Jewish movements, a spokesperson said.

"We encourage the members of the Senate and the House of Representatives to endorse this agreement," the 340 rabbis wrote in a letter to Congress distributed by Ameinu, a progressive charitable Jewish organization.

"We are deeply concerned with the impression that the leadership of the American Jewish community is united in opposition to the agreement," the rabbis added.

"We, along with many other Jewish leaders, fully support this historic nuclear accord."

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wanted to strike at Iran’s nuclear facilities in 2010 and 2011, but was prevented from doing so, first by his army chief of staff and then by ministerial colleagues, Netanyahu’s former defense minister Ehud Barak said.

Barak expressed outrage that the recordings had been released and tried to prevent them from being aired, Channel 2 noted. The station stressed, however, that the contents of the recordings had been approved for broadcast by the military censor.

The IDF's top brass are no fools.