Monday, July 06, 2009

"No Nukes" Obama--No Matter How He Does It?

Tapper noticed this, Morrissey followed up.

With the clock running out on a new US-Russian arms treaty before the previous Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START, expires on December 5, a senior White House official said Sunday said that the difficulty of the task might mean temporarily bypassing the Senate’s constitutional role in ratifying treaties by enforcing certain aspects of a new deal on an executive levels and a “provisional basis” until the Senate ratifies the treaty.

...“The most ideal situation would be to finish it in time that it could be submitted to the Senate so that it can be ratified,” said White House Coordinator for Weapons of Mass Destruction, Security and Arms Control Gary Samore. “If we’re not able to do that, we’ll have to look at arrangements to continue some of the inspection provisions, keep them enforced in a provisional basis, while the Senate considers the treaty.”

Obama has five months to convince the Senate (60 of which are in his party, remember?) to agree to a new nuke treaty with the Russkis.

The news item indicates that perhaps Dear Leader doesn't think he can get it through. In that case, the question is "Why not?"

Morrissey:

If Obama is simply moving forward with a straightforward, supportable treaty with Russia to reduce nuclear stockpiles in an effective verification system, why couldn’t he get a quick ratification? The GOP gave George H. W. Bush enough support in 1991 to pass the original START treaty, so it’s not as if ratification would be impossibly complicated.

Well, that is, if the deal actually does put in place an effective verification system and doesn’t amount to a de facto unilateral disarmament.

Yah, well, that's a consideration, eh? Dreaming of a "no-nuke" world is great. But Obama, a bright guy, doesn't seem to have street-smarts. He is not in a game with players who follow the Marquis of Queensbury's rules--not in Iran, not in Palestine, and not in Eastern Europe.

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