I don’t find myself able to understand issue having to do with the Middle East very well, but I’m struck by the insanity of the opposition to the Iran deal. Actual nuclear experts love the deal. Even many unrepentant Iraq war hawks favor the deal on balance. The opposition to the deal comes almost exclusively from hard-core neocon dead-enders like Jackson Diehl and David Frum.
Unfortunately, hard-core neocon dead-enders have a lot of influence on our political process, and Congress may scuttle the deal. Call your Congressperson and Senator and tell them to pass the damn bill. We can’t let the same idiots that got us into Iraq get us into Iran. It’s probably not even fair to say “the same idiots”, we’re really talking about an elite group of super-idiots from within the group of idiots who got us into Iraq.
Calouste
Cleek’s law. End of.
benw
I don’t think you have to know much about Middle East issues to understand the opposition to the Iran deal. It seems to me that the actual, real Middle East as a real place filled with real people is pretty incidental to the people who are opposed to the Iran deal.
Gin & Tonic
I watch very little TV, and yet I see the anti-deal ad all the fucking time. Who’s paying for that?
Gindy51
It’s because a black guy helped broker it and no more easy money for war with Iran.
Bobby Thomson
I don’t get it. I thought the only thing Congress could do was pass a bill prohibiting implementation of the deal – a bill that would be vetoed without 2/3 support.
Bobby Thomson
@Gin & Tonic: AIPAC. And they pay for heavy rotation on Leslie Blitzer’s show because his free advertising dovetails nicely.
trollhattan
@Calouste:
Afraid it may be as simple as that. Add that it was OBAMA who cut the deal that’s evaded every predecessor and there you go. And would somebody please kick Huckabee in his shriveled balls hard enough to send them to his uvula? Why does that fvcker even warrant camera time?
OT, possible excellent news on the Ebola front.
Roger Moore
I suspect that the core opposition to the Iran deal centers around the concept of a deal. There is a core faction that doesn’t believe in deals and negotiation. They think we’re supposed to tell everyone else how things are going to be, and they either go along or get beaten into submission. This applies just as much to domestic deal making as it does to international treaty making. Failure to get everything we asked for, maybe plus a bit extra as an apology for not going along immediately, is proof that you’re a wuss and don’t understand how things are supposed to go.
trollhattan
@Gin & Tonic:
Before the deal was inked some Likudnik dead-enders were buying daily half-page ads in our newspaper yelling at us to Not Go There. They don’t want a deal, they want us to give Israel a bunch of those monstrous new Boeing bunker-busters (and I suppose an airplane big enough to carry one) so Bibi can get his war on.
Like that ever works.
Linda Featheringill
I think that those who oppose this or any deal with Iran on limiting nuclear capability fall into at least one of these categories:
1. Those who want to bring on Armeggedon because they think that when Christ rules the world they’ll have a place of honor because they are so fucking righteous.
2. Those who stand to make money off of war. Their number is legion.
3. Those who need an active bogey man in order to keep the Israelis in line under right wing government.
4. And, yeah, there are some who hate it because a black man brokered the deal.
Mike in NC
Tom Cotton and his merry band of idiots long to return to the days of Dubya’s Cowboy Diplomacy, because it worked out so well before.
Bill Arnold
I finally finished slogging through the PDFs of the agreement (skimming the commercial stuff because it’s not very interesting to me) and agree in good conscience with Jeffrey Lewis – it’s a very good deal.
The one dubious bit that popped out at me was section 82.1 in Annex 1 (*), which basically is a paragraph that says Iran cannot acquire or develop nuclear weapon simulation software. That seems unenforceable given that a small air-gapped supercomputer cluster can fit in a rack or a few racks. It is not a key part of the deal though.
Other than that, it seemed fine. I haven’t yet spent the effort to try to work out how to game it, but a lot of super smart detail people were involved so it is probably pretty hard to game, if all the translations the parties agree to are precise.
Omnes Omnibus
DougJ, thank you for posting this. This deal is a big fucking deal and people on the left should be making a lot of noise in support of it.
Archon
Maybe I’m being naïve but I refuse to think even a Congress as insane as this one would override Obama’s veto and in effect destroy whatever diplomatic and political influence we have left in the world to peacefully solve problems.
beltane
@Linda Featheringill: There is considerable overlap between # 2 & # 3. This combined group is the only one that really matters in matters of foreign policy. The Jeebus is Coming crowd would much prefer to focus on Planned Parenthood, etc.
BR
@Bill Arnold:
Impressive that you read the whole thing and analyzed it. Thanks for that. I should call my senators and tell them to stand with Obama on this.
dogwood
@Bobby Thomson:
It’s my understanding that you are correct. After the President vetoes and Congress fails to override, Congress will then fail to lift economic sanctions. Not much Obama can do about that other than unfreezing Iranian assets. Eventually business will put pressure on Congress to lift sanctions when they see they are losing money, and Congress will go along. That will happen long after Obama is gone. If I’m interpreting this incorrectly, I’d love to be corrected. Essentially what is happening is what always happens. Republicans scream loudly with consistent talking points thereby establishing the narrative and controlling the debate. Democrats sit back meekly and watch it unfold as if they aren’t involved, or they go along with the Republicans. That’s how we ended up in Iraq.
? Martin
@Gindy51: This, but I think it’s a bit broader than that. Our concept of ‘american exceptionalism’ where we can force the world to genuflect is thankfully dying, and this is just more evidence of it. Trump claiming he’d get Mexico to build the wall is them lashing out. Graham saying ‘We. Would. Win.’ in a war with Iran is them lashing out – as if there would be no negative externalities to such a war. Opposition to Obamacare is them lashing out. The opposition to the Pacific Trade initiative is the left acting out, FWIW.
But the whole GOP right now is a neutron star of concentrated ‘We must win’, which is I think a big part of why many there really like Trump. Trump will win, even if it means destroying everyone and everything to get there. Obama has been trolling the right hard on this point by winning his policy battles regardless of what the GOP does.
Tim C.
The opposition to the Iran deal has very little to do with the actual deal. There are honest dead-enders of course, but they aren’t driving it.
1) the GOP has it’s narrative about Obama being “weak”. This fits it.
2) The odds of the GOP getting the 2/3rds of the senate they need is low. So all their storm and fury is essentially free. The deal goes through anyway and they get to look strong without having to take any responsibility for it. If the deal works, it disappears from the news, if it doesn’t or even if there are trivial problems with it, they get to say “I told you so”
3) Finally, remember the money that is being made on all the ads. There’s a whole ecosystem of bottom feeders who make a zillion dollars making, and selling ads on all the TV stations. This way that whole ecosystem gets to fundraise and make some sweet wingnut dough in an off year.
Calouste
@Bobby Thomson: At which point Congress might realize that the bill they pass don’t have any effect in the UK, France, Germany, Russia and China, the other parties in the deal, who will happily start trading with Iran’s 80 million people market.
Or considering that they are Republicans, they probably won’t
Bill Arnold
@BR:
I also didn’t follow all the links to security council resolutions etc, instead assuming that they are correct.
The main document isn’t very hard. The annexes are a slog.
Link here: http://eeas.europa.eu/statements-eeas/2015/150714_01_en.htm
Poopyman
@Archon: They just don’t care. “Government IS the problem” is their mantra, and that coupled with Cleek’s Law trumps everything else.
Valdivia
Thank you DougJ for posting this.
I know it’s more fun to pontificate online about all our political passions but it really really matters that we actually show up this time. So:
Call your senators, your representatives, if you can, go to a townhall, or if you’re going to see your favorite political candidate bring up the deal and how much it matters.
/gets off soapbox.
gets back on:
@Bobby Thomson: I am glad you asked this question. If the dems go squishy, he wont have the votes to sustain the veto. It really really matters to make your voice heard. People seem to be confused about this and think it’s a done deal. It isn’t!
JCJ
@dogwood:
That, or the companies will do business with Iran through subsidiaries in other countries. I can’t imagine it will matter much to Iran if China is buying the oil produced instead of the US.
Linda Featheringill
@beltane:
You may be right. Huckabee, however, probably belongs in group #1.
Belafon
Congress can’t scuttle the deal. All they can do is refuse to lift the sanctions that everyones agreed to lift if Iran holds up its end of the deal. At that point, if they don’t, the US will lose a lot of influence in the world and a whole lot of other countries are going to be very supportive of Iran if the US tries to get tough.
Jeffro
I’ve had great success sending wingnut friends the transcript of O’s press conference announcing the deal and asking them to visualize St. Ronnie speaking the exact same words at the podium.
Seriously. One of them was like…”Yeah, it really is the old ‘trust but verify’ thing”…”ok, I get it now”.
boatboy_srq
@Linda Featheringill: I’d add a fifth category: those so convinced of Ahmurrcan Ecksepshunulism that scuttling US commitment to the agreement will somehow scuttle the agreement itself. Europe/Russia/China won’t back out just because Ahmurrcan Reichwingers throw a hissyfit and refuse to play: they’ll open their doors and their markets, and instead of a workable means of lowering the heat in the region we’ll have more heat from Israel and the US foaming at the mouth, and possibly Russia or China basing strategic weapons in Iran as a deterrent. If the wingnuts want to drive Iran into the Russian or Chinese camps, rejecting the deal is a pretty darned good way to achieve that. And closing a big foreign market to US goods/services doesn’t do domestic industry any good. Yet somehow there are still VSPs and Congresscritters that view the agreement as a binary US/Iran deal and have convinced themselves that saying “NO! NO NO! WAAAH!” will somehow make the entire thing fall down.
Pie Happens (opiejeanne)
@Archon: they don’t have the votes to override a veto, but that’s not the point. We are in danger of looking like idiots if Congress decides to create such a bill and it passes.
Linda Featheringill
@boatboy_srq:
You have a point.
“Reichwingers”
Love it!
boatboy_srq
@Pie Happens (opiejeanne): In danger of looking like even more idiotic idiots (than usual), you mean…
Valdivia
@Pie Happens (opiejeanne): Actually we don’t know that for sure, and after a summer of pressure from a 20 million $ neocon campaign they might given our dem caucus lack of backbone (see Guatanamo). Let’s not assume this, it’s dangerous to do so.
@dogwood: @JCJ: Actually it does matter very much if the veto is not sustained. Because Iran then is not bound by the deal anymore no matter how many businesses come there to gain from the opening of the market. This sort of: let the idiots in congress do this, it won’t matter attitude is what they are counting on. It does matter, otherwise why is Obama begging people to call their representatives.
Also: it makes us look like idiots around the world but more importantly, we will have zero credibility in dealmaking. Who would negotiate anything with us after this? That still matters no?
Sorry to get so ranty but I am kind of in disbelief that people are being so blaze about this.
? Martin
On the ‘government is the problem’ front, this may be one of Obama’s most enduring legacies:
If this can hang on past Obama and can get the next President as a champion (which seems in doubt) then this could be extremely transformative. One encouraging sign is this comment from JEB!:
dogwood
I also think there’s a short term political motive for many republicans here. Making issues like repealing Obamacare central to the last campaign didn’t pay off. Looks like they’ve decided to put foreign policy front and center this time and see how that works. It’s not enough for democrats to simply explain the benefits of the deal; they need to let the public know in no uncertain terms that these are the same people who were wrong about Iraq.
? Martin
@Pie Happens (opiejeanne):
You’re worried that our Congress will start to look like idiots?
dogwood
@Valdivia:
I’m not the least bit blasé about this. I simply recognize that not a single republican will vote for the agreement, and a handful of democrats will join them.
AnonPhenom
@dogwood:
That won’t stop our plutocrats. At least not the neo-conservative ones.
Pie Happens (opiejeanne)
@boatboy_srq: Tom Cotton* ain’t helping us look smart.
*His name is something straight out of a Southern Gothic novel; not the name of a person, more like the idea of King Cotton when he’s at home.
dogwood
The Democrats who will give republicans cover on this are the people we should be going after. More than Tom Cotton or any of the other kooks, they will influence public opinion.
Valdivia
@dogwood: I agree, however that does not mean that a congressional override of Obama’s veto is a nothing thing. The agreement can only survive if all the parties bound by it follow it, once we don’t, the thing will begin to fall apart. Those snap-back sanctions will not snap back if the US walks away from their part of the agreement and for Iran those sanctions, our sanctions, matter.
I just think it’s important enough, at least for me, to harass my congress people once a week even if I am talking to a wall. If they only hear from the other side they feel free to vote the other way. I hoped the rest of those who care would do the same, because the other side is actually behaving like they don’t have this in the bag, why leave the arena all to them?
jl
My Dem senators and reps are supporting the deal. DiFi says she strongly supports it.
i heard the human political weather vane Manchin say he is inclined to support it. If a letter of thanks from a San Francisco liberal to Manchin thanking him for leaning in the right direction early on would not be counterproductive. I could drop him a line.
Anyway, I tank Manchin making favorable noises a good sign that enough Democrats will sign on.
I think DougJ forgot to mention the GOP wargrift caucus and not-so-small army of GOP presidential wannabees as the other driving force of lunatic deadender opposition.
Tokyokie
@Linda Featheringill: Those groups are not mutually exclusive. But I think it’s mostly grounded in the notion that Iranians cannot be trusted to honor any deal they sign and that their fanatacism would lead them to nuke Israel, the concept of their own nuclear destruction be damned. This, of course, a vilely racist notion. But these are Republicans, after all.
Pie Happens (opiejeanne)
@Valdivia: I just checked and as far as I can tell my congressperson is not a problem, maybe I’ll send her a note of encouragement. Neither senator from Washington has stated whether they support the Iran deal or not; they are each getting a letter.
MomSense
@Bill Arnold:
I take it you read armscontrolwonk.com
For non readers, Jeffrey Lewis is like the Richard Mayhew of arms control explaining.
srv
Read this lovely story on the weapons our allies are giving the Kurds.
And now that the Turks have ‘joined’ the fight against ISIS, they’re back to bombing the Kurds. That’s what victory smells like.
Valdivia
@dogwood: Yes thank you this is my point. Let’s pressure these squishes before they vote the wrong way. And apologies if I sounded a tad too ranty. I am just tired of being bombarded by neocon propaganda and hearing how the dem caucus is slipping away from the President on this while on our side there seems to be crickets.
@MomSense: Perfect description. He is amazing. I am also totally digging Moniz as a spokesperson for the deal.
@Pie Happens (opiejeanne): I sent an email and put a call to VanHollen and Edwards in Maryland since they both came out strongly in favor. Cardin is very wishy washy and needs encouragement which I am giving him all the time ;)
jl
@Valdivia:
” hearing how the dem caucus is slipping away ”
But remember that is a function of the always very interested insider tips provided by the corporate media’s most trusted anonymous sources in government, which they eagerly copy and paste as news. And we know who they are.
Pie Happens (opiejeanne)
@? Martin: I didn’t say “start” anywhere in that post, but yeah, Congress is stupid and always has been. I was saying that the US government will look stupid (er).
When we’ve traveled overseas we’d get interesting political questions from people as soon as they realize we are Americans (I dunno, maybe they think we’re Canadian), and they really like our current president. Our latest trip was in September and we ran into the other side of European politics: we met both fascists (and I do not use that term lightly) and what would pass as Tea Partiers. These delightful encounters were both in Paris and in northern Italy, although there was quite a bit of edginess about all of the boat people from Africa everywhere, and we travelled south from Milan and Venice all the way to the heel of the boot, to Brindisi. Amazing trip and very surprising after previous conversations.
In Venice it was mostly Tea Party resentment in that they were unhappy that their side hadn’t won the previous election so they wanted to secede from Italy and go back to being a city-state. Some of them were fascists, some were merely idiots, but it took a long time for us to find out what the demonstrations in Milan and Venice were championing because they didn’t want the tourists to know and they kept dissembling, if that’s the right word. I finally found one, a fascist, who was quite proud of what they were doing and told me all about it. At the time, Venice’s entire city council and mayor were in jail for embezzlement and their entire economy is based on tourism. I suppose they included Mestre, since it’s part of Venice even though it’s the mainland bit. Mestre is where the jobs are but it’s not nice, not pretty, like Venice is.
The guy in Paris had a nice stall at one of the flea markets, and he proudly proclaimed his love of Bill O’Reilly and Fox News in general. I had to walk away because he refused to see that Bill-O lying was a serious matter, since we get to decide. Ugh. Not just Americans are idiots.
Omnes Omnibus
I am even calling Ron Johnson although I already know he is strongly against the deal. Because fuck him, he doesn’t get a free pass.
Valdivia
@Omnes Omnibus: If I had a vpn to fake local calls to some of the crazier neocons I would spend a good chunk of one day calling them about their irresponsibility on this deal. If dems get abused why shouldn’t they?
@jl: part of it is that, but there is also a real danger that at home during break the AIPAC pressure will break enough of these guys. I don’t underestimate the noise and hatred they can unleash during August. I remember the summer of death panels.
Pie Happens (opiejeanne)
@Valdivia: Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray each just got a note encouraging them to support President Obama and the deal with Iran. I think they’re both a bit squishy because of the red interior of the state, but they really shouldn’t be.
The next thing we need to fix in this state are the number of Republicans screwing up our state legislature so that we can’t get anything done on schools or transportation. Idiots always whining about money, and we have a regressive form of raising revenue: no state income tax, everything depends on property and sales taxes, and referendums(referenda?).
ruemara
@Omnes Omnibus: And they’re very busy not supporting it because #FEELTHEBERN & #NOMONSANTO. You can’t take your head out of your asses just a little bit to see the wider world? Jesus.
boatboy_srq
@Pie Happens (opiejeanne): Remind me: did Cotton enlist before or after Shrub had DoD lower enlistment standards?
BruceJ
@Roger Moore: Bingo. These people view ‘compromise’ as weakness. Everything is a zero-sum game and anything short of outright total ‘pile their skulls in front of the city gates‘ annihilation is a defeat of their side.
Culture of Truth
If all those squawking about Iran getting a bomb all these years meant one word of what they said, they would rush to support this deal. Unfortunately some of the opposition is anti-Obama; they have to call him weak and Chamberlain / Hitler, therefore the deal is bad. The other reason is some fear it would work, Iran would not have the bomb and the economy would improve empowering a rival to House of Saud and Israel.
These might be legit reasons, but they can’t say it since they’ve makes nukes their #1 priority all these years. So Obama gives them what they asked for and they so no way, making his enemies look stupid and craven. Again.
BruceJ
@Archon: You’re being naive. They won’t succeed at scuttling the thing, but it won’t be for lack of trying.
BruceJ
@Culture of Truth:
“unfortunately
some ofthe opposition is anti-Obama”There, FTFY.
jl
@Valdivia: You have a good point. The noise can be taken as a signal to certain types of weak Democrats So, it is a reason to take action and contact the politicians, but I was just saying, don’t mistake it for real news that might push your blood pressure in the wrong direction! :).
Valdivia
@Pie Happens (opiejeanne): I thank you for contacting them, encouragement is a wonderful thing since I thin it breaks through the noise they get. I agree with you too on local elections, its very frustrating that there is a lack of focus on that, glad to see people like you with their eye on it.
@jl: You better believe my blood pressure has been sky high since this thing happened. Both because it matters to me and because I feel the other side is more with their eyes on the prize than we are. I do get a lot of it has to do with narrative though. Now that I am back to swimming hopefully my blood pressure will stabilize :)
Cheryl Rofer
This is why you should call your senators and representatives, particularly the ones on this junket:
More here.
Also, too, I am doing some serious explaining at Nuclear Diner of the 159 pages of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, also known as the Iran deal. Mostly the nuclear stuff, not so much the sanctions, although I may eventually go there.
Valdivia
@Cheryl Rofer: Thank you for saying this and linking. Someone a couple of weeks ago said the fight over this deal would make ACA look like tea with cucumber sandwiches and I believe it. It is very baffling to me that our side seems to not have an urgency about it, glad DougJ front-paged it.
Patrick
@jl:
The Democratic Party just drives me insane. It was the same crap during the idiotic Iraq war. Half of them, for the most part, unwillingly voted for Bush’s war in Iraq, because they were scared what the media/GOP might do to them. And then 5-8 years later, most of them had to apologize or disavow (like Clinton did) their vote. And here we are again. A great president, from their own fricking party, has negotiated a deal. If it doesn’t work out they can easily go back to the sanctions. And once again, they are getting cowardly and want to take the easy way out and vote with the Republicans. It just blows the mind…
Tree With Water
“Four score and seven years ago, [revolutionaries] brought forth on this continent a new nation.. dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal”.
“The history of American democracy is a gradual realization, too slow for some and too rapid for others, of the implications of the declaration of Independence”.
It’s been a tough 150 years or so for Americans who refuse to reconcile themselves to those implications. So much so that by 1865 they had killed tens of thousands of their fellow, white countrymen who did acknowledge and uphold that truth (however imperfectly), even as they were in turn were slain. Today’s republican party is comprised of the same dregs, the same bitter enders, a mere few generations removed from that cataclysm. Their most recent mass bloodletting was a successful plot to War in Iraq; and they thirst yet for more war. They pose a mortal threat to the planet. Today’s democratic party rank and file is the only thing that stands between them and the destruction of our Republic. Like it or not, democratic party ranks have assumed the role Lincoln’s blue armies once held.
Valdivia
@Patrick: Seconded. Exactly how I feel. But it’s also on us if we don’t push them and just sit here wondering five years down the line how war with Iran happened.
Chris
@Roger Moore:
QFT.
I’ve used the phrase “Tom Clancy fan fiction” to describe Republican foreign policy thinking, and I think it’s literally true. There’s a huge chunk of Americans who really do think foreign policy is a Tom Clancy novel (or Michael Bay film, or Call Of Duty game, or Punisher comic – pick your specific entertainment). In that reality, “negotiations” aren’t even a concept that exists or has any real meaning; it’s just a formality, a plot device to demonstrate how stupid and blind the negotiators on your side were for thinking they could negotiate with evil, and how evil the other side is when they inevitably break their word (the latter being exactly where Republicans see the Iran deal going; that’s always how the script goes).
Donald Rumsfeld put it best when he brushed away the possibility of negotiating with Iran with a “we don’t talk to evil.”
Chris
@boatboy_srq:
Well, this is, after all, exactly how our Cuba policy worked for fifty years.
redshirt
So the Republicans will ensure US businesses will be locked out of Iran while Europe/China/Russia invest.
They’ve even become anti-Business. It’s amazing.
Chris
@redshirt:
IIRC, at some point in the Cold War the John Birch Society put the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on their list of suspected communists. Because of the number of its members who did business in communist countries.
(Completely missing the nature of capitalism…)
Tree With Water
@Chris: There was a ’70’s made for TV movie starring Dick Van Dyke about a town that quits smoking. In it, a right wing nut says, “I was never one of those that thought Ike was a red”. I laughed for years at the absurdist humor, until I discovered that an astonishing number of Americans believed precisely that… and nowadays they control what’s left of the republican party.
rikyrah
@Gindy51:
YEP
YEP to the nth degree.
agorabum
Republican prion disease. In the 80s, Reagan sold arms to the Iranians. In 1991, we kicked Saddam out of Kuwait and Bush elder (and Cheney!) decided occupying Iraq would be a big mistake – that punishing aggression and protecting the little guy (Kuwait) from invasion was enough.
Then they started going nuts in the 90s when Clinton was prez, and once 9-11 hit, it went into overdrive with non-stop aggression and attacks over deals, and also reflexively hating anything that liberals approved of. Diplomacy is for wimps; “real men go to Tehran.”
For the last 7 years they have been the party of “no” – so this is diplomacy, it is done by a democrat president, it is supported by liberals…that’s all they need to hear to lose their shit and freak out.
rikyrah
When I think of this deal, I still go back to the scene from Syriana of the ‘ Free Iran’ Committee –
wasn’t a mofo in there that remotely looked Persian. So, exactly, what is the point of YOU trying to ‘ Free Iran’.
redshirt
The illegal invasion of Iraq by W was literally the best thing to happen to Iran in a geopolitical sense since maybe the end of Mongol rule.
Patrick
@Chris:
Except for when Rumsfeld himself negotiated with Saddam Hussein back in the early 1980’s.
Except for when Ronald Reagan negotiated with the evil empire, ie the Soviet Union.
How dumb do these folks think we are?
LanceThruster
A year later another Palestinian child is burned alive.
This one was a 18 month old toddler.
yodecat
When I moved to SW Oregon, I got DeFazio, Merkley and Wyden. I don’t think that they need to be called over almost any issue, but sometimes I call to give ’em an ‘attaboy’.
Omnes Omnibus
@yodecat: The “attaboys” matter too.
Bill Arnold
@Cheryl Rofer:
Thanks for the pieces you’ve done on the Iran deal. They are interesting, informative and easy to read.
Bill Arnold
@LanceThruster:
Also the parents and a sibling have extremely serious burn injuries.
Does Israel still do punitive demolitions of the homes of relatives of terrorists?
boatboy_srq
@Chris: Yes – and look how well that’s worked out.
jonas
@Mike in NC: Well, it did for them. They still get to go on Fox and bitch about Obama and the great Iraq-Dolchstoss and get paid for op-eds in the National Review. All the dead folks? Not so much.
Bill Murray
@Tree With Water: Probably you are talking about “Cold Turkey:, although this was not a TV movie. Most of it was filmed in Greenfield Iowa, where one of my uncles lived a couple of years after the movie was filmed. Bob Newhart, Tom Poston and Jean Stapleton were also in the movie, along with M. Emmett Walsh, Vincent Gardenia and Bob and Ray
AnonPhenom
@Patrick:
Also, too: Iran-Contra!
Procopius
@? Martin: Given that Congress now has approval ratings lower than pedophiles and puppy mill operators, looking like idiots is the least of their worries.