
Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff testifies at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee on the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) on June 17, 2010. (DoD photo by Mass Communication Specialist Chad J. McNeeley/Released)
An interesting guest column appeared in today’s Des Moines Register, written by the current Physicians for Social Responsibility Board President. Here’s his main point:
In a world where uninformed opinions are too often passed off as information, sometimes the best prescription is to listen to the experts. Here’s hoping that senators heed the advice of the national security experts in our military leadership and follow the long tradition of putting national security before partisan politics on arms control. Ratifying the New START treaty really should be a “no brainer.”
So what’s he talking about?
I thought it might be useful to round up what some of the experts and military leaders have said during the most recent New START hearings in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as well as the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Mitt Romney: Dazed And Confused on New START
Mitt Romney campaigning in Ames, Iowa, May 2007.
I realize that the 2007-2008 presidential debates were an eternity ago in terms of “political time”, but I’m resurrecting the following quote from Mitt Romney for a reason. He was asked about his views on Vladimir Putin. As part of his response, he outlined his rather scrambled view of international politics:
Romney has had several years to educate himself on what’s really going on in the world, especially on nuclear weapons issues.
If Romney’s the best that New START opponents have to offer, then they’re doing it wrong.
I’m talking, of course, about Romney’s Washington Post editorial today, in which he blunders through a stale, much-debunked series of arguments against the New START treaty.
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