Every so often these motherf*ckers and their lies just get to you. I had my cup of tea in hand tonight and i decided to do a little perusal of the Congressional REcord, see if I could find something to add to my cheat sheet for the live-blog next week. I come across this exchange about adopting the Chemical Weapons Treaty back in the 105th Congress. (1997-1998) The US Senate was debating a treaty on prohibiting Chemical Weapons, for the love of God. The Rethug bastards in Congress didn't want to pass the thing because their buddies in the Chemical industry thought that it would be too expensive. So they made shit up about how it wouldn't work anyway and it would be too costly to implement.
This is in the goddamn Congressional Record. These asshole bastards have the balls to say that Democrats can't protect the country, Democrats are soft on terrorism and so forth and these sons of bitches bailed for their corporate friends on all sorts of simple detection measures at home and abroad that actually try to help in stemming global terrorism. Again, this is a matter of public record.
This is from the Congressional Record of April 23, 1997, and the Senator inserting these quotes is Craig from Wyoming, the douchebag. Craig first quotes Cheney who says, in effect, why go for a Chemical Weapons ban, we can't enforce it anyway:
The technology to manufacture chemical weapons is simply too ubiquitous, covert chemical warfare programs too easily concealed, and the international community's record of responding effectively to violations of arms control treaties too unsatisfactory to permit confidence that such a regime would actually reduce the chemical threat. Indeed, some aspects of the present convention, notably its obligation to share with potential adversaries like Iran, chemical manufacturing technology that can be used for military purposes and chemical defensive equipment, threaten to make this accord worse than having no treaty at all: Richard Cheney, Letter to Chairman Helms, April 7, 1997.
Not content with just quoting that limp Dick Cheney that 'we can't do this, it won't work,' they go on to quote that bastard Rummy, who tells everyone, it costs too much:
Here are the names of 25 major CEO's of chemical companies who stand clearly in opposition to this treaty. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that these ladies and gentlemen and their statements be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
America's Top Foreign Policy, Defense, and Economic Experts Raise Concerns Over the CWC's Impact on U.S. Business
Steve Forbes, President and CEO of Forbes Inc.: `....As I have strenuously argued on other occasions, maintaining America's competitive edge requires a lessening of the tax and regulatory burdens on the American people and on our Nation's enterprises. Unfortunately, the CWC will have precisely the opposite effect. It will burden up to 8,000 companies across the United States. Remember, these are in the hands of an international bureaucracy, not what we would like them to be, with major new reporting regulatory and inspection requirements entailing large and uncompensated compliance costs. These added costs constitute an unfunded Federal mandate. Like so many mandates, they are bound to retard our economic growth and make our companies less competitive.
...in addition to the costs arising from heavy duty reporting, the CWC subjects our chemical companies to snap inspections that will allow other nations access to our latest chemical equipment and information. No longer will violators of intellectual property rights in China, Iran, and elsewhere, have to go to the trouble of pirating our secrets... Some might even regard such burdens as a barrier to entry that can enhance their market share at the expense of their smaller competitors.'
Donald Rumsfeld, former Secretary of Defense and President and former Chairman and CEO of G.D. Searle and Company: `...Big companies seem to get along fine with big government. They get along with American government, they get along with foreign governments, they get along with international organizations, and they have the ability, with all their Washington representatives, to deal effectively with bureaucracies... Indeed, that capability on the part of the big companies actually serves as a sort of barrier to entry to small and medium-sized companies that lack that capability. So I do not suggest... for one minute that large American companies are not going to be able to cope with the regulations. They will do it a whale of a lot better than small and medium sized companies...
I don't believe that the thousands--whatever the number is--of companies across this country know about this treaty in any detail, believe that the treaty would apply to them, understand that they could be subjected to inspections, appreciate the unfunded mandates that would be imposed on them in the event this were to pass.' Sen. Kerry, speaking for the sane, starts off a long speech about this treaty, and his concern for genuine security with these lines:
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, it is interesting. I have been here on the floor listening to this debate for a period of time, and it is almost as if the arguments kind of pass each other in a strange way. I have, also, on the Foreign Relations Committee, been at the hearings. We keep hearing the same mantra repeated with respect to a number of objections, notwithstanding the fact that either the language of the treaty is going to be changed by virtue of agreements made between Senator Helms and Senator Biden and the administration, or the treaty itself addresses those specific arguments. One of the most interesting repetitive arguments is that this is somehow going to be dangerous for the chemical companies. We keep hearing people say that this is going to be terrible for American industry. But American industry has signed off on it. The Senator from Delaware represents many chemical companies. Fifty-six percent of the economy in the State of Delaware is represented by chemical companies. He hasn't heard from them in opposition. Nevertheless, we hear people repeat that.
Now, obviously, this convention, despite its attributes, is not a panacea for the threat of chemical weapons. None of us who are proposing this convention, I think, are suggesting that this is the panacea. But what it does do, Mr. President, is it contributes, on balance, more to the effort to have deterrence, to expose cheaters and to detect chemical weapons production and proliferation of any kind of significant military nature than not having it.
Honestly, I hope Rumsfeld and Cheney burn in hell someday for what they have done. These evil motherf*cking bastards are what's wrong with this country and the ball-less wonders in the American press core should have taken these friggin bastids apart years ago. Sigh!
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