Can someone please tell me a real problem with the Iran nuke deal.

Dayton, it is not just Reagan. Executive agreements go all the way back to Thomas Jefferson and every president has made them. That is why Republicans are so full of shit on this issue when they pretend it is even slightly out of the ordinary.

Is it true that this is a handshake or verbal agreement? There are stories starting to come out that Iran's take differs from what is being reported here.

If those are true, yeah, this is a load of horse manure masquerading as house paint and you're all buying it. If it's not, and it actually is in writing, then the Executive should have no problem allowing Congress to have a thorough look at it. If it is all there, we lose nothing by going ahead with the agreement.

As the Washington Post editorial board points out, Obama is dooming the chance of success of the very agreement he demands we sign on to - by demanding we sign on to it.

In insisting on a deal that isn't even done yet, and putting his full weight behind it, the Iranians can reject almost anything they object to and Obama still has to sign on - or completely reverse his staunch political position. He's given away all his leverage by showing how desperate he is for a deal.

He sucks at sales, poker, and negotiation - simultaneously.

The majority of our diplomatic agreements are written out executive agreements which are not formal treaties. This has been true since at least the 1920's.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...xecutive-agreements-and-senate-disagreements/

I didn't dispute that. Would you care to take a swing at the questions I actually asked?

I did. You asked if they were just hand shakes or written out and then pretended like this was some how unusual or abnormal. It is not.

Frankly, the Republicans in Congress are dysfunctional hacks at the best of times and it is a complete waste of time to bother with them any where near an election so why bother? The president could single handedly cure cancer and Republicans would still pretend that is an evil and bad thing. That is just the type of lying pieces of dog shit that they are, they have no interest in actually governing, so the Preside t should do everything in his power to keep things going despite the drooling idiots in the clown car.

@Elwood, I can't prove it's written down, but many of the links in the thread Demiurge started include quotes from experts that essentially claim having read a document.

You want laughable cheap home prices the Augusta area is right up your alley. Here are some 100,000 to 150,000 dollars. You can even get cheaper if you
don't want a garage. And Augusta/Richmond County is 52 percent minority, mostly black. There are not many Asians or Hispanics there.
My county is not so diverse, but we have Indians (dot not casino) and Hispanics. Home prices are slightly higher, traffic is heavy (but not East coast heavy) and the schools are way better.
http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-search/Augusta_GA/price-100000-150000

But he'd have to live in the Augusta/Richmond area, where everybody apparently gets arrested when they aren't busy getting shot.

IOW, you'd better be busy getting shot, otherwise you're getting locked up

The water can be taken care of by having some kid piss in one of the open air reservoirs so the city will flush it all into the river...

Mixing apples and oranges. My county(Columbia County) is where they arrest you for everything. Augusta is where you get shot.
It's actually harder to get arrested in Richmond County/Augusta because the cops stay busy with real crimes
like shootings, stabbings, armed robbery, etc. Columbia County has a lot of weed grower busts, people
making fake ID cards for illegal Mexicans, and white collar embezzling, etc.
For example one of the closest convenience stores got busted for selling controlled substances out of the store like
synthetic marijuana/bath salts/etc. He paid a big fine and was not very long behind bars. Eventually he transferred ownership of
the store to his wife, because with a police record he couldn't get a booze selling license. BUT he figured with her having a
clean record, she could get the license. Spoiler alert: the local gub'mint saw right through what they were doing
so denied her a license.

What good is a convenience store with booze? People prefer "one stop" shopping so they will go to
another store.

We already have an extensive grey water delivery system and for at least a decade they have talked about "toilet to tap" or a plan to completely recycle grey water to drinking water standards.

Still, if I ever moved out of California it would be to the PNW and Portland is looking good.

Henry Kissinger and George Schultz weigh in in the Wall Street Journal. It says in part:

Mixing shrewd diplomacy with open defiance of U.N. resolutions, Iran has gradually turned the negotiation on its head. Iran’s centrifuges have multiplied from about 100 at the beginning of the negotiation to almost 20,000 today. The threat of war now constrains the West more than Iran. While Iran treated the mere fact of its willingness to negotiate as a concession, the West has felt compelled to break every deadlock with a new proposal. ​

They are both sharply critical. And from US News and World Report comes this:

Hope Is Not a Policy
There’s no evidence the White House thought through the consequences of its Iran nuclear deal.

The great powers and Iran have now agreed upon a temporary nuclear deal, pending a more permanent agreement in six months, which offers relief to Iran on crushing U.S.-European economic sanctions in exchange for which Iran has made modest concessions which may slightly slow their inevitable development of nuclear weapons. While the substance of the deal itself is being attacked by critics, it has other secondary problems: it sends the wrong messages to American adversaries and allies alike, it undermines the teetering alliance structure which has kept relative stability in the Middle East for 60 years, it alters the balance of regional power in the Middle East, and may unintentionally further accelerate the American departure from active leadership in the region. Diplomacy is not just about negotiating agreements, but on anticipating their consequences before they are made. If the White House thought through these consequences before they entered into this agreement with Iran, we have no evidence of it.

<snip>

One major difference between American diplomacy in Sudan versus Iran, is that the United States did not alienate any of its long-time allies by making deals with Khartoum. American diplomacy to end multiple civil wars in Sudan posed no downside risk; the nuclear deal with Iran is another matter entirely. The United States is at risk of collapsing our 50 year alliance structure in the Middle East for a nuclear deal with Iran which is unlikely to yield any salutary results for American interests in the region, as we have no evidence that Iranian intentions have changed. Their interest in a nuclear deal is a function of the crushing economic sanctions, not a change of the fundamental nature of the Iranian state.​

It's long, detailed, and also sharply critical.

Finally, from the Asia Times comes a piece laying out some of the demographic background on why Iran needs sanctions dropped so it can modernize its military and dominate the region before it's too late for them to win.

Demographically, Iran is in a position comparable to that of France in 1914: its military-age population is now approximately half that of three most important Sunni states combined (Pakistan, Turkey and Egypt). By 2020 the ratio will shift to only one-fourth, due to the collapse of Iran’s fertility rate from 7 children per female in 1979 to only 1.6 in 2012. Its 125,000 Revolutionary Guards constitute the best fighting force in the region after overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq. Although Iran lacks a modern air force, it is the dominant land power in the Levant. Saudi Arabia’s new Sunni coalition is an attempt to respond to Iran’s depredations in Yemen and elsewhere, but the fractious and divided Sunnis are far from acting in concert. Pakistan is too preoccupied with India and its internal extremists to send soldiers on foreign adventures, and Turkey has no desire to commit to Saudi leadership in the region. Iran’s strength will peak during the next several years, especially if the lifting of sanctions gives it the money and authority to modernize its armed forces.​

The article has some nice charts and graphs, including the relative military-age populations over time. Well worth reading.

Irrelevant. The reality impaired have pronounced this agreement a Good Thing, and will maintain that position until the mushrooms start blooming. Maybe even after that, since any nuclear weapons going off in the ME will obviously be Israel's fault.

To prevent that the United States should drop a small nuclear weapon on one remote Iranian city. The casualties of around 50,000 will be acceptable losses and it will show that we mean business.

I don't hold out much hope for this from our Novelty President of course.

Dayton is unfortunately correct. That's where things will head if we ignore the diplomatic option.

Ummm . . . that was NotDayton. Tho I understand your confusion.

As Liet noted earlier, they are increasingly interchangeable.

Of course, because you know I go around all the time advocating dropping nuclear weapons on cities. Fuckface........

When you advocate actions such as you've done in this thread that would lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians, it doesn't much matter whether you're calling for them to be nuked or killed by conventional weapons. You're fundamentally the same person either way. NotDayton's post was no more extreme than your posts in this thread.

Oh really.

Where I have advocated deliberately killing 50,000 civilians just to show "we mean business"

......animal.....

In an NPR interview Obama said:

What is a more relevant fear would be that in year 13, 14, 15, they have advanced centrifuges that enrich uranium fairly rapidly, and at that point the breakout times would have shrunk almost down to zero.

Keep in mind, though, currently, the breakout times are only about two to three months by our intelligence estimates. So essentially, we're purchasing for 13, 14, 15 years assurances that the breakout is at least a year ... that — that if they decided to break the deal, kick out all the inspectors, break the seals and go for a bomb, we'd have over a year to respond. And we have those assurances for at least well over a decade.​

NPR transcript

So State Department spox Marie Harf has clarified Obama's PBS remarks in response to a question from the AP's Matt Lee, who asked:

Matt Lee (AP): I would like to go to Iran and the president’s rather unusual sales job in this most recent interview in which he said that after 13 years, Iran would have the capability or could have the capability to produce a weapon. Is the idea simply –"​

And Harf did not disappoint her fans in the Iranian government, responding with:

Marie Harf: That quote, I think, that people are referring to – I think his words were a little mixed up there, but what he was referring to was a scenario in which there was no deal.

And if you go back and look at the transcript, I know it’s a little confusing. I spoke to the folks at the White House and read it a few times. It’s my understanding that he was referring to – even though it was a little muddled in the words – to a scenario in which there was no deal.

Matt Lee: But I thought that without a deal, they could – they’re at breakout in two to three months, not 13 years.

Marie Harf: Right, right. He wasn’t saying something different, it was more of a hypothetical: Well, look, without a deal, this is what could possibly happen. He was not indicating what would happen under an agreement in those years.​

So there you have it. Without a deal Iran is held to a one year breakout time for about 13 years, but with a deal, Iran is held to a one year breakout time for about 13 years.

Top. men.

Yes it will be Israel's fault, for provoking Iran. Classic "blame the victim" that the left has mastered.

Guess Obama the Manlet and Kerry the Moron didn't see this one coming:

Russia opens way to missile deliveries to Iran, starts oil-for-goods swap

A retarded child - who's so retarded, retarded children call him retarded - could beat Odumbo in the game of international politics.

Ah, so you think this had nothing to do with Republican and Israeli saber rattling? Much to learn you have, young Noodles.

Yes, Putin obviously senses that Obama and his pet idiot, Kerry, would be strong politically if only his bipartisan domestic opponents hadn't pointed out how weak this non-deal really is!

Ensuring no consequences for past and future violations, Obama had Iran by the balls until everyone pointed it out.

Um, no. He is hedging his bets in case they manage to derail the deal.

Perhaps it does, but perhaps you're not quite cynical enough. Russia wants the deal with Iran to fail and wants the US or Israel to go to war with Iran and flatten the country because Russia's flagging petro-economy will get a boost from crippling Iran's oil industry.

It doesn't much matter in the end, because unless Russia offers Iran nukes--i.e. something sufficient to actually deter a U.S. attack--Iran can't do better than the deal on the table.