the guy by the door …

Former Secretary of the Navy¹ and now Senator Jim Webb² thinks it is. What is Kyl-Lieberman?³ It is an amendment, offered by Senator Jon Kyl and Senator Joe Lieberman, to the 2008 Department of Defense Authorization. As Senator Webb says,

…amendment No. 3017, the Kyl-Lieberman amendment, which among other things–and most troubling–would designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a foreign terrorist organization under section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act.

The fear, as mentioned below, is that this reclassification of part of the Iranian military might be used by the neocons to justify bombing Iran under the Authorization for the Use of Military Force:

This is not the way to make foreign policy. It is not the way to declare war, although this clearly worded sense of the Congress could be interpreted this way. These who regret their vote 5 years ago to authorize military action in Iraq should think hard before supporting this approach, because, in my view, it has the same potential to do harm where many are seeking to do good.

Or:

This proposal is DICK CHENEY‘s fondest pipe dream. It is not a prescription for success. At best it is a deliberate attempt to divert attention from a failed diplomatic policy. At worst it could be read as a backdoor method of gaining congressional validation for military action without one hearing and without serious debate.

The original version has apparently been rewritten slightly to no good effect. The best reportage is by Carah Ong at Iran Nuclear Watch.

Check out Crooks and Liars and Talking Points Memo.

[More links to come. bbl :)]
¹Under Ronald Reagan no less!

²But at least he’s a Democrat which is not much in and of itself, but he did introduce the measure to try to get more time for rest and retraining between combat tours for the troops. It was denouced by the neocons as a “backdoor” way of winding down the war in Iraq.

³The flippant footnote answer is, “the shortest but regrettably cryptic way I could think of to get a quasi-punchy title and still appear to be doing more than recycling persistant internet Bomb Iran rumors.