If Republicans really want to hold up the Iran deal, they should send Dick Cheney to jail.

If Republicans really want to hold up the Iran deal, they should send Dick Cheney to jail
If the GOP really wants to hold up the Iran deal, it must first hold its party members accountable for their crimes
MARCY WHEELER



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If the president decides sharing WMD information Congress has required him to share would damage national security, he cannot be required to do so, even by a specific law.

While Yoo was reviewing laws on the books in 2003 and not the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act mandating congressional review of the Iran deal, nothing in Yoo’s expansive conclusion would change for this law. Indeed, Yoo relied heavily on an OLC memo written during the Iran-Contra scandal finding that the president could blow off reporting requirements passed specifically to cover those activities. Yoo’s claim that presidents can blow off mandated WMD reporting relied on the executive’s past efforts to blow off very specific efforts to rein in the president.

So while Roskam may be right, in theory, that Congress should have a “robust and transparent review process necessary to cast a fully informed vote,” to argue the point, Republicans will also have to argue that a bunch of Republicans (many of them Iran deal opponents) should have gone to prison for blowing off Congress in Iran-Contra, and another bunch of Republicans (again, most of them Iran deal opponents) should be legally accountable for withholding any details about Iraq’s purported nuclear program in advance of the Iraq War.

Want to hold up the Iran deal? Fine. Send Dick Cheney, its biggest opponent, to prison first.

Republicans are right to demand transparency from the executive branch (though in this case, they seem to be asking for things that — by design — the president cannot give). But to force the issue, they’re also going to have to find a way to criminalize common Republican practice, a practice blessed by John Yoo.
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http://www.salon.com/2015/09/11/if_republicans_really_want_to_hold_up_the_iran_deal_they_should_send_dick_cheney_to_jail/