On tonight's Hannity, guest host Mark Steyn gave Dick Morris the opportunity to yet again shill for his own website (where, as we've noted, the first thing you see is a solicitation to join his mailing list), this time to build sentiment against the START treaty. After citing some of the GOP's anti-START talking points and ticking off a list of Republican senators who he claims are wavering on the treaty, Morris concludes, “We've got to beat Obama on this thing.” He later added:
MORRIS: Let me just go back to START. There's an even more fundamental issue here. It's not just about the START treaty, it's not just about stopping Obama's momentum. It's about maintaining the unity and the discipline of the Republican Party.
What Morris doesn't mention: Defeating START would also defeat America's military leadership. Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Adm. Mike Mullen has written in a December 20 letter to Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman John Kerry:
This treaty has the full support of your uniformed military, and we all support ratification. Throughout its negotiation, Secretaries Clinton and Gates ensured that professional military perspectives were thoroughly considered. During the development of the treaty, I was personally involved, to include two face-to-face negotiating sessions and several conversations with my counterpart, the Chief of the Russian General Staff, Gen Makarov, regarding key aspects of the treaty.
The Joint Chiefs and I – as well as the Commander, U.S. Strategic Command – believe the treaty achieves important and necessary balance between four critical aims. It allows us to retain a strong and flexible American nuclear deterrent that will aloow us to maintain stability at lower levels of deployed nuclear forces. It helps strengthen openness and transparency in our relationship with Russia. It will strengthen the U.S. leadership role in reducing the proliferation of nuclear weapons. And it demonstrates our national commitment to reducing the worldwide risk of a nuclear incident resulting from proliferation.
In other words, Morris wants to scuttle a treaty supported by the entirety of America's military leadership in part for purely political reasons.
Thank you, Dick Morris, for reminding us once more what an utter partisan hack you are.