Joe Lieberman Promotes Right-Wing Talking Points Against Nuclear Treaty

Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman, a so-called “independent Democrat,” is making noises about not supporting the arms reduction treaty between the United States and Russia, buying into the right-wing meme that we first have to do more to modernize our nuclear arsenal.  This is a myth, as the administration has sought massive funding increases to maintain our nuclear arsenal. But that hasn’t stopped Lieberman from repeating the mantra of the right, on Fox News Sunday, that we need to do more to keep our nukes up-to-date before the START treaty can be considered.

LIEBERMAN: Anytime we are working on something with our old Cold War enemy, Russia, cooperatively, it’s a good sign. Anything we can do to reduce the number of nuclear warheads in the world is a positive development. But in my opinion as we reduce the number of nuclear warheads… we have to make darn sure that are nuclear warheads are capable and modern and a lot of them are decades old. So I feel very strongly that I am going to be real hesitant to vote for this treaty unless we have a commitment from the Administration that they are prepared to modernize our nuclear stockpile.

Furthermore, as Think Progress notes:

The Obama administration has already demonstrated a massive commitment to modernizing the nuclear weapons infrastructure. Vice President Biden in a speech in February attacked the Bush administration for neglecting the nuclear infrastructure and called for a dramatic 10 percent annual increase in its budget.

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.