WASHINGTON – The star-studded rally is Wednesday but the heroes came to the Capitol Tuesday.
They came to deliver moving and impassioned pleas to stop the President Obama's nuclear deal with Iran.
Because their reasons had nothing to do with partisan politics.
It all came straight from the heart.
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And the bitter lessons of experience they paid for with their own blood.
Brian Mast stood ramrod straight and proud, as befitting a former member the elite Joint Special Operations Command, looking sharp in his immaculately tailored gunmetal grey suit. Only, he was wearing shorts. And instead of legs, there was a pair of black, plastic prosthetic limbs. A life-long reminder of his last operation in Afghanistan as a bomb disposal expert after 12 years in the Army. His job was to find improvised explosive devices, or IEDs – made or funded by Iran – on a nightly basis.
Plastic legs or not, he still stood tall.
Robert Bartlett had his body ripped in half by an IED bearing Farsi inscriptions in Iraq in 2005. Farsi is the Iranian language. After the explosion, he died three times. Three times he was brought back to life. Bartlett then spent four-and-a-half years at Walter Reed Hospital having his body rebuilt. Members of the Bartlett family have fought for America since Valley Forge. His family name is on the Declaration of Independence.
His body damaged but his pride unbowed, Bartlett spoke with a spirit perhaps as strong as anyone who has ever stood in front of the Capitol steps.
Under a sweltering hot September sun, with just a hint of a heaven-sent breeze, there were also national security experts who spoke passionately about the need to stop the deal with Iran, at a news conference held by the Endowment for Middle East Truth, or EMET.
But it was the words of Mast and Bartlett that those in attendance most likely took home with them.
The big rally against the Iran deal on Wednesday will feature such luminaries as leading GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, fellow candidate Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, former Gov. Sarah Palin, R-Alaska, and radio talk-show hosts Glenn Beck and Mark Levin.
But it was the lesser-known opponents of the deal who had the press spellbound on Tuesday.
Bartlett spoke of the horrors of war and the damage done on the battlefield by bombs made in Iran.
"My buddy did die next to me. In fact, I died three times and was resuscitated all three times. I am here to tell you the truth. They said they want to kill us. That is the reality."
He continued, "$150 billion goes directly to the people who killed me and my friends. Why would we do that? We are selling out the very men and women who wore the uniform and were willing to die for you."
Noting his family had fought for the country since the Revolutionary War, Bartlett warned, "I can't say my son will fight for this country because I don't know if he'll have a country left. This is the beginning of the end, if this deal goes through."
"A lot of people will die" around the world if the deal isn't stopped, he added.
He implored everyone to do what they could to make their voices heard.
"Call your friends, call your family members, tweet it, Facebook it across the world that we will not stand for terrorism in any country, period. And we will work together to stop it."
Barlett said those who discount the "Death to America" chants should think twice.
"Are they really willing to kill us? Well, they have. This is a blessing. I died for my country. I would die for it again. I am still up here fighting for you. I am still fighting for world peace."
Watch the video of wounded veteran Brian Mast:
Mast began by observing, "The America that I grew up in has never been a country that has looked at evil and done nothing about it. We've always been at the tip of the spear. We have always led the charge against evil. That's what out history is."
The world has always turned to America, he said, because it has always known, "We don't run, and we don't hide and we don't negotiate with terrorists."
"We can go to any town around the country and find Marines that have battled against fighters who were trained by Iran."
"We can go right down the road to Walter Reed Medical Center and find service members who are so badly burned that those who knew them before will never be able to recognize them again," because they were maimed by IEDs made by Iran.
"We can travel to any state and we can see the broken families whose protector will never come home again because of an Iranian-made IED."
He closed with a plea to reject the Iran agreement before it causes untold further damage.
"Congress, Senate, President Obama, if you push this deal through, you will have the blood of U.S. service members on your hands."
Watch the video of former CIA Director James Woolsey:
James Woolsey was director of the CIA under President Bill Clinton and a negotiator in four arms-control agreements.
He ridiculed the terms of this deal.
"Let's take the last one, for the Conventional Forces in Europe where I was the ambassador and chief negotiator. If I had come back from the negotiations in Vienna to call on my boss at the time [former Secretary of State] Jim Baker and said, 'Secretary, I've got good news and bad news. The good news is that the Russians have agreed to a lot of verification procedures. The bad news is that they're not going to tell us what they are. But they think we ought to go along with them anyway. What do you say?'"
Woolsey deadpanned, "Jim Baker's a pretty blunt guy. He would have punted me out of his office. That might be the kindest thing he would have done."
EMET President Sarah Stern called the upcoming bill to stop the Iran deal," Perhaps the most important Congressional vote in history."
She asked Obama, 'What is it about 'Death to America' you don't understand?'"
Watch the video of EMET President Sarah Stern:
Despite overwhelming opposition, the Iran nuclear deal is likely to attain approval this week because of a Senate ploy which many critics consider a colossal tactical blunder.
The "Corker bill" allows the nuclear deal, effectively, to be approved by a minority of lawmakers.
That's because, Congress did not insist upon pursuing the normal treaty process that requires such an important international agreement to be approved by two-thirds of the Senate. Instead, a bill from Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., requires Congress to submit a bill disapproving the deal, if lawmakers want to block it.
That means a bill blocking the deal would need two-thirds of both the Senate and the House to override a presidential veto. And, opponents of the deal, although in the clear majority, do not have that many votes.
Republicans are expected to introduce bills in the House and the Senate this week to stop the deal.
But 34 senators have now committed to support it, ensuring Obama could veto a bill blocking the deal without the Senate overriding that veto.
That means the much-criticized deal likely will go into effect despite opposition by nearly two-thirds of the Senate, as much as three-quarters of the House, and 55 percent of the country. Just 25 percent of Americans support the deal.
Sixty-six percent of voters believe the deal should require the approval of Congress.
Critics say the deal does little to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, and instead, virtually assures that it will. Even the Obama administration has conceded the deal does nothing to stop Iran building atomic weapons after it expires in a decade.
The deal's most controversial provision has been kept secret, even from Congress.
A side deal between the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, and Iran lets the country's leaders decide which sites to inspects. It also lets Iran do its own inspections at a key site.
The Associated Press reported in August, “The agreement in question diverges from normal procedures by allowing Tehran to employ its own experts and equipment in the search for evidence of activities it has consistently denied – trying to develop nuclear weapons.”
The deputy IAEA director general in charge of the Iran probe from 2005 to 2010 told AP he could think of no similar concession with any other country.
The IAEA chief told Republican senators in August that he could not let them see the side deal.
In a nutshell, the secret side deal would:
- Let Iran use its own inspectors to investigate the Parchin site where experts suspect it has been developing nuclear arms.
- Let Iran provide the IAEA its own photos and and videos of suspect locations, while, “taking into account military concerns.”
- Bar international inspectors from sites Iran declares it has “military concerns.”
- Prevent the IAEA from getting photo or video information from areas Iran says are off limits because they have military significance.
While a copy of a draft of the side deal (which sources said was virtually identical to the final document) obtained by the AP said the IAEA “will ensure the technical authenticity” of Iran’s inspection, it did not say how.
Iran has since confirmed it intends to decide where, and what, inspectors may inspect.
“Iran does not plan to issue permission for the [International Atomic Energy Agency] to inspect every site," said Iranian Defense Minister Brig. Gen. Hossein Dehqan last week.
And Iran’s official FARS news agency reported, "Dehqan had earlier underlined that Tehran would not allow any foreigner to discover Iran's defensive and missile capabilities by inspecting the country's military sites."
That limitations on inspections directly contradict what the Obama administration had said.
As WND reported, Secretary of State John Kerry said in April that, under the deal, Iran would allow the IAEA to inspect anywhere it wants. He would later deny saying that, while testifying under oath to Congress.
After the deal was concluded, Kerry told senators on July 23 he “never uttered the words anywhere, anytime” regarding inspections of Iran’s facilities, and claimed “it was never part of negotiations.”
That’s not what the Obama administration said in April, and it directly contradicted what Deputy National Security adviser Ben Rhodes promised back then, when he said the International Atomic Energy Agency would have immediate access to any Iranian nuclear site.
Rhodes has since flip-flopped and directly contradicted himself.
On April 6, he said, “Under this deal, you will have anywhere, anytime, 24/7 access as it relates to the nuclear facilities that Iran has.”
On July 14, he said, “We never sought in this negotiation the capacity for so-called anytime, anywhere” inspections.
Parchin is just one of the sites where Iran has not permitted IAEA inspectors to go.
Iran has denied any nuclear weapons work was done at Parchin but has never allowed access to the site.
The IEAE suspects Iran experimented on nuclear detonators at Parchin, based on U.S., Israeli and other intelligence.
Work at Parchin stopped more than decade ago, but the IAEA has cited satellite image evidence of apparent attempts to clean the site.
This is how EMET described the speakers at Tuesday's news conference:
Brian Mast served our country as a soldier in the U.S. Army for 12 years. Brian’s service also included the honor of serving under the elite Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) as a bomb disposal expert. Working under JSOC meant that Brian fought at the tip of the spear for the U.S. military in the ongoing war against radical Islamic terrorism. While on his last deployment in Afghanistan, Mast was tasked with protecting his brothers from improvised explosive devices (IEDs) on a nightly basis. While he was able to detect and destroy most of these IEDs, the very last IED Mast found resulted in him sustaining catastrophic injuries, which included the loss of both his legs.
Ken Stethem is a Navy Seal (ret.), an American hero, and a great patriot, whose brother Robert Stethem was brutally murdered by Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorists when they hijacked TWA flight 847 in 1985. Because he was wearing a uniform of the United States of America, Robert was specifically singled out by these Iranian backed terrorists, to be brutally tortured before they put a gun to his head.
R. James Woolsey is a Venture Partner with Lux Capital Management. He also Chairs the Board of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Mr. Woolsey previously served in the U.S. Government on five different occasions, where he held Presidential appointments in two Republican and two Democratic administrations, most recently (1993-95) as Director of Central Intelligence. From July 2002 to March 2008 Mr. Woolsey was a Vice President and officer of Booz Allen Hamilton, and then a Venture Partner with VantagePoint Venture Partners of San Bruno, California until January 2011. He was also previously a partner at the law firm of Shea & Gardner in Washington, DC, now Goodwin Procter, where he practiced for 22 years in the fields of civil litigation, arbitration, and mediation.
Sarah Stern is the Founder & President of EMET, an unabashedly pro-Israel and pro-America think tank and policy shop in Washington DC. Sarah has more than 30 years of experience on Capitol Hill, and has helped to draft and pass many pieces of legislation, speeches and congressional resolutions. Sarah is the editor and author of the highly acclaimed book, “Saudi Arabia and the Global Islamist Terrorist Network: America and the West’s Fatal Embrace.” Additionally, she is the author of one novel, “Cherished Illusions,” (2005, Balfour Books), and has written a chapter in Frank Gaffney’s widely acclaimed book, “War Footing” (Naval Press. 2006).
Saundra Flanagan, Gold Star Mother, is the mother of Kevin Rux, who was an electronics warfare technician on the USS Cole. He was killed in the 2000 al-Qaeda bombing of a US Navy destroyer in Yemen.
Dr. Michael Ledeen is the Freedom Scholar at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD). Dr. Ledeen is an internationally renowned scholar, is a highly regarded expert on Iran’s Green Movement and maintains close ties to opposition groups inside Iran. His scholarship on Iraq, terrorism and international security have been sought after by those in and out of government and the intelligence community, the media and policy influencers.
Penny Nance is the CEO and President of Concerned Women for America LAC. She is an outspoken voice for America’s support for Israel.
Gary Bauer is the head of Christians United for Israel (CUFI) Action Fund.
Manda Zand Ervin came to United States as a political refugee on June 17th, 1980 and is the founder and president of the Alliance of Iranian Women, a group which has deep connections within the Iranian diaspora and within Iran. As the head of the Alliance of Iranian Women, Mrs. Ervin works to bring the West’s attention to the plight of Iranian women under Islamic Sharia laws.
Jeff Ballabon is the Chairman of the Iron Dome Alliance and the Washington Representative of the American Families of Terror Victims.
Lauri Regan is the President of EMET’s New York Chapter.
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