That means that the lion’s share of decisions on our issues are in play RIGHT NOW. We urge you to contact your Members of Congress now -- especially if you have not yet done so this year. Thank you, thank you, thank you -- from the bottom of your DC lobbyist’s heart.

No new nuclear arms race! In June, the House zeroed out funding for the RRW. That's awesome. But the Senate is not likely to follow suit. So take a minute: send a message to your Senators to say: Don't start a new nuclear arms race. | Take action.

No more money for missile defense Deny funds to this overpriced, misplaced, malfunctioning weapons system. Missile defense is the single most costly weapons system in the Pentagon budget and is one of the least justifiable military programs. The Administration proposed nearly $11 billion for missile defense for FY08| Take action.

FEDERAL BUDGET WATCH

NUCLEAR NOTES

House zeroes funding for "RRW"

That's some good news, that. The House turned down the administration's proposal to build some new nukes. This new Congress? Good news.

Now let's convince the Senate to do the right thing as well.

No new nuclear arms race! In June, the House zeroed out funding for the RRW. That's awesome. But the Senate is not likely to follow suit. So take a minute: send a message to your Senators to say: Don't start a new nuclear arms race. | Take action.

Of course, there's bad news, too. Mostly to do with "missile defense" -- you might've thought that thing died when it sucked up so many billions and then, oh yeah, FAILED THE TESTS.

But no. The neocons have doggedly poured so many more billions into it and then, just to make it seem worthwhile, poured some flames onto the embers of the Cold War fire. Which stopped burning like, 15 years ago... But they'll get it going again, just you watch.

(In pretty good news, there is the fact that House Armed Services Committee cut the missile defense appropriation by $764 million -- it's a start.. But we do need to work to get similar reductions in appropriations bills in the House and Senate.)

No more money for missile defense Deny funds to this overpriced, misplaced, malfunctioning weapons system. Missile defense is the single most costly weapons system in the Pentagon budget and is one of the least justifiable military programs. The Administration proposed nearly $11 billion for missile defense for FY08| Take action.

Loose talk about nukes could sink U.S. interests
USA Today – Editorial, June 11, 2007

Keeping all options on the table without explicitly spelling them out — something diplomats call "strategic ambiguity" — has its place in keeping enemies guessing about U.S. intentions. But the tactical nuclear option is so extreme, and has such enormous potential ramifications, that it should not be discussed in the same breath as conventional bombs. In their haste to talk tough, Hunter and his fellow GOP aspirants lost an opportunity to show voters that they grasp the dangers and can be trusted to be responsible nuclear stewards.

Nukes aren't just another weapon. Their use risks killing hundreds, if not thousands, of civilians both on the spot and later from the effects of radiation. Even raising the prospect of using them to stop a nuclear program crosses a dangerous red line.

Congress Seeks New Direction for Nuclear Strategy
By Walter Pincus | Washington Post | June 18, 2007

Congress is moving to change the direction of the Bush administration's nuclear weapons program by demanding the development of a comprehensive post-Sept. 11, 2001, nuclear strategy before it approves funding a new generation of warheads.

The Bush administration had sought $88 million for the Reliable Replacement Warhead program next year so that cost and engineering studies could be completed and a decision could be reached on congressional approval to build the first RRW model, with the first new warheads ready by 2012.

The House already passed the fiscal 2008 Defense Authorization Bill, which reduced RRW funding and called for development of a new nuclear weapons strategy before steps are taken to produce new warheads.

While the Senate has yet to act on the authorization or appropriations measure, the Senate Armed Services and Appropriations committees are expected to follow the House's example by reducing proposed RRW spending and demanding development of a new nuclear weapons policy.

Keeping nuclear arms out of wrong hands
BY JOHN C. ROOD | Miami Herald

The technology, expertise and material needed to produce a nuclear weapon have become more widespread. The break-up of the A.Q. Khan network was critical in stemming the spread of the know-how and equipment needed to produce fissile material and nuclear weapons. But regrettably, proliferation of these sensitive technologies occurred before Khan and his associates were stopped.

Terrorists and their supporters continue to try to acquire nuclear material on the black market. This requires us to remain vigilant. Fortunately, most of the hundreds of cases over the past decade involved hoaxes or material unsuitable for a radioactive device. But there have also been troubling cases like the recent seizure in Georgia of highly enriched uranium (HEU) usable in a nuclear weapon.

Against this backdrop, the desire of al Qaeda and other terrorist groups to gain nuclear weapons or improvised nuclear devices is a grave threat that we must urgently address.

The Spirit of June 12
by JONATHAN SCHELL | from the July 2, 2007 issue of The Nation

Twenty-five years ago, on June 12, 1982, approximately a million people demonstrated in New York City's Central Park against nuclear arms and for an end to the arms race of the cold war. Nothing like it had ever happened before. It was not only the largest antinuclear demonstration but the largest political demonstration of any description in American history. Nothing like it has happened again, either. The tide of protest was at its high-water mark, and thereafter receded steadily...

The aftermath has been dispiriting. Arms control resumed and had some successes, but no fresh or bold initiative to deal with the nuclear danger has been launched. No heir to either the freeze movement or Reagan has arisen. The end of the cold war, seemingly the greatest opportunity to lift nuclear danger since 1946, was wasted. Instead, the whole issue fell into a shocking state of neglect, as if people believed that a mortal illness could be dealt with by forgetting about it.

In the years of silence, the unattended predicament quietly went haywire, assuming a malevolent post-cold war shape. Observing that the cold war powers, whatever they might say or not say, were determined to hold on to their nuclear arsenals, other nations--India, Pakistan, North Korea, perhaps Iran--determined to join the undissolved nuclear club.

Whereupon the nuclear powers suddenly awoke to the danger and declared that these nuclear arsenals were intolerable. Having, in the early post-cold war years, mutely forgone the idea of negotiated nuclear disarmament for all, the United States soon turned to war as the ultimate solution to proliferation, and the Bush Doctrine of preventive war was born. There followed the Iraq War and, now, the threat of war with Iran, including the multiplying threats to use nuclear weapons. The wellsprings of change in public opinion are as hard to predict as ever.
No one can say whether a June 12, or some twenty-first-century equivalent, is in the offing. That one is needed is beyond argument.

The Elephants of Missile Defense
Frida Berrigan | June 13, 2007 | Foreign Policy in Focus

...President Bush sought to quell this rhetoric with a one-two punch of reassurance and criticism. He insisted that the proposed system was a “purely defensive measure, aimed not at Russia but at true threats.” In Prague, flanked by Czech Republic officials, Bush said: “My message will be ‘Vladimir’—I call him Vladimir—‘you shouldn’t fear missile defense system. As a matter of fact, why don’t you cooperate with us on a missile defense system? Why don’t you participate with the United States?’”...

Elephant Number One
The U.S. missile defense system continues to present large technological hurdles that the engineers and physicists at Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and the Missile Defense Agency have been unable to vault despite $53.9 billion invested since 2001. ...

Elephant Number Two
Even if the technology could work, is missile defense worth the financial or political cost?

There are many ways to counter and dissuade an emerging threat. And missile defense—designed to detect and then intercept a launched long range missile—is the most expensive and the most last minute.

The paradox of missile defense
By James Carroll | Boston Globe | June 5, 2007

ONE MAN picked up a club, and the other answered with a stone. A knife was parried with a sword. The shield followed, then the spear, the mace, the longbow, the fortified wall, the catapult, the castle, the cannon. Across eons, every warrior's improvement in defense was followed by a breakthrough in offense, leading to yet new countermeasures, ever more lethal. This ancient offense-defense cycle was made modern by the machine gun and the tank, then by warplanes and anti aircraft guns, and, ultimately, by ballistic missiles and anti ballistic missiles...

Two days after the Russian test, Vladimir Putin said simply, "It wasn't us who initiated a new round of the arms race."

Of all the problems that are exacerbating US-Russian tensions today, none compares for destructiveness with Bush's misguided missile defense project. The irony, of course, is that this reigniting of the old tensions in the name of security leads to less security, not more. The tragedy is that it ignores the lesson that had already been so well learned four decades ago.

A consensus has lately developed that the Bush administration's worst legacy will be tied to the disastrous war in Iraq, but that may be wrong. The resuscitation of the fantasy of missile defense, and with it the raising from the dead of the arms race, may result in catastrophes in comparison to which Iraq is benign.

IRAQ UPDATES

Demanding an end to the war through an escalating series of actions on the THIRD FRIDAY of every month beginning Friday September 21st

The Iraq Moratorium will be an escalating, monthly expression of determination to end the war. Commencing Friday, September 21st and continuing the Third Friday of every month thereafter, we will encourage people to make a break with business as usual.

Join with millions to:
* Wear and distribute black ribbons and armbands
* Refrain from buying gas
* Pressure politicians and the media
* Hold vigils, pickets, rallies, and teach-ins
* Hold special religious services
* Coordinate events in music, art, and culture
* Host film showings, talks, and educational events
* Organize student actions: Teach-ins, school closings, etc.

House Looks to a Hot July on Iraq
By Jennifer Yachnin | Roll Call | [By subscription only: click here.]
June 20, 2007

...Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.), a member of the Appropriations subcommittee on Defense, said Tuesday that he expects the fiscal 2008 bill to contain measures including the prohibition of permanent bases in Iraq as well as the invasion of Iran, and said that measures stripped from the recent supplemental war-spending bill could also be revived.

“All the readiness standards are fair game for the ’08 bill,” Moran said, in reference to standards proposed by Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), the Defense appropriations subcommittee chairman, that would require military personnel to receive specific levels of training and rest between deployments.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) asserted in a June 13 letter to President Bush that the Democratic majorities in both chambers would aim to produce legislation in the coming months to “limit the U.S. mission in Iraq, begin the phased redeployment of U.S. forces, and bring the war to a responsible end.”

No longer can we avoid this bitter conclusion. Iraq's winner-take-all politics are increasingly vicious; there will be no open, pluralistic Iraqi state to take over from the United States. Iraq has no credible central government that U.S. forces can assist and no national army for them to fight alongside. U.S. troops can't beat the insurgency on their own; our forces are too few and too isolated to compete with the insurgents for the public's support. Meanwhile, the country's militias have become a law unto themselves, and ethnic cleansing gallops forward.

One of the sources for hope on ending the funding for the Iraq war is the fact that even Republicans are getting sick of the mess; and are finding the need to respond to the concerns of constituents. One Republican Senator from Oregon saw for himself what a fiasco looks like...

...Since [Sen. Gordon Smith (R-OR)]'s "end of my rope" speech six months ago, the senator has been voting with the Democrats on such Iraq matters as timelines and benchmarks, stopping short only of voting for Sen. Russ Feingold's proposal to cut off funds for the war next March. Among Republicans, he is virtually a caucus of one. Unless you count Nebraska's Chuck Hagel, who counts less and less because he is decreasingly active among Senate Republicans.

Smith's loneliness may be assuaged in September, when Petraeus reports on the effects of the troop surge. "There is," Smith says, "a high expectation that we" -- Republican senators -- "will be able to vote for something different in September." And: "I can," he says, "think of a dozen Republican senators who will be with me in September."

WHAT UP WITH IRAN?

WAND welcomes Dr. McNally as the new executive director of WAND’s important ally, Physicians for Social Responsibility. He had a letter in USA Today recently; and here is a bit from their recent report.

Now, in early 2007, it seems as if the U.S. Administration, certain that Iran must be prevented from acquiring a nuclear weapon by any means,
is moving toward a military solution. This is consistent with counterproliferation policy and doctrine, which under the Bush Administration has come to emphasize military action over diplomatic negotiation as the preferred means to prevent and roll back nuclear proliferation, with unimpressive results.
A national security decision such as launching a war with Iran has profound human consequences. Thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of people would immediately be killed or injured. Others would lose access to medical care, safe drinking water, and adequate supplies of food. Expensive infrastructure would be destroyed. Untreated chronic conditions such as diabetes could quickly become deadly diseases. Compromised water treatment and sanitation could cause infant mortality rates to soar. Can this be described as action proportional to the threat we face? This report considers this question...

Preventive war? Preventive action.
The time to stop the next war is now.
While Congress wrangles over funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, many believe that the administration is considering undertaking yet another military action on foreign shores -- this time, in Iran. This, despite the fact that the situation in Iraq has clearly shown that using force before we have exhausted every other alternative is foolish, deadly, and counterproductive.

NEWS FROM WiLL

A roundup of what's up with WiLL

In past weeks WiLL and WAND have been hard at work responding to the Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee's proposal to fund the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW). We believe that non-proliferation is the only reasonable answer.

WiLL Gears up for 2007 National Conference: "Women at the Table of Power"

We're pulling out the stops to get everything ready for our 2007 conference! (September 30-October 2 at the Washington Court Hotel in the nation's capitol.) Three days of trainings, briefings and Hill visits will feature key members of Congress, national women leaders and policy experts, highlighting such topics as media messaging, understanding the federal budget, and running for higher office.

Confirmed speakers include:

Ellen Bravo, founder, National 9 to 5; author, Taking on the Big Boys
Marian Wright Edelman, founder and president, Children’s Defense Fund
Jane Fonda, co-founder, GreenStone Media
Carol Jenkins, president, Women’s Media Center
Celinda Lake, political strategist and international pollster; president,
Lake Research Partners
Barbara Lee, founder, Barbara Lee Family Foundation
Hon. Jean Shaheen, former governor of New Hampshire; director,
Harvard Institute of Politics
Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor, The Nation

Please save the date to join us for this empowering and informative conference that's consistently ranked by legislators as a not-to-be-missed networking opportunity. Bring your concerns to Washington, meet with your Congresssional delegation, and join other talented women policymakers on the path to the table of power!

Best Sense Of Humor Award | PinkDome
Goes to....State Representative Jessica Farrar (TX). I received three "Women taking a seat at the Table of Power" silk scarves in the mail today with a personal note from the representative encouraging me to update my wardrobe. Class act.

Jessica is on the WAND Board of Directors and a member of WiLL.

Faith in Action

Faith in Action June 2007: Healing Our Democracy with Words, not War
Recently, I’ve been troubled by the 110th Congress. We elected them, and with one voice on Election Day we said, "Let's get out of Iraq." How is it, then, that they passed a bill that funds the war without measures to ensure accountability...?

NOTABLE NATIONAL EVENTS

The White House Project and Americans for Informed Democracy are joining together to host a conference to answer these questions and to harness the power of women’s voices throughout national security discussions.
The Gold Room, The Rayburn Building
Independence Avenue and First Street, Washington, D.C.
www.aidemocracy.org/was.cfm

3rd International Women's Peace Conference (July 10-15)
Dallas, TX
The Conference will focus on the theme, Empowering Peacemakers, and will include plenary sessions, lectures, seminars, facilitated discussion groups, interactive workshops, and special programs for Peace Teens (ages 12-17) and Emerging