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For the first time since President Obama took office in 2009, Congress has overridden his veto.
The U.S. Senate voted 97-1 to override President Obama's veto of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, which would allow victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks to sue Saudi Arabia. The lone dissenting vote was Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada), who has "always had the president's back":
In a letter Monday to House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry (R-Tex.) and ranking member Adam Smith (D-Wash.), Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter warned that allowing the bill to become law risked "damaging our close and effective cooperation with other countries" and "could ultimately have a chilling effect on our own counter-terrorism efforts." Thornberry and Smith both circulated letters among members in the last few days, urging them to vote against overriding the veto. CIA Director John O. Brennan also warned of the 9/11 bill's "grave implications for the national security of the United States" in a statement Wednesday.
The House of Representatives voted 348-to-77:
Congress on Wednesday voted overwhelmingly to override a veto by President Obama for the first time, passing into law a bill that would allow the families of those killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to sue Saudi Arabia for any role in the plot.
Democrats in large numbers joined with Republicans to deliver a remarkable rebuke to the president. The 97-to-1 vote in the Senate and the 348-to-77 vote in the House displayed the enduring power of the Sept. 11 families in Washington and the diminishing influence here of the Saudi government.
See also: The Risks of Suing the Saudis for 9/11 by the New York Times Editorial Board and this article in the Saudi Gazette.
Previously: President Obama to Veto Bill Allowing September 11 Victims to Sue Saudi Arabia
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday September 29 2016, @05:36PM
So basically, all Arabs have to do to get their land back is kill and drive off the Israelis. Got it.
Maybe they should get better at doing that.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jmorris on Thursday September 29 2016, @05:55PM
Exactly. We live in a world governed by force. Accept that. The only laws governing sovereign nation states are force and self interest. But the Arabs do not have the power to win another war with the Jews any more than they could win the several attempts made since the Allies refounded Israel. And if they try again they should be prepared to lose a lot more land and possibly have their capitals reduced to radioactive wastelands. The Jews went easy on em before because they couldn't afford to lose our support. If, just saying, a President Trump took the choker chain off em there probably isn't much in the Middle East could stop them. And when it was over there would be peace in the Middle East because the surviving Arabs would be, to borrow a line, satisfied with less.
Sooner or later somebody will figure out that intractable problems can only be solved when one side loses badly enough that they can't afford to care about the problem anymore. Sometimes you just have to give war a chance.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Thursday September 29 2016, @11:34PM
Heinlein was, as usual, correct in his assessment [goodreads.com] that "violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor.”
That said, just because it's true, that doesn't mean that violence is a positive or desirable thing.
As Salvor Hardin [wikipedia.org] pointed out, "violence is the last refuge of the incompetent." With all due respect to the memory of Mr. Asimov, I'll go the same way as Ambrose Bierce [bartleby.com] did with Samuel Johnson [samueljohnson.com] regarding patriotism, and submit that it is the first.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr