Word: horner
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...says be told his tour colleagues on the evening of the 27th (at a group meeting that Horner says she does not recall) that "I would not sign it--I made a speech about it. "The reason, according to Jordan; "I did not go on the tour to send telegrams. I went on it to learn something." Lobbying for the AWACS sale "was not appropriate," Jordan stresses, that's why I voted against it" at the group meeting...
...PROPRIETY of Horner's individual decision, then, hinges not on any conflict of interest but on the merits of the AWACS issue itself. And given that no other pressures worked upon Horner, she had a special responsibility to make a cogent case for the sale. That responsibility, to understand the complexities and likely impact of the sale, seems particularly great given the less-than-wholesome aura of its origin a corporate conclave in Riyadh apparently teeming with Saudi influence-peddlers...
...Horner's justifications for the AWACS sale are dubious, indeed. She argues that U.S. prestige in the Mid-East rested on the Senate's keeping the President's promise to the Saudi ruling family to sell the reconnaissance aircraft. Taken to its logical extreme, that philosophy would strip the Senate of all responsibility for foreign agreements, leaving it at the mercy of Presidents who strike deals first and consult Congress later. It would also effectively nullify any post-Vietnam limits on executive foreign policy making privileges...
That her meeting with Saudi and other leaders taught her the need for the U.S. to reestablish its trustworthiness seems a dubious rationale, too, but Horner clings to it. If the last several months have shown anything about the Saudis, it is their intractability on the Israel issue. The Saudi ruling family recently reaffirmed that its principal enemy remains Israel--not the Soviet Union, as the Reagan Administration with its dream of a "strategic consensus" would wish, and as the State Department thought it had settled. The U.S. acted as an arms salesman, the Saudis as a cash-carrying customer...
...Horner also argues the sale was justifiable because the planes are "a defensive piece of equipment; you can't do anything offensive with an AWACS." Tell that to Carter Administration officials who denied the Saudis' 1978 request for the aircraft precisely because of their offensive capability--because their reconnaisance ability could facilitate Saudi air raids on Israel. Horner, though contends otherwise. "You can't say knowing about someone else is offensive'--to me, 'offensive' is dropping bombs on somebody." Horner says, "Every single person who signed that telex is an extremely strong supporter of Israel." With supporters like that...