Reading today’s Quartet statement on resumption of direct talks, it’s worth noting that, while Prime Minister Netanyahu was successful in avoiding a complete reiteration of the Quartet’s March statement emphasizing Israel’s settlement obligations, as President Mahmoud Abbas wanted, Abbas also got a reference to 1967 (though notably not a reference to those borders as a basis for negotiaton) that he wanted, and which Netanyahu had resisted:

The Quartet reaffirms its full commitment to its previous statements, including in Trieste on 26 June 2009, in New York on 24 September 2009, and its statement in Moscow on 19 March 2010 which provides that direct, bilateral negotiations that resolve all final status issues should “lead to a settlement, negotiated between the parties, that ends the occupation which began in 1967 and results in the emergence of an independent, democratic, and viable Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with Israel and its other neighbors.

Speaking to the press after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s announcement of the resumption of talks, Special Envoy George Mitchell said that the administration believed a peace agreement “can be done within a year, and that is our objective.”

Mitchell also restated the importance of achieving a peace agreement not only to the Israelis and Palestinians, but also as a key U.S. interest “in terms of dealing with other conflicts in the region.” This was a clear reference to the “linkage” concept that has informed much of the administration’s approach, but which is still resisted by many conservatives who contend that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is unrelated to other U.S. challenges in the Middle East.

As Pakistan continues to be ravaged by “the worst floods in its history,” it is desperately in need of continued international assistance. Most of the international response to Pakistan has been focused on aid, with the U.S. leading the way by donating $150 million to the disaster relief effort. While increasing aid to Pakistan is important, there is another way the United States can help the people of Pakistan that wouldn’t require giving a single taxpayer dime to the country.

The United States currently imposes an average 17 percent tariff on textile products like cotton pants and shirts from Pakistan. This tariff imposes a significant strain on an industry that is crucial to Pakistan’s economy. 3.5 million Pakistanis are employed in the textile sector, and comprise 40 percent of urban factory jobs. Textiles and apparels account for 60 percent “of Pakistan’s total exports.” $3 billion worth of these textile goods went to the United States last year.

The Wall Street Journal talked to one textile company owner, Rana Hassan Sajjad, who viewed lowering the tariff as more important than receiving more foreign aid:

Umer Apparel Ltd., a Faisalabad company that exports $15 million in goods to the U.S. annually, including brands like American Eagle and Aeropostale, has laid off almost a fifth of its work force of 1,500 and is running at only three-quarters of capacity, says its chief executive, Rana Hassan Sajjad. [...]

“It would help if they would lower the tariff,” said textile company owner Mr. Sajjad. “Being an owner of a company, do I benefit from aid? No. I don’t know what the government is doing with the money. They are not spending it on us.”

The paper estimates that eliminating these tariffs on Pakistani textiles would “boost the nation’s textile exports by $5 billion annually,” meaning that simply eliminating this punitive tariff would provide 33 times more money to Pakistanis than all flood aid given by the United States so far — and it would all be done without spending a single taxpayer dollar.

Last year, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would allow for “Reconstruction Opportunity Zones” (ROZs) that would create special trade zones for Pakistanis manufacture and develop textile goods that were not subject to tariffs. Unfortunately, as the New York Times editorialized, it “was so hemmed in with protectionist limits that it was almost worthless.” And the Senate has failed to pass even this watered-down bill “because Republicans have objected to sound language in the House bill endorsing basic international labor standards for Pakistani export workers.” That is an extreme position to hold, given that Pakistan’s weak labor enforcement has made many labor rights advocates skeptical of the use of ROZs in the country because the labor standards would not be tough enough.

A better idea would be for Congress to lower or simply eliminate, country-wide, the tariffs the United States has imposed on Pakistani textile products. Doing so would add billions of dollars to the Pakistani economy and help Pakistanis help themselves with their own hard work and ingenuity.

Since the passage of Arizona’s tough new immigration law, its defenders have justified SB-1070 by claiming that Phoenix, AZ is the “kidnapping capital of the world.” Though that claim was immediately dismissed by experts, the 358 kidnappings the Phoenix Police Department reported in 2008 is quite high when compared to other surrounding areas. Sgt. Phil Roberts, who worked kidnapping investigations for Phoenix, is now alleging that the Phoenix Police Department is “inflating its kidnapping numbers, possibly to get federal stimulus money.”

According to Roberts, only 20 to 30 “traditional” kidnappings occurred in Phoenix in 2008 — a range which more closely resembles that of surrounding cities. “Traditional” kidnappings are defined by procedures such as monitoring phone calls, money drops and apprehension or attempted apprehension of kidnappers. Roberts believes the inflation occurred as a result of procedural errors and duplicate reports. “Despite this understanding of how kidnapping statistics were being falsely inflated,” he wrote in an August 13th memo, “others would later push and tout these numbers to the news media and eventually to the United States Congress.” KPHO reports that the Phoenix Police Department’s own records “describe 59 of those 358 reports as ‘incident information only,’ and states that those reports ‘should be excluded from the count of kidnapping incidents.’”

Mark Spencer, President of the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association (PLEA) is standing by Roberts’ claims. “Frequently when you work with the federal government as long as the problem persists the money keeps flowing,” explained Spencer. “The bigger the problem, the more money you get.”

Watch local coverage:

Nonetheless, the Phoenix Police Department denies Roberts’ and PLEA’s allegations. “If it’s a kidnapping, it’s a kidnapping and that’s what we count as a kidnapping,” stated Sgt. Tommy Thompson. Ironically, Roberts actually cited the same kidnapping figures he now disputes in an interview with ABC News for a report broadcast in February 2009. And despite PLEA’s claims that the kidnapping numbers are fudged and that the kidnapping problem is not as bad as it has been made out to be, they are still strong supporters of Arizona’s controversial immigration law.

Stephen Rademaker’s defensive op-ed in the Washington Post is a fairly transparent effort to shift blame for the delays in the ratification of New START to the Democrats. According to Rademaker, the failure of New START could never actually be blamed on pouting GOP Senators who refused to vote for the treaty and therefore endangered our nuclear security merely because they don’t like Obama. No, obviously if New START fails it’s not because the GOP didn’t vote for it, it’s because John Kerry would have “rushed” or “pressured” GOP Senators.

This sort of up is down logic seems to be all opponents have left in the START debate. What is so amusing about Rademaker’s op-ed is that he essentially says that all the GOP policy concerns can be met in such a way that they can vote yes. There is of course a reason why their concerns can be met — they are mostly baseless and stupid concerns that exist due to a seemingly general failing of high school level reading comprehension. For instance, Rademaker sights a concern that the treaty doesn’t mention certain types of missiles –- well this is because they don’t exist, but if they did exist they actually would be covered. Yet no matter how ridiculous, all these concerns have been addressed endlessly in the more than 20 hearings that were held. As a result, the debate over START has become tediously repetitive and is now largely about something that has nothing to do with the actual treaty — nuclear pork.

The real heart of Rademaker’s piece, however, is more process whining. He claims “and if treaty critics aren’t going to be accommodated on questions of process, they almost certainly aren’t going to be accommodated on substance.” But Rademaker’s claims are completely off base.

First, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee DELAYED the vote until September so GOP Senators didn’t feel rushed. If a vote were held before the August recess, perhaps the GOP could hang their hat on something, but the vote was delayed so that all the i’s can be dotted and all the t’s crossed.

Second, claims that it is justified for GOP Senators to hold up the vote because they didn’t get the negotiating record are bunk. In US history, treaty negotiating records were almost always kept private and almost every US President has insisted this be the case. Yet Rademaker’s claims that there is precedent for the release and he points to a past arms-control treaty where the record was released. But the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the time in a bipartisan letter specifically noted that the release of the record should be seen as an exception not a precedent. But even with all that being said, the Administration recently shared the negotiating record dealing with missile defense with the GOP Senators.

Third, the complaints about START critics not being heard, while not being true, is largely a reflection of there being so few START opponents. Kerry in fact held hearings featuring substantially more Republicans than Democrats. But the committee, to appease far-right Senators Jim Demint and James Inhofe, searched and found anti-nuclear arms control ideologues like the Bush administration’s Robert Joseph and Eric Edelman and Keith Payne were heard from.

Finally, Rademaker claims the Senate should look to the Chemical Weapons Convention as a model and follow its slow two year approach. This is comparing apples to oranges. That was an entirely new treaty, with brand new implications, and that did not have any urgency about it. New START is merely continuing and updating the status quo – we know what this treaty does. So spending two years on it is just a huge waste of time. But moreover, the go slow approach is one that is extremely dangerous as we are losing intelligence on Russian nukes and missiles as inspections have ceased. Senator Jon Kyl, claimed to have not known this and as David Broder noted, “what a price to pay for ignorance.” And as John Farrell, an editor at US News and World Report noted, “Are Republican senators providing aid and comfort to the Russian military?… the answer to this question is: Yes.”

Rademaker’s oped is simply a transparent attempt to deflect criticism from the GOP for doing something incredibly reckless – obstructing the START treaty. It also demonstrates just how weak the opposition’s case to START really is. Rademaker didn’t write a piece nitpicking New START – that has already been done and rebuffed – he didn’t write a piece opposing the treaty, and he didn’t even write a piece that really talked about the treaty. No, he wrote a whole op-ed making false and dubious claims whining about process. To invoke the spirit of Alan Iverson, “process!” “what are we talking about? We’re talking about process man.” This is all opponents have left is to grasp at is process. And even there they have nothing to grasp at.