Four different Senate Republicans have four different ideas on how to alter U.S. aid to Egypt, in a struggle that is also becoming about the future of Republican leadership on foreign policy.

The Senate is working now on the next Continuing Resolution (CR) to fund the government from April until October -- and aid to Egypt is the main foreign policy issue likely to be attached to the funding measure. Sens. Marco Rubio (R-FL), John McCain (R-AZ), James Inhofe (R-OK), and Rand Paul (R-KY) all have introduced amendments to the CR dealing with Egypt aid, but they all have competing ideas on how to condition it in light of Egypt's changing security challenges and the fragile path to democracy under the government led by Muslim Brotherhood President Mohamed Morsy.

Senate Appropriations State and Foreign Ops Subcommittee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) has also introduced an amendment on Egypt aid, making it five total amendments that are now the subject of intense behind-the-scenes negotiations.

"We have five different amendments that have been offered on Egypt," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said on the Senate floor Thursday, lamenting that the Senate was confronted with tackling the Egypt aid issue in a rush on a temporary funding bill. Reid doesn't really want to do Egypt policy on this bill at all.

"This is a CR for six months. We have a functioning Foreign Relations Committee. That's where this should take place," he said. "We all have concerns about Egypt. Our funding in Egypt, maintaining stability in the region, supporting Israel. We have, as I've indicated, five senators who have filed five separate, distinct amendments. And literally staffs with senators have worked all day coming up with an amendment that Democrats and Republicans could agree on. It hasn't been done. Doesn't mean it can't be done, but it hasn't been done. I would again remind senators that this is a Continuing Resolution. The long-term solution to the situation in the Middle East is not a short-term CR. Whatever we do on this bill would expire in six months anyway."

But despite Reid's reluctance, senators are likely to coalesce around one or two Egypt aid amendments that could get a vote on the Senate floor next week. The first senator to introduce an Egypt amendment was Rubio, who spoke about it in an interview this week with The Cable.

"This is not about cancelling foreign aid to Egypt per se. This is about restructuring it in a way that lines up with the interests of the taxpayers of the United States of America," Rubio said. "Their real security needs are largely internal and we want to recalibrate our military aid to Egypt to meet their actual needs. Egypt doesn't need tanks, it doesn't need jet fighters, it's not going to be invaded by neighbors in the near future."

For Rubio, the Egypt amendment is his opening salvo in what promises to be a year of increasing involvement in an array of foreign policy issues. He promised he would have similar amendments in the future on aid to other countries as well.

"Foreign aid is important because it increases our influence and in particular our ability to influence things around the world to advance our interests. But foreign aid is not charity.... That means that every single dime we give in foreign aid should be conditioned," he said.

Rubio is also concerned about the Morsy government's commitment to the Camp David accords, their unwillingness or inability to maintain security in the Sinai Peninsula, and their treatment of opposition parties and non-governmental organizations.

"We've heard some of the comments of the president of Egypt and some of the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood. It's downright offensive, and that's their ideology and we've seen some of that come through in their public policy," he said.

Rubio's original amendment would have blocked disbursements of economic support funds (ESF) and new foreign military financing for Egypt until the administration could certify that the Morsy government was enacting economic and political reforms, not restricting religious and human rights, not undermining free and fair elections, improving its treatment of foreign NGOs, fully implementing the peace treaty with Israel, taking all available actions to end smuggling into Gaza and combat terrorism in the Sinai.

The Rubio amendment required the administration to certify that the government of Egypt had apportioned specific amounts of aid to counterterrorism and the Sinai but gave the administration the authority to waive the new aid restrictions every six months.

The McCain amendment takes a different, less confrontational approach. It only would impact foreign military financing, not economic support funds, and clearly states that any change in Egypt military aid should only affect new contracts, not existing contracts for items already in the manufacturing pipeline.

The McCain amendment requires the administration to report back to Congress about how the Egyptian military is spending the money and how it might be spent better in the security interests of both Egypt and the United States. But there's no cut off of aid and no waiver authority. Last year, Egyptians got angry when Congress imposed new restrictions on military aid to Cairo, only to see Secretary of State Hillary Clinton waive them anyway.

After McCain filed his amendment, Rubio made some changes to his amendment to bring it closer in line with McCain's. Rubio's new amendment now conditions ESF funds in a way that's closer to what's already in present law. Backroom negotiations between the two offices are ongoing.

The Leahy amendment is seen as the Democrats' attempt to take what they liked of the Republican amendments and try to reach a compromise text. It most closely follows McCain's approach by requiring the administration to report on the military aid spending but also requires the administration to report on political reform, human rights, and NGO treatment in Egypt.

Paul's amendment would cut off all assistance to Egypt until Morsy says in English and Arabic that he intends to uphold the Camp David accords. Inhofe's amendment would conditionally suspend the sale of F-16 fighter jets to Egypt. Inhofe has also co-sponsored the Paul amendment.

"For months, I have been calling for President Obama and his administration to hold president Morsy accountable for failing to promote promised democracy in Egypt and for the instability in the region," Inhofe said on the Senate floor this week. "Under President Morsy and his radical Muslim Brotherhood, the United States' historically good relationship with Egypt is at a standstill."

The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee said on Tuesday that he agreed with the White House that cuts to the defense budget must be part of upcoming budget negotiations.

"Defense has to be on the table," Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) said in a Tuesday interview. "It means there should be some reductions in some parts of the defense budget. We haven't decided what those are yet, because it depends on a lot of things and it doesn't say how much those cuts should be, because that shouldn't be decided in the abstract."

Levin's comments track with those of Senior White House Advisor David Plouffe, who said on Sunday on ABC's "This Week" that, "We're going to have to look at defense spending."

Levin's Republican counterpart John McCain (R-AZ), said in a Tuesday interview that he strongly disagreed with Levin and that the efficiencies and savings put forth by Defense Secretary Robert Gates earlier this year were sufficient.

"We are in two wars, we are in a crisis in Libya, and before I could say I was for cutting defense, I'd have to be shown a need for them, not just a blanket statement that we should cut defense," said McCain. "That's just crazy and stupid."

The Paul Ryan (R-WI) budget actually calls for steady increases in defense spending: It proposes a $583 billion base defense budget in fiscal 2012, growing to $642 billion in 2016. Meanwhile the Ryan budget would slash State Department and Foreign Ops funding, which was cut by $8 billion in the budget deal struck last week to avoid a government shutdown.

The Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on State and Foreign Ops Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) said in a Tuesday interview that those cuts were ill advised.

"Most people think that about 20 to 40 percent of the national budget is in foreign aid, it's less than 1 percent," he said. "And A lot of time, what we do there if we do it wise keeps us out of wars."

The crisis in Egypt is occupying the time and attention of top administration officials to such an extent that Obama foreign policy critic Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) is now representing the United States on a non-proliferation panel at the Munich Security Conference in Munich this weekend.

Kyl replaces National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, who was originally scheduled to speak on Saturday afternoon to represent the U.S. perspective, on a panel entitled, "Nonproliferation, Arms Control and Disarmament: What's next?" Donilon will remain in Washington as the White House continues to work around the clock on the Egypt crisis. The conference organizers chose Kyl, who is in Munich already, to replace Donilon.

The choice is perplexing because Kyl, who led the vociferous GOP opposition to the New START nuclear reductions pact with Russia, has been the most active and effective critic of the Obama administration's non-proliferation agenda. He has also worked to raise concerns about the administration's missile defense plans, its civilian nuclear agreements, and he is promising to stand in the way of the administration's next arms control agenda item, the Congressional Test Ban Treaty.

The conference organizers bypassed top Obama administration arms control officials who will also be in Munich, including Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Ellen Tauscher, Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemeoller, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. They, along with Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-MA), will all be sitting in the audience as Kyl tells the assembled world leaders in Munich how he sees the future of arms control in the United States.

Many in the State Department are not happy with this turn of events, and wonder why the German organizers bypassed the administration officials. "We're floored," one State Department official said. "It's odd on many levels."

Requests for comment from the conference organizers and the National Security Council were not immediately returned.

So what will Kyl's message be in Munich? Here's an excerpt from his remarks on the topic last May at the Nixon Center:

Bottom line: there is no evidence our moral leadership in arms control and disarmament will convince countries to set aside their calculations of the impact of nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism on their national security, and help us address these threats.  

The Administration's security agenda is based on the notion of the U.S. making substantive changes to our national security posture in the hopes of persuading others to act, frequently contrary to their economic or security interests.  

But this good faith assumption that others will reciprocate is not supported by any evidence -- it is certainly not informed by any past experience....

As you can tell by now, I am not much impressed with the notion that we can achieve important U.S. security goals by leadership which stresses concession by the U.S.  Rather than change and hope, I adhere to the philosophy of President Reagan epitomized in the words -peace through strength.

A strong America is the best guarantor of a peaceful world that has ever been known.  And there is nothing immoral about strength that keeps the peace. 

 UPDATE: Tauscher was added to the billet and spoke on the panel alongside Kyl. Our sources report that the panel went were and there were no real fireworks between Tauscher and Kyl.

South Carolina GOP Sen. Jim DeMint repeated today his claim that "millions of Americans" are "outraged" that Congress would dare work on major legislation, namely New START, this close to Christmas. He previously called it "sacrilegious."

"Don't tell me about Christmas. I understand Christmas," Vice President Joe Biden responded in a Dec. 16 interview. "There's 10 days between now and Christmas. I hope I don't get in the way of your Christmas shopping, but this is the nation's business. National security's at stake. Act."

Less than a week later, DeMint is back at it again. "It's clear with this treaty that [the administration is] trying to cram something down the throats of the American people under the cover of Christmas," DeMint said in a press conference on Tuesday. "They're not looking at politics right now, they're celebrating their holy Christmas holiday, and the fact that we're doing this under the cover of Christmas...is something to be outraged about."

Here at the Capitol building, there's some confusion about exactly how long before Dec. 25 Congress should stop working on major bills (so as not to offend the "millions" of outraged Christians DeMint is standing up for), and why only Christian holidays should be protected from major legislation.

In an exclusive interview with The Cable, DeMint explained what commentators have coined his drive to combat the "war on Christmas vacation." Here's the transcript:

JR: Senator DeMint, exactly how long before Christmas Day is the period during which the American people don't want Congress to work on major legislation, in your view?

JD: It has nothing to do with us not being willing to work. For the [continuing resolution] I'm willing to work right through New Year's. It's just, trying to do [New START] under the cover of people being distracted. We've worked with a lot of people on the outside and around the country who feel this is a bad way to do a bad treaty. People are distracted.

JR: How long are people distracted before Christmas? Is it the entire month of December, or what?

JD: The whole lame duck [session] to me is an illegitimate process and the intent to do whatever is the nation's business that has to be done, such as fund the government. But to pass major legislation during the lame duck is not the intent. People who are here, the voters have changed a lot of them. Doing it during Christmas is just one piece of it. The big issue is using the lame duck of unaccountable senators to ram through a major arms control treaty. That's the issue.

JR: Why invoke only the Christian holidays? Congress works on major legislation during Jewish holidays, Muslim holidays. You never said anything about that, right? Aren't Jews distracted during Hannukah?

JD: Sure, we normally take off for Jewish holidays. It's more of the distraction of the end of the year. I'm not trying to make it just an issue of Christmas. But it is obvious that Americans do not expect their unelected officials to come in and make major decisions when we're not supposed to be here and they're not paying attention.

If there's one thing that the liberals and libertarians can agree on, it's the need for large cuts in defense spending in order to reduce the U.S. budget defecit.

55 lawmakers sent a letter Wednesday to the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, widely known as the Debt Commission, urging them to include in their final report "substantial reductions in projected levels of future spending by the Department of Defense." The letter was signed by leading liberal representatives such as Barney Frank (D-MA) and Lynn Woolsey (D-CA), but also many Democrats involved in national security matters such as Senate Appropriations Foreign Operations subcommittee chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and House Oversight and Government Reform National Security subcommittee chairman John Tierney (D-MA).

The lone Republican to sign the letter was libertarian Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX). But the libertarian Cato Institute has also campaigned aggressively in support of the movement.

"We hope that the report you release this coming December will subject military spending to the same rigorous scrutiny that non-military spending will receive, and that in so doing a consensus will be reached that significant cuts are necessary and can be made in a way that will not endanger national security," the lawmakers wrote.

On a conference call, Frank and Cato experts argued that their longstanding call for a revision of the U.S. military role in the world is more necessary than ever due to the United States' fiscal woes, particularly as political leaders search for ways to limit cuts to entitlements.

"I've been a critic for some time of America's excessive military engagement with the rest of the world," said Frank. "We have a changed situation... it is clear that we have to do something to reduce our deficit.

Cato's Benjamin Friedman argued on the call that the recent aggressive conservative efforts to defend ever-increasing defense budgets was a recognition of the libertarian wing of the Republican Party's increasing momentum in support of trimming military spending.

"Conservatives are starting to figure out that trying to run the world is not conservative," Friedman said.

Friedman participated in a bipartisan report, published in June, which spelled out exactly how $1 trillion of savings could be found in the Pentagon budget over the next 10 years by scaling back military arsenals, large weapons systems, and permanent overseas troop deployments.

Frank and Friedman both acknowledged that the issue of defense spending is highly polarized and that, politically, implementing defense budget cuts would be extremely difficult, especially in Congress. But they are nevertheless laying down a marker by going on record that there are at least 55 votes in Congress in support of such moves.

"What we are saying is that there will be a number of us that will be very unhappy if defense cuts are not part of the tradeoffs," Frank said.

Russian immigrants to Israel have emerged as a central obstacle to achieving a Middle East peace deal, according to former President Bill Clinton. He voiced fears that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), which increasingly consists of soldiers hailing from this community, might not be fully willing to oppose Israeli settlers as a result.

In a roundtable with reporters during his Clinton Global Initiative conference in New York, Clinton made his most extensive remarks on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process that his wife, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, is spearheading.

"An increasing number of the young people in the IDF are the children of Russians and settlers, the hardest-core people against a division of the land. This presents a staggering problem," Clinton said. "It's a different Israel. 16 percent of Israelis speak Russian."

According to Clinton, the Russian immigrant population in Israel is the group least interested in striking a peace deal with the Palestinians.  "They've just got there, it's their country, they've made a commitment to the future there," Clinton said. "They can't imagine any historical or other claims that would justify dividing it."

To illustrate his view on the Russian immigrant community, Clinton related a conversation he had with Natan Sharansky, the former Soviet dissident turned Israeli parliamentarian, who he said was the only Israeli minister to reject the comprehensive peace agreement Clinton proposed at the Camp David Summit in 2000. The proposal was eventually rejected by Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.

"I said, ‘Natan, what is the deal [about not supporting the peace deal],'" Clinton recalled. "He said, ‘I can't vote for this, I'm Russian... I come from one of the biggest countries in the world to one of the smallest. You want me to cut it in half. No, thank you.'"

Clinton responded, "Don't give me this, you came here from a jail cell. It's a lot bigger than your jail cell."

Clinton used the anecdote to explain the Russian immigrant population's attitude toward a land-for- peace deal with the Palestinians. "[Sharansky] was nice about it, a lot of them aren't," Clinton said.

Clinton then ranked the Israeli sub-national groups in order of his perception of their willingness to accept a peace deal.  The "most pro-peace Jewish Israelis" are the Sabras, who he described as native-born Israelis whose roots there date back millennia, because they have the benefit of historical context. "They can imagine sharing a future."

Ashkenazi Jews who emigrated from Europe and have been in Israel for one or more generations are the next most supportive of a peace deal, Clinton said.

The "swing voters" are what Clinton called the "Moroccans": North African Jews who immigrated to Israel in the 1970s. He described them as right-of-center citizens who nevertheless want normal, stable lives.

"When they think peace is possible, they vote peace. When they think it's not, they vote for the toughest guys on the block," Clinton said.

Regarding the settlers, Clinton said that their numbers had grown so much since 2000 that their longstanding opposition to giving up their homes in exchange for peace might be more entrenched and therefore a bigger challenge than before.

"In 2000, you could get 97 percent of the settlers on 3 percent of the land. Today, you have to give almost 6 percent of the land to get 80 percent of the settlers," said Clinton. "There were 7,000 settlers in Gaza and it took 55,000 Israeli forces people to move. Somewhere between 50,000 and 60,000 settlers will have to be moved out of the West Bank."

Clinton spoke extensively about the positives and negatives he sees in the ongoing direct peace talks launched by the Obama administration.

"I'd say their chances are at least 50-50," Clinton said optimistically.

The Palestinians' internal divisions, specifically the lack of Palestinian control over the Gaza Strip, present another problem, but one that a peace deal could help solve, he suggested.

"That makes it more difficult for Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu to make a deal and to wonder what a deal means," he said. But if there's a deal on the table, that would create enough pressure for an election in Gaza that President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party would win, Clinton argued.

"I believe if there were an election in Gaza today, Fatah would win because of the greater prosperity and the greater security produced under Abbas and Fayyad," Clinton said, adding that Fatah only lost in Gaza elections because of intra-party faction fighting that saw many candidates run against others in their own party.

There are some factors that point to improved conditions for making a peace deal as compared to 2000, said Clinton. He pointed to the fact that two-thirds of Israelis trust Netanyahu to make a peace deal, more than when Ehud Barak was negotiating, according to Clinton. Also, he said that he has faith that the current Palestinian Authority leadership is serious about reaching a settlement.

"They won't do what Arafat did, they won't get up to the deal and lose their nerve. They know what the future looks like."

In the long term, Israelis will face increased pressures, Clinton said. Because of the high Palestinian birth rate, Israel will become a Palestinian-majority state sometime in the next 30 years, if it does not give up the West Bank.

"Then they will have to decide either to be a Jewish state or a democracy, but they cannot be both. They don't want to face that. They don't want to face not only the international legitimacy question but also the internal identity crisis."

Moreover, Clinton said, Hamas militants will soon have military technology that will allow their relatively low-damage attacks on Israeli population centers to have greater accuracy and lethality.

"It's just a matter of time before the rockets have a GPS system on ‘em and a few rockets will kill a whole lot of people. Netanyahu understands that," said Clinton.

He also said that Arab leaders were on board with Middle East peace now more than ever, partly because they now have Iran as a boogeyman to deflect attention from their unpopular policies.

"They think they've got a real enemy in Iran now, so they don't need a faux enemy in Israel to keep people in the street directed at somebody besides them."

Before pontificating on the peace process, Clinton seemed to realize he was stepping into some sensitive territory, but decided to proceed nonetheless.

"I wouldn't say too much about this if Hillary weren't Secretary of State and in charge of these negotiations, so I'm darned sure not going to say too much now," he said, before going in depth on the issue for over 10 minutes.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is set to approve Sen. Richard Lugar's resolution of ratification for the New START nuclear reductions treaty with Russia this morning, but not before Sen. James Risch tried to stop the vote from happening due to what he called an alarming intelligence issue was brought to senators this week.

Risch tried to stop the hearing at the outset, saying that he had been approached by the "intelligence community" with shocking information that if true would fundamentally impact the treaty and should prevent the committee from proceeding in any way. He did not specify what the information was but implored chairman John Kerry (D-MA), to postpone the vote.

Kerry acknowledged that the intelligence community had come to committee with a last minute issue and he said he made efforts to make sure all committee members' offices were aware of the secret issue. But he declined to postpone the vote and said the issue would be vetted thoroughly before the full Senate votes.

"It is inappropriate for us to have any discussion in open session in any substance of the information," Kerry said. But he made clear he viewed the issue seriously and  even spoke personally with Vice President Joseph Biden about the issue.

"The conclusion of the intelligence community is that it in no way alters their judgment, already submitted to this committee, about the substance of the treaty... We would not have proceeded today if this information had any effect on this vote or the substance of this treaty," Kerry said. "Before we go to the floor, this issue will further be vetted by the intelligence community and everybody else."

Several Hill sources declined to comment due to the fact that the information was classified.

Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), who is now supporting the treaty, said he attended a briefing yesterday about the issue and said it would not affect his support.

Overall, Kerry endorsed the resolution of ratification put forth by Lugar, which the committee voted to replace a previously circulated version by Kerry.

"I have been particularly pleased to work with Senator Lugar to develop a resolution that we can all support," Kerry said in his opening statement for today's committee business meeting in the Dirksen Office Building, where the vote on the treaty will take place in about an hour. "This is a draft that reflects all of our views and I look forward to the committee adopting it."

He also implored senators to put aside politics and ratify the treaty soon as a matter of national security.

"The stakes are significant," Kerry said. "By ratifying this treaty, we will limit Russia's nuclear arsenal. We will regain the ability to inspect their nuclear forces. And we will redouble international support for our nonproliferation efforts.""

Kerry touted the dozens of hearings held on the issue, the testimony of current and former officials in both parties, and the hundreds of answers to questions submitted by Congress. He said the administration had provided a summary of the negotiating record, although not the full record, as some GOP senators demanded.

Kerry has been quarterbacking the ratification process since April, but recently Lugar has become the center of gravity in the START ratification process because his version of the resolution for ratification is the one that the administration, Kerry's staff, and several GOP senate offices have been working on. He raised it at the meeting as a "substitute amendment" to an earlier version floated by Kerry.

Lugar said his amendment brought in the concerns of senators and should alleviate any concerns about the treaty have a constraining impact on the plans to deploy ballistic missile defense program, a key concern of lots of GOP senators, including Senate Armed Services Committee ranking Republican John McCain (R-AZ).

"My substitute amendment covers at length concerns raised about missile defense... the treaty places no limitation on the deployment of missile defense... and the 2010 unilateral statement by the Russian federation about missile defense does not impose any legal obligation on the United States."

The full Senate won't debate the treaty until after the November elections, Kerry has said.

The Cable has obtained the final version of Sen. Richard Lugar's (R-IN) resolution to ratify the New START nuclear reductions treaty with Russia.

This latest draft is the version that will likely reach the Senate floor, after facing some amendments from other Senate Foreign Relations Committee members. That floor debate is not expected until after the November elections.

The document, which will be voted on Thursday morning by the committee, represents the culmination of over a week of negotiations between Senate Foreign Relations committee staff, various GOP Senate offices, and the Obama administration. As we reported earlier today, several GOP committee members have pledged to sign on to the Lugar resolution, as opposed to a previous version circulated by committee chairman John Kerry (D-MA).

The latest Lugar version has only minor modifications from a version he circulated last Friday also published on The Cable. In an exclusive interview with The Cable Tuesday, Lugar said he was confident his resolution would be approved by the committee and that he had commitments from numerous GOP senators. He added that the Obama administration was on board as well.

"The administration has been very enthusiastic about our efforts," Lugar said, adding that he spoke with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during the negotiations.

His resolution addresses several, but not all, of the concerns various Republican senate offices had about the START treaty. Regarding one main concern, the modernization of the nuclear complex, Lugar's staff added language that seeks to assure senators that there will be some mechanism if the administration's 10-year modernization plan doesn't go as scheduled.

"Essentially it says there would be consideration of withdrawal [from the treaty] if our modernization effort is not effective," Lugar said.

Administration officials who spoke with reporters on a conference call Tuesday afternoon said they supported the committee's process but needed a resolution that doesn't change the treaty so much that the Russians might object.

"It's very important that we have a clean resolution so we have no ramifications for how the Russians manage their own ratification process," said Undersecretary of State for Arms Control Ellen Tauscher.

Principal Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Policy James Miller said the administration was sensitive to the fact that the Senate might not be able to ratify the treaty immediately.

"We understand that the Senate has to act according to its own timeline," he said.

A lobbying group affiliated with the Tea Party has joined the effort to derail President Obama's new arms-control agreement with Russia, launching a grassroots campaign by spreading misleading information about the pact to the general public.

Former governor Mitt Romney kicked off the conservative nationwide campaign to convince ordinary Americans to actively oppose the new nuclear reductions treaty with Russia. He is even trying to raise money off of it. The Heritage Foundation has a new grassroots lobbying arm that has made opposition to New START one of its core activities. Other right-leaning issues organizations are now following suit.

The latest salvo is being launched by a Tea Party-affiliated group called Liberty Central, a 501c4 lobbying organization that has started a letter-writing campaign entitled, "TAKE ACTION: Tell Your Senators to Oppose START Treaty."

The group dates back to November 2009, and was started by Virginia "Ginni" Thomas, the wife of none other than Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas. She has also worked for former congressman and leading Tea Party figure Dick Armey, and served as the White House liaison to the Heritage Foundation during the George W. Bush administration.

The group explains its mission as returning the United States to its "Founding Principles," which it describes as "limited government, personal responsibility, individual liberty, free enterprise, and national security."

A video introducing the group was moderated by failed 2004 Georgia GOP Senate candidate Herman Cain, who now leads a group called The New Voice, of which he appears to be the only member.

"Today, our society is being remade by the elected leadership in Washington, who wants to take us down the road to a European style social democracy, disconnected from the principles of the Constitution and the ideas and the ideals of our founding fathers," Cain said.

Liberty Central's call to action on New START, written by Director of Policy and General Counsel Sarah Field, lists six major objections to the treaty:

1. Our existing missile defense system, put in place by the Bush Administration, actually does not have the technology to stop a Russian missile attack.
2. The Treaty drastically reduces our offensive nuclear capabilities without advancing our defensive capabilities - specifically through the development of a meaningful missile defense program.
3. According to the Russians themselves, the section of the treaty that actually allows either the U.S. or Russia to withdraw from the treaty is included specifically so that Russia can withdraw if it believes that it is being "threatened" by developments in U.S. missile defense programs.
4. As part of the negotiating process, President Obama gave up our missile defense presence in the Czech Republic and Poland, but it is not clear that the Russians gave up anything of similar value.  If we concede something, they must as well.
5. In 2009, General James Cartwright testified that, at a bare minimum, the United States needs at least 860 weapons launchers.  However, this new Treaty limits our capabilities to only deploying 700.  Why did we agree to have 160 less than necessary?
6. In addition to reducing the number of weapons in our arsenal, this Treaty also limits the types of circumstances in which the United States is allowed to launch our weapons!

The criticisms omit several relevant facts and get others wrong. For example, although the existing U.S. missile-defense system has its origins under the Reagan administration, it was never intended to stop a Russian missile attack. In any case, New START was never aimed at advancing defensive capabilities, which fall outside the scope of the treaty.

Moreover, there is no section that allows each country to withdraw; rather such language is in the preamble, which does not include the word "threatened."

Nor did President Obama did not give up the U.S. missile-defense presence in Poland and the Czech Republic as "part of the negotiating process"; that decision was made independently of the START talks and was aimed at strengthening the system's ability to thwart the short- and medium-range missile threat from Iran.

The treaty also does not limit the type of circumstances in which the U.S. is allowed to launch weapons. Here, Field might be referring to the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review, which reduced the scenarios under which the United States would launch a nuclear strike.

None of that prevented Liberty Central from including these assertions in its form letter, which members can send to senators with one click of the mouse.

"The START Treaty fails to ensure the ability of the US to maintain a reliable nuclear deterrent going forward, and severely limits our missile defense systems. I urge you to protect American security by opposing this treaty," the letter states.

"This group is trying to come up with any argument they can and so they came up with several that aren't even relevant to the treaty," said John Isaacs, executive director of the Council for a Livable World. "It's even more troubling when we see these same arguments repeated by some GOP senators."

"They say that missile defense doesn't protect us from Russia? Well, it doesn't protect us from cancer either, so what does that prove?"

Multiple attempts to contact Field or Liberty Central garnered no response.

As President Obama gets ready to roll out his new Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy, some leading Democrats are focusing on the cost of the pending troop escalation. But they are unlikely to apply actual legislative pressure on the White House to find the money.

The debate was heightened by the introduction of a bill by House Appropriations Chairman David Obey, D-WI, and John Larson, D-CT, a member of the House leadership, that would impose a 1 percent surtax on most Americans to pay for the wars.

But as with most bill introductions in Congress, House leadership has no plans to actually move the bill and most insiders recognize it as a way for those Democrats who oppose escalation to stake out a semi-critical posture while also seeming to be fiscally responsible.

"That's a message bill, not one we will pass," one very well placed Democratic source told The Cable.

Congressional Quarterly has also reported that defense appropriations subcommittee Chairman John Murtha, D-PA, acknowledged that "he knew the bill would not be enacted and that advocates of a surtax were simply trying to send a message about the moral obligation to pay for the wars."

Rough estimates put the cost of any escalation at about $1 million per added troop, per year. Obama is expected to announce Tuesday the deployment of 30,000 new soldiers and Marines, which would make the price tag at least $30 billion in 2010, in addition to the ongoing costs of fighting the wars with currently deployed resources. 

The Obama administration pledged upon taking office to move to "honest budgeting" for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and did include war costs as part of its formal fiscal 2010 budget request. But that request, around $130 billion, will be insufficient to pay for war operations this fiscal year and a supplemental spending bill is expected in early Spring.

The White House also placed a $50 billion "placeholder" in its budget projections for fiscal 2011 and beyond, a figure nobody believes is enough to keep the war machine humming, no matter what new strategies are announced. So the Obama administration's promise to pay for the wars was doomed to be broken even before a troop escalation was contemplated.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters Monday that there would not be a "lengthy discourse" on how Obama intends to pay for his new strategy in his speech Tuesday at West Point.

"I think the president will... elude to the cost. I don't know if it gets down to the granularity of the exact dollar amount for each and every thing," Gibbs said, "Some of that's going to depend on logistical decisions that are ultimately made."

More broadly, Obey has not been shy about his skepticism about a continued U.S. commitment to Afghanistan. When giving the money for fiscal 2010, he went out on a limb and warned that he might not be willing to support funding for the wars if progress wasn't shown in one years' time. Those comments were widely criticized.