I think someone dumped Morpheus' blue pill stash in the Potomac.
Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, who is the [Senate Foreign Affairs Committee]'s senior Democrat, seemed to sum up the mood of many on the committee when he mused that the damage to our relationship with India that blocking the deal would certainly cause outweighed the possible danger that the agreement could lead to a breakdown in anti-proliferation efforts.
Why? Because corporate America might lose its principal cheap labor market? How can enabling India to inevitably contest China for military supremacy in south Asia be a minor point? Gee, lets take the handcuffs off India while they sit between Pakistan on the north and China on the East, all of whom are nuclear powers that have no interest or intent in participating in a non-proliferation treaty. And give our blessing to it, to boot. Perish the thought that we might be willing to sell energy technology to India in exchange for, let's say, not threatening their fellow nuclear power with annihilation, instead of simply giving them anything they want simply because we're afraid they'll close their sandbox off to American companies that want to keep offshoring jobs to India.
Senator Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat, said the pact "rewards a nation for not signing the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty."
She also questioned whether it would foster the kind of great-power alliance that Ms. Rice described. "I do not share the view that closer U.S.-India ties will be a counterweight to China, which seemed to be the unstated yet driving force behind this deal," Ms. Boxer said, calling the idea "old-fashioned, cold war thinking."
Well at least someone on the hill is still driving the clue bus with their eyes open.
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