As Cotton speaks, activists surround him over Iran letter

WASHINGTON -- Eight activists dressed in Colonial-era outfits confronted U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton on Monday over a letter he authored regarding negotiations about Iran's nuclear program.

Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, spoke Monday morning at an event in the Hart Senate Office Building titled "Will Congress Provide for the Common Defense?" It was hosted by conservative policy institutes American Action Forum and Foreign Policy Initiative.

The event was aired live on CSPAN3. About two minutes after he began, members of the group CODEPINK surrounded Cotton at the lectern and held up pink, handwritten signs with slogans like "We the people want peace with Iran" and "President Obama=Chief Negotiator not you!"

U.S. Capitol Police removed the protesters within seconds. After pausing to read the sign held behind his head, Cotton continued speaking over the commotion.

Cotton then finished his roughly 17-minute speech about the need to increase defense funding and stop the negotiations with Iran. He is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and said spending on the military needs to increase significantly.

"I stand before you with a simple message: The world is growing ever more dangerous, and our defense spending is wholly inadequate to confront the danger," he said.

Video of the event is available online at http://www.c-span.org/video/?324967-1/senator-tom-cotton-remarks-us-national-security-priorities.

On March 9, Cotton released a letter to Iranian leaders signed by him and 46 other Republican senators which notes that without congressional approval any deal agreed to by Obama and Iran can be revoked when the president leaves office in 2017.

Some criticized the letter signers for interfering with the negotiations, a role commonly left to the executive branch.

CODEPINK National Coordinator Alli McCracken said by phone afterward that the protesters wanted to hold Cotton accountable for the letter and for attempting to derail the negotiations. The group aims to end U.S. wars and militarism.

"As peace activists we very much see Sen. Cotton as a threat to our national security," she said.

McCracken said the activists also challenged Cotton before and after the speech. They delivered a letter signed by about 5,000 people to his office.

"It was hard to miss us," she said. "It's not the first time we've confronted him."

Cotton's spokesman Caroline Rabbitt responded to the protesters' actions by saying that Iran is the gravest threat the country faces.

"Any claim to the contrary is misguided. Iran is the number one sponsor of terrorism in the world and they've been killing Americans for 35 years, yet these negotiations would allow them to continue progressing toward a nuclear weapon. Further, anyone who calls someone who left their job and family to fight terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan a threat to our national security is clearly using flawed logic," she said.

CODEPINK routinely disrupts Capitol Hill hearings and events. In January, the group attempted a citizen's arrest of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger during a Senate Armed Services Committee meeting, prompting Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., to call them "low-life scum," according to the Washington Post.

Metro on 03/24/2015

http://www.arkansas…">VIDEO CLIP: Protesters disrupt Sen. Tom Cotton's speech

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