Senator Tom Cotton has become a 99controversial figure in the US Congress since 2014. This trend has been strengthened since 2016, along with the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States. Cotton is a graduate of Harvard University (Law School) and was a US soldier in the Iraq war. He is currently nominated for the post of CIA Director after “Mike Pompeo”. The support of AIPAC lobby and other Israeli lobbies in the United States have strengthened this trend.
On the one hand, he wants to amplify the US military budget (giving the excuse of confrontation with China and Russia), and on the other hand, he is one of the main supporters of the breach of the nuclear deal with Iran. However, the activity of this young American senator in the US Congress has drawn lots of attention to itself especially in the US media. But he seems to have shattered many of the Senate rules and regulations in the shadow of Trump and AIPAC’s support!
The first issue that needs to be addressed in this regard is “Cotton’s membership in the Senate Committee on Intelligence”. His presence in the most critical committee at the Senate in his first term, has created a lot of ambiguity among experts of the security affairs in the United States. An American security official who didn’t want his name to be revealed told our reporter:
“Since 2014, the AIPAC lobby insisted on Tom Cotton presence in the Senate Committee on Intelligence. This was while many of Republican senators, despite having AIPAC support, could not attend this committee. AIPAC, after choosing Cotton as Arkansas Senator, insisted that he should certainly be serving in the Senate Intelligence Committee, which Cotton promptly accepted because of his dependence on AIPAC.”
On November 30, 2017, Reuters reported that Cotton, despite being a member of the Senate Committee on Intelligence (which calls for a high level of management experience), has no experience in managing big organizations. Evidences suggest that many US senators are really dissatisfied with the Israeli lobbies in the United States, especially AIPAC, because of putting the credibility of the Senate Intelligence Committee under question. But these senators from both Democratic and Republican parties have refused to express their displeasure fearing AIPAC’s destructive activities against them.
But another issue that has raised lots of ambiguity among many American politicians over Cotton’s performance in the Senate, is his use of permanent and special advisers. Cotton spends a lot of money in this regard and he doesn’t keep the Senate informed about his financial resources (on employing permanent advisors).
The Senate’s monthly and annual allowance to senators are to the extent that they can use some advisers to maintain their power during the electoral campaign. One of Tom Cotton’s special advisers is “Robert O’Donnell”. During the US Senate elections in 2016, he helped seven Republican senators stay in power. However, his relations with Tom Cotton is of a very special kind! O’Donnell is considered a powerful media advisor in the Republican Party. In the 2004 presidential election, he led the American media atmosphere to the benefit of the Iraq war and the reelection of Bush-Cheney’s team. In 2008, O’Donnell was selected by the Time magazine as the best conductor and expert in electoral and political debate in the United States. On March 19, 2006, Bush’s Media Advisor, Mark McKinnon, praised O’Donnell’s great role in the US media and politics, acknowledging that there was no one like him in this field of expertise.
O’Donnell played an important role in Cotton’s victory in Arkansas and entering the Senate. However, the question that what has O’Donnell’s goal been of supporting Cotton (as a novice senator in the US Senate) and why has this support been continued? In the meantime, Tom Cotton hasn’t given the slightest indication of how much funding he has paid for O’Donnell’s permanent counseling service. In contrast, Cotton tries to deny O’Donnell’s role as his official and permanent advisor, and attempts to pretend the Senate Rules Committee that O’Donnell’s advices to him is impermanent!
Elliott Abrams is Cotton’s other adviser in the Senate who is also very protective of him. Elliott Abrams was the Special Assistant to George W. Bush and Senior Director on the National Security Council for Near East and North African Affairs, and his Deputy National Security Advisor for Global Democracy Strategy. He is a well-known neoconservative theorist who believes that the United States should face the American and Israeli enemies only through military confrontation.
He was the founder member of the New American Century project and in 2014, he was trying hard so that Cotton would enter the Senate. The point here is that Tom Cotton isn’t basically interested in the Senate inspection of his relationship with O’Donnell and Abrams. He would prefer that the Senate would not even know about these relations. Thus most of his communications with these two American politicians are confidential and far removed from the attention of the Senate’s observational bodies. But the fact is that neither Cotton’s membership in the Senate Committee on Intelligence nor the recruitment of his top advisors has met the rules of the US Congress.
Some European and American media have reportedly received some $ 4.5 million from the AIPAC lobby at the time of the election, which apparently concealed a large portion of the cost of these communications.
Source: Us Journal
