Okay, here is my analysis of the Santorum bill from a couple months back.

This bill has very little in common with the Iraq Liberation Act.  If you want to argue that "even if we impose the mildest economic sanctions on Iraq, BushCo will use unitary executive magic to turn it into an authorization for war," then I can't stop you, but that's still not what the bill says.  Let's have a look.

   

Congress declares that it should be the policy of the United States--

              (1) to support efforts by the people of Iran to exercise self-determination over the form of government of their country; and

              (2) to actively support a national referendum in Iran with oversight by international observers and monitors to certify the integrity and fairness of the referendum.

The House version, which was slightly different, called for financial assistance to pro-democracy groups within Iran.  Let's compare this bill to the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998:

   

It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and to promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime.

It looks to me as if there is a very sharp distinction between the two.  Congress has not called for outright regime change in Iran.  Funding pro-democracy movements and hoping for change to occur from within is, of course, business as usual for the US.

There is a legitimate policy debate regarding whether sanctions against Iran help or harm our overall policy.  However, let's be clear that the sanctions in this bill are quite narrowly defined.  One set of sanctions relates to WMD technology:

   

the President shall impose two or more of the sanctions described in paragraphs (1) through (5) of section 6 if the President determines that a person has, on or after the date of the enactment of this Act, exported, transferred, or otherwise provided to Iran any goods, services, technology, or other items the provision of which has contributed to the ability of Iran to--

                 `(1) acquire or develop chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons or related technologies; or

                 `(2) acquire or develop destabilizing numbers and types of advanced conventional weapons.'.

I realize selling arms to Iran is a proud Republican tradition but I don't mind breaking with tradition in this case.

The other set of sanctions in the bill makes it harder for American companies such as Halliburton to use offshore subsidiaries to profiteer through Iran's oil industry.  Existing law, the Iran and Libya Sanctions Act of 1996, provides:

   

the President shall impose 2 or more of the sanctions described in paragraphs (1) through (6) of section 6 if the President determines that a person has, with actual knowledge, on or after the date of the enactment of this Act, made an investment of $40,000,000 or more (or any combination of investments of at least $10,000,000 each, which in the aggregate equals or exceeds $40,000,000 in any 12-month period), that directly and significantly contributed to the enhancement of Iran's ability to develop petroleum resources of Iran.

The present bill merely toughens those sanctions mildly by eliminating the "actual knowledge" language and penalizing any "private or government lender, insurer, underwriter, re-insurer, or guarantor" which aids another entity in developing Iran's oil industry.

In short, and with all respect to the distinguished Rep. Kucinich, I really don't see this bill as a big deal.  I understand why people are quite concerned about the willingness of the looney-tunes in office to launch another stupid war, but I simply don't see a scenario where we look back 5 years from now and the wingnuts point to this bill as a license to wage war.  It's not much of a change to existing law, and it's clearly different from the way we called for regime change in Iraq.