"The agreement, which sparked fierce opposition from nuclear proliferation experts, acknowledges India as a de facto nuclear power, even though it has never signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty designed to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. India until now has been barred from worldwide nuclear trade, leaving its homegrown industry hobbled and short of uranium fuel to run its reactors. The administration said the deal would bring a substantial portion of India's nuclear industry -- though not the facilities that produce materials for weapons -- under international observation. 

"Supporters, moreover, argue that the deal will help India become a responsible world power and will forge ties between two large democracies that have had an antagonistic relationship. With an agreement in hand, India has said it plans to spend $14 billion on reactors and other nuclear equipment next year, though France and Russia are also expected to be key suppliers.

"The ban on nuclear trade with India was a "Gordian knot" that had forever hampered U.S. relations with India, said Philip D. Zelikow, who as Rice's counselor in 2005 played a key role in developing the proposal. "The Gordian knot has been cut, and that opens the way for India to join the world's great powers, with all the responsibilities that go with it."

"Zelikow called the deal "a long-term bet that the enlargement of India's role in the world is likely to be for the good."

Philip Zelikow was a Bushite conflict of interest Executive Director of the 9-11 Commision whose main responsibility was to see that little or no accountability stuck to the Bush regime.

"Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, blasted the deal as a "nonproliferation disaster." India, along with Pakistan and Israel, has never signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty. India conducted nuclear tests in 1974 and 1998, despite international outrage, and continues to produce fissile material. Kimball said the deal "does not bring India into the nonproliferation mainstream" because it "creates a country-specific exemption from core nonproliferation standards that the United States has spent decades to establish."

More on this questionable Senate vote from Crooks and Liars: "One of the major stumbling blocks had been that the bill contains no specific wording to cease co-operation if India goes back to nuclear testing, on which it currently has a self-imposed moratorium. The Bush administration refused to add any such wording to an all-important waiver from the Nuclear Suppliers Group which it heavily pressured other nations to pass, and an amendment to the US bill that would have made it explicit failed to pass.

"Critics also point out that India's military nuclear facilities would not be subject to inspection - only 14 of its 22 existing or planned reactors would come under regular IAEA surveillance - and note that being able to buy US uranium for its civilian reactors would allow India to redirect more of it's own nuclear material to bomb production. They also note, not that anyone on the Hill is listening, that India could have sidestepped all of this rigmarole by joining the NPT and giving up its nukes. Once upon a time, the US backed that provision of the NPT fully. No longer, exceptions are now the name of the game (see Iran and the hyperbolic saber-rattling over what so far has only been shown to be a purely civilian program)

"Interestingly, almost immediately after the NSG waiver was granted, Pakistan announced that it would be buying state-of-the-art enrichment and seperation technology from China. Pakistan, historically, has been the proliferator of choice for those wishing to build nuclear programs outwith IAEA and NPT supervision.

"The House and Senate have just made a serious mistake by following the Bush administration, energy and defense lobbyists on this so enthusiastically. The NPT is effectively dead - as the neocons have wished for all along. What comes next?"