Mitt Romney has written another tiresome anti-ratification op-ed:

Does New START limit America’s options for missile defense? Yes. For the first time, we would agree to an interrelationship between strategic offensive weapons and missile defense. Moreover, Russia already asserts that the document would constitute a binding limit on our missile defense program. But the WikiLeaks revelation last weekend that North Korea has supplied Iran with long-range Russian missiles confirms that robust missile defense is urgent and indispensable.

Is this just a rehashing of discredited objections that Romney mindlessly repeats? Yes. For the umpteenth time, the preamble to the treaty is non-binding, and the preamble’s acknowledgment of a relationship between strategic arms and defense capabilities is a statement of the blindingly obvious that in no way impairs U.S. ability to pursue missile defense. Whatever the Russians are saying, the actual treaty doesn’t do what Romney says it will. It is telling that treaty opponents must rely on the rhetoric of Russian officials over the testimony of our military officers. As Romney has been corrected numerous times on this point, his persistence in this error is a bit strange. A former Deputy Commander in Chief and Chief of Staff of U.S. Strategic Command, Ret. Lt. Gen. Dirk Jameson wrote the other day:

Some critics have attempted to muddy the waters with questions that have already been addressed. They claim the treaty restricts American missile defense, an argument that does not hold water. Lt. General Patrick O’Reilly, Director of the Missile Defense Agency testified that the treaty, “has no constraints on current and future components of the Ballistic Missile Defense System.” Frankly, their concerns have been put to rest.

These “red herrings” are presented wrapped in ever more demanding commitments from future legislators that no arms control treaty past or future could meet.

As for the “revelation” Romney mentions, there is good reason to believe that the alleged transfer of BM-25 missiles to Iran doesn’t mean much of anything, since it is not at all clear that these longer-range missiles work. So the treaty doesn’t limit missile defense, and the missile threat from Iran and North Korea has been significantly overhyped in recent days. This is the core of Romney’s opposition to the treaty, and it is laughably wrong. The rest of the op-ed rattles off more of the red herrings Lt. Gen. Jameson correctly dismisses.