Will Iran Be Next?

[rmnunez]

Somehow, even 4 gringoes a day doesn't seem like such a tremendous sacrifice considering the alternative is a nuclear-armed Iran (a nation with a theocratic form of government that subscribes to Islamic fundamentalism).

[bishop]

they wouldn't be able to hit us though, only israel.

[Scribbler1]

I'm just glad you don't have any say in the U.S. government. It's like you read your posts out of a playbook with no room for adaptation. You say it's either occupation or nuclear war with no apparent basis for that conclusion.

Or is it you just have no problem with dead gringos?

[Nono]

I think rummie just has a bad case of Obsessive Gringo Utterance Disorder, a compensatory syndrome that appears in individuals who wish to camouflage the fact that they slavishly embrace all aspects of Official Gringuissimo Foreign Policy.

Anyway, there are a lot of Latinos in the US armed forces...

[bishop]

sure looks like bush is interested in having another war....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2005Feb12.html

The Bush administration has been flying surveillance drones over Iran for nearly a year to seek evidence of nuclear weapons programs and detect weaknesses in air defenses, according to three U.S. officials with detailed knowledge of the secret effort.

the rest of the article's pretty interesting imo.. combine that with the leaked report where our administration has been developing plans for attacking iran. if i were the iranians, i'd be doing everything i can to develop nukes to defend against a seemingly inevitable bush-led invasion. same thing for north korea.

[Paavo]

if i were the iranians, i'd be doing everything i can to develop nukes to defend against a seemingly inevitable bush-led invasion. same thing for north korea.

I'm sure they are, too.

This is sickening, truly it is. I'm willing to bet someone else's testicles there will be a war, soon. It all fits the picture well enough. What's even more troubling is the Iran & Russian "alliance," makes the problem that much more dangerous. If there ever was a looming third world war, this kind of shit is as good a "spark" for one as any.
The US needs to rethink its policies...NOW, or there will be trouble, you can quote me on that.

EDIT:
With the flying planes over Iranian airspace and whatnot, looks alot like a provocation on the part of the US to get the Iranians to shoot one down. Voilá, a reason to "retaliate." A miniature pearl harbor is all they need... in case the nuclear plans on the part of Iran turn out to be for peaceful purposes. "Well, alright, but they did shoot first, we were merely acting in self-defense!"

[Nono]

Of course there's no overestimating the sheer imbecile blindness of the Neocons now rewarded for their proven incompetence by not having their asses fired from the Pentagon and the NSC. But I really can't imagine how the US could possibly launch a "war" on Iran given its current uhh commitments in the neighbourhood.

If I were running the show, I'd also have drones over Iran and would be trying to get the best idea of their air defences, possibly for transfer of that intelligence to the Israelis.

On the other hand, whereas Saddam was caught with his pants down at Osirak, nothing can be more certain than that a gargantuan shitstorm awaits anybody who tries to take out the Iranian nuclear facilities by any means whatsoever.

[Paavo]

If I were running the show, I'd also have drones over Iran and would be trying to get the best idea of their air defences...

I can't believe they would need to fly anything with cameras over any territory in Iran, as they've most likely got every inch of Iranian soil covered by satellite-imagery.

...as for what you said concerning US resources, I don't know what they'll cook up. A draft? Civilian terror to crush morale? Clandestine operations a'la CIA? Remains to be seen.

[RickSp]

President George W Bush added a new twist to the international tension over Iran's nuclear programme last night by pledging to support Israel if it tries to destroy the Islamic regime's capacity to make an atomic bomb.

'America would back Israel attack on Iran'

Just another pretext for starting a new war. Talk diplomacy but use a client state to strike the match.

[RickSp]

Quote by: rmnunez Somehow, even 4 gringoes a day doesn't seem like such a tremendous sacrifice considering the alternative is a nuclear-armed Iran (a nation with a theocratic form of government that subscribes to Islamic fundamentalism).

Your continued dismissal of the value of the lives of American soldiers is nothing less than disgusting. This must be at least the third time that you have blythely waived away the deaths of others. You obviously share the contempt of those who claim to "Support Our Troops" but really mean "Support More War." If you were one of the "4 gringoes a day" doing the dying at least we wouldn't have to tolerate your chicken hawk squawking.

[bishop]

man... the news just keeps getting better and better.

i wonder how much the people who voted for bush this past election would support another war. i have a feeling that not all bush supporters are as rabid fools as the ones we normally associate with. another war would cause disaster both abroad and at home.

[Matt W]

Also, I recall Blair saying he wouldn't support any attack on Iran - so it seems pretty clear it would be the US and Israel standing alone on this one. Tell me again, who's the 'rogue nation' in this scenario?

[bishop]

they had some open forum in britain a couple months before the war where they debated what was the greatest threat to world peace. they viewed us as a much greater threat, in the big picture, than north korea or iraq. and since our policies help recruit new terrorists, as goss himself proved just a couple days ago, we even beat out al qaeda.

and the vast majority of the world views israel as a rogue.. we're bound to further isolate ourselves by choosing to side with them in another aggressive war.

this article sums things up pretty well:

http://www.time.com/time/europe/maga...ver/story.html

[Matt W]

Here we go...knew I'd find it somewhere...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4201555.stm

Key quote from the article:

'Mr Straw has already said Britain would not participate in any such attack.'

[Scribbler1]

Quote by: bishop man... the news just keeps getting better and better. i wonder how much the people who voted for bush this past election would support another war. i have a feeling that not all bush supporters are as rabid fools as the ones we normally associate with. another war would cause disaster both abroad and at home.

Convince them that (a) Iran is a direct threat to us and (b) invading another country is spreading democracy even further.
Oh, yeah, (c) They asked us to invade.

Easy enough to do. Just use the same stories bur change the names.

[rmnunez]

Four gringoes a day would be double the average now sustained and it sure doesn't seem to be too hard to do that as its been a constant for about 2 years already, so give me some slack on this callous disregard business, if it were such an enormity I'm sure gringoes would have voted for the other guy who was promising to bring all the troops home. Then consider the size of Iraq, compare to continental Europe and consider what was the toll in conquering that (hint, at the rate they are going it would take about 6 centuries to kill as many allies as died in WW2). Finally there is this dumb, uniquely gringan expectation everyone always will be absolutely safe, didn't you hear its a war in Iraq, casualties are part of the picture.

[rmnunez]

If there is a war with Iran too, I don't think it will be the "shitstorm" forecasted, pretty much the same was forecasted each time before the gringoes intervened, and in every instance it was more of a "cakewalk". I have no doubt some Iranians would be mighty upset, but they couldn't withstand the awesome military power the US can bring to bear. In the unlikely event the Iranians could rush a nuke off to the US, they would be completely incinerated and its unlikely the thing would even work. But we do know the US has tons of ICBMs, every one of which has undergone all sorts of tests and calibrations, they work fine and have the range to reach Iran. If I were forecasting the outcome of a conventional US attack on Iran, I'd expect it to take about 2 days to take Teheran, I'd figure a couple of weeks to hunt down and capture or kill a few of the ayatollahs and then the same sort of simmering insurgency seen in Iraq. The fact that the US has plenty of troops close by, makes attacking Iran more tempting.

[rmnunez]

In the first such threat, a leading Iranian official raised the prospect of Iranian retaliation against Middle East oil exports. The official said such Gulf oil states as Kuwait and Saudi Arabia could be threatened, Middle East Newsline reported. "An attack on Iran will be tantamount to endangering Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and (in a word) the entire Middle East oil," Iranian Expediency Council secretary Mohsen Rezai said on Tuesday.

[rmnunez]

Iran is advancing its efforts to acquire nukes as fast they can:

New satellite images show a heavy water plant in Iran, intended to supply a research reactor that could eventually produce plutonium for one atomic bomb a year, is nearly complete, a US think-tank said on Friday. The photos of the plant in Arak, 150 miles south of Tehran, were taken in February by the US commercial satellite firms DigitalGlobe and Space Imaging and provided to Reuters by the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), a US think-tank. http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=7814520

I think ISIS is a reliable think tank, are they dismissed as "beyond the pale" Bushian mouthpieces or does a heavy-water reactor to produce the explosive for a nuclear bomb seem like indicia of an effort to procure such weapons to you too?

[rmnunez]

Washington will now try rewarding Iran for complying with the NNPT:

"We will make clear that we will lift our objections to an Iranian application to the WTO, and that we are prepared to lift an objection to the licensing of spare parts for Iranian commercial aircraft." "The decision that the president has taken is that the US will make an effort to actively support the EU3 negotiations with the Iranians." Correspondents say the US and the EU appear to have agreed a joint approach to Iran. Previously, the US has refused to offer incentives for Iran to abide by the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4340453.stm