I want to go to war with Iran and I can't, all because of Bush.

[Stinky The Clown]

And that whole improbable statement formed in my pointy head as I considered the fact that Iran has just successfully enriched uranium.

No, that fact is nowher NEAR a reason to go to war with Iran ..... or anyone else.

The point of my thought was:

Bush has our national defense so compromised, so marginalized, so overengaged, so misused, so demoralized, so abused, so stretched, that, as we sit here today, we're unlikely to effectively defend ourselves should some serious, real, righteous need present itself.

To be sure, we have air superiority. To be sure we can outnuke almost any one. To be sure we can outnavy anyone. But if it comes to a measured response requiring 'boots on the ground' we are - in a word - fucked.

And who is saying this? No one, actually. It is yet another dead moose siting right there on our national dining room table.

.... and we are **all** just peering around it, over it, under it, just to be able to look someone else in the eye.

But no one is talking about it.

Our Dead Moose.

Thanks George .... you have fucked up again .... as you ahve your whole.whorthless.life.

[wtmusic]

1. That's why the "measured response" won't happen

Now we drop things from the air. Already taking boots off the ground in Iraq.

[acmejack]

2. But if we ever have need of an Anti Ballistic Missile System that doesn't

do a damned thing, we are fully prepared!

[AlamoDemoc]

3. I think we need to be on the chill-out zone and stop being

super-power-dictator around the world and instead embrace peace and harmony around the world

[enigma000]

4. But occupying Iran could have never been the plan

You can't do it now, you couldn't with the army 5 years ago. For that matter you couldn't do it with the army America had in 1945 at the end of WWII - there would just be too much of a hostile population.

This isn't Iraq where the place was run as one man's personal fiefdom and 80% of the population was happy to see him overthrown. For an occupation of Iran to succeed, the Iranian people would have to be thoroughly defeated, something that no Western government has the stomach for.

As for "boots on the ground" a couple of US armored divisions would squash Iran's military like a bug. Those 1970s vintage Soviet T-72s would be be nothing but target practice for the Americans. And the Iranian conscripts would break and run for the hills. Two weeks to Tehran I figure.

They just couldn't stay there. Insurgent warfare would start almost immediately. So the result would be a quick retreat back to Iraq, leaving chaos behind.

[Stinky The Clown]

5. With all due respect, I think you may have missed my point ......

I was hardly calling for war with Iran .... or anyone else. My point was that for Il Dunce to have done what he's done thus far in his reign of terror, he has ruined our capabilities by tying up our assests (to say nothing of our asses) to a stupid occuption of a country that was nothing more than a game and family vendetta to him.

In short, he has compromised our ability to fight a righteous war if that need should present itself.

Our military - any contry's military - is a resource not to be squandered. Far better to let it sit quietly and train and allow the **implied threat of force** to be sufficient to back up a more egalitarian, tolerant, and inclusive foreign policy.

No, if now threatened, we have to hear talk of using nukes. That would NEVER have been on the table in a more reasonable and less militaristic America. But with a decimated force, it has to move up the ladder of acceptable options.

And to me, that is just plain UNacceptable.

For this alone, I think a case for treason against Il Dunce can be made.

[AusGail]

6. Why not send in the Israeli army?

After all, isn't this what its all about. I mean protecting Israel's interests. Anyway, they're only keeping themselves busy making lives miserable in Palestine at the moment. Give them something constructive to do and let THEM do the saber rattling. By the way. Isn't it time they pulled the plug on Sharon?

[Douglas Carpenter]

7. Fishing for a Pretext in Iran -- the White House lies have already begun

Fishing for a Pretext in Iran

by Juan Cole; March 18, 2006

link: http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=9929

snip:"Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei has given a fatwa or formal religious ruling against nuclear weapons, and President Ahmadinejad at his inauguration denounced such arms and committed Iran to remaining a nonnuclear weapons state.

In fact, the Iranian regime has gone further, calling for the Middle East to be a nuclear-weapons-free zone. On Feb. 26, Ahmadinejad said:
“We too demand that the Middle East be free of nuclear weapons; not only the Middle East, but the whole world should be free of nuclear weapons.”
Only Israel among the states of the Middle East has the bomb, and its stockpile provoked the arms race with Iraq that in some ways led to the U.S. invasion of 2003. The U.S. has also moved nukes into the Middle East at some points, either on bases in Turkey or on submarines.

Iran is a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has allowed the International Atomic Energy Agency to inspect and monitor its nuclear energy research program, as required by the treaty. It raised profound suspicions, however, with its one infraction against the treaty--which was to conduct some secret civilian research that it should have reported and did not, and which was discovered by inspectors. Tehran denies having military labs aiming for a bomb, and in November of 2003 the IAEA formally announced that it could find no proof of such a weapons program."

snip:"it is often alleged that since Iran harbors the desire to “destroy” Israel, it must not be allowed to have the bomb. Ahmadinejad has gone blue in the face denouncing the immorality of any mass extermination of innocent civilians, but has been unable to get a hearing in the English-language press. Moreover, the presidency is a very weak post in Iran, and the president is not commander of the armed forces and has no control over nuclear policy. Ahmadinejad’s election is not relevant to the nuclear issue, and neither is the question of whether he is, as Liz Cheney is reported to have said, “a madman.” Iran has not behaved in a militarily aggressive way since its 1979 revolution, having invaded no other countries, unlike Iraq, Israel or the U.S. Washington has nevertheless succeeded in depicting Iran as a rogue state"


snip"Bush’s allegations about the Iranians providing improvised explosive devices to the Iraqi guerrilla insurgency are bizarre. The British military looked into charges of improvised explosive devices coming from Iran, and actually came out this past January and apologized to Tehran when no evidence pointed to Iranian government involvement. The guerrillas in Iraq are militant Sunnis who hate Shiites, and it is wholly implausible that the Iranian regime would supply bombs to the enemies of its Iraqi allies."

link to full article: http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=9929
_______________

And be sure to watch/listen/or read transcript of Sy Hersh's interview on Democracy Now. He pretty much says that baring unforeseen events a major attack on Iran is almost certainly going to happen in the not too distant future:

link to listen/watch/or read transcript:

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/12/1359254

snip: "Everybody I talk to, the hawks I talk to, the neoconservatives, the people who are very tough absolutely say there's no way the U.N. is going to work, and we're just going to have to assume it doesn’t in any way. Iran, by going along with the U.N., what they're really doing is rushing their nuclear program. And so, the skepticism -- there's no belief, faith here, ultimately, in this White House, in the extent of the talk, so you've got a parallel situation. The President could then say, ‘We've explored all options. We've done it.’ I could add, if you want to get even more scared, some of our closest allies in this process -- we deal with the Germans, the French and the Brits -- they're secretly very worried, not only what Bush wants to do, but they're also worried that -- for example, the British Foreign Officer, Jack Straw, is vehemently against any military action, of course also nuclear action, and so is the Foreign Office, as I said, but nobody knows what will happen if Bush calls Blair. Blair's the wild card in this. He and Bush both have this sense, this messianic sense, I believe, about what they've done and what's needed to be done in the Middle East. I think Bush is every bit as committed into this world of rapture, as is the president.”