<p>Another agressive action by United States. With Dick Cheney lobbying for war, it seems that the White House is determined to move this conflict to the next stage.</p>
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<p>and
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<p>Official US response:
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<p>Pray, but how does having 2 aircraft carriers, 7 battleships, 17,000 armed men and cannonfire in the reagion going to promote the “free flow of commerce?”</p>
<p>So what is your oppinion on the subject? WHAT is going on?</p>
<p>It’s called saber rattling. The idea of the floating military is the projection of American strength. That should be enough to project this presence in the gulf. It is far too little to pose a serious invasion threat to Iran.</p>
<p>The US has no prayer of taking on and defeating Iran. No prayer. Iraq was promised to be a walk in the park, war done in a matter of weeks or months, not the endless occupation that we currently have.</p>
<p>Cheney is the most dangerous man in Washington DC. The Iran confrontaton will escalate, without doubt, because perpetual war is good for the corporate war machine.</p>
<p>Cheney tried to get a third carrier sent to the Gulf. The military brass shot him down.</p>
<p>It has been reported recently that the Joint Chiefs were asked to prepare an attack plan to take out Iran’s underground facilities with nuclear tipped bunker buster bombs. The Joint Chiefs reportedly told the President they would resign as a group before carrying out that plan.</p>
<p>The crazy thing is that all the US saber rattling is what is motivating the Iranians to press forward with uranium enrichment and the spector of acquiring nuclear weapons.</p>
<p>The Iranians intend to obtain nuclear weapons. There is a realistic possibility that they will use those weapons to further their religious beliefs and hatred of Jews. Instead of having one person as a suicide bomber we will now have a suicide bomber as a nation with a nuclear bomb. Do any of you who oppose military action have any definate and conrete suggestions as to how to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons? Or is that ok with you?</p>
<p>“The Iranians intend to obtain nuclear weapons. There is a realistic possibility that they will use those weapons to further their religious beliefs and hatred of Jews.”</p>
And I’m sure that you have a reliable source for this information just like you have had for other such whoppers that you been challenged to produce but then failed to produce them?</p>
<p>Ktoto changed words in the quotes from CNN. Just a heads up.</p>
<p>FWIW, there are NO commissioned “battleships” left in the world. Not even CNN was boneheaded enough to make that mistake. They used the accurate term, “warships.” </p>
<p>If you want to make something sound more imperialist and ominous use “gunboats” not “battleships.” HTH.</p>
<p>Iran wants a nuke to be left alone… just like every other nuke power. A nuke is the most effective way to secure your border from invasion at least from us. As long as we press them, they will work towards a bomb. Would they use it, no, because not all Iranians want to die. There is no surplus of sucide bombers. If they were to nuke isreal or us, within minutes they would be a big glass ashtray…they know it, we know it. However, all they have to do is look around in the difference in how we treat the other axis of evil members… which country without the nuke did we invade, which one are we giving money to? </p>
<p>We keep thinking these guys are dumb or something…</p>
<p>Do you honestly think that the term, battleship is more ominous than the term, Warship? You say, “potatoes…”</p>
<p>This may indeed be saber rattling, but Iran MUST know that we have virtually nothing to back it. Our military is stretched nearly to the breaking point just in Iraq and Afghanistan. Where would we get the troops for an invasion of Iran? The draft? Good luck with that! Where would Bush get the backing for an Iran invasion? Congress? The American people? The United Nations? Hardly. We aren’t going into Iran, and they know it. Even if they do obtain nuclear weapons, we will just have to sit back and hope for the best. Our options are virtually nil.</p>
<p>PH, I’ve been privy to musing-alouds by in-service personnel that suggest that a predominantly aerial strike on Iranian nuclear facilities is plausible. As to the wisdom of this, they are divided but more pro than con. However, when I pose the question of the effect of a strike on Iran upon our efforts in Iraq–think of both the Sadrists and SIIC (until a week ago SCIRI), they fall strangely silent.</p>
<p>Given this so-called president and his detachment from reality, I don’t rule out a strike. He creates a failed state and a breeding ground for Islamist terrorists, bungles his way into being the best recruiting poster that the wonderful chaps of Al Qaeda could hope for, and still expects to be vindicated. Some of the more cynical think he know’s he’s effed up and is just trying to run out the clock to dump the whole mess into the next president’s lap…I don’t credit him with that much intelligence.</p>
<p>Yes. Hans Blix, who has spent his entire life in nuclear proliferation issues, stated recently that there are two reasons a country seeks to obtain nuclear weapons:</p>
<p>a) as a military deterence in response to what they perceive as a threat to their security</p>
<p>b) as a means of establishing national “prestige” or “stature” in a regional or global context, prestige that alters the way others deal with the country (trade agreements, etc.)</p>
<p>Blix’ recommendation is that in order to convice any country to stop development of nuclear weapons, the world community must specifically address these two motivations. He used, as an example, the recent success in getting North Korea to suspend their nuclear program. The US and its regional allies addressed N. Korea’s security concerns by pledging a policy of not attacking N. Korea. They addressed N. Korea’s “status” related concerns with a package of trade agreements.</p>
<p>Blix pointed out, quite correctly, that the current US foreign policy (sanctions and isolation combined with saber rattling) is completely counter to addressing Iran’s motivations. To the extent that Iran perceives an imminent military threat, who could blame them? They have the US military on both its borders and the most forms of aggressive saber rattling from the administration. Their “stature” concerns are also being intensified as the US seeks to enhance trade sanctions. This is compounded by the US pawning off all discussions with Iran to the Europeans who have little to offer since they already have diplomatic relations. The carrot that could be extended is US diplomatic and trade relations with Iran.</p>
<p>Furthermore, the suspension of uranianium as a precondition for US-Iranian talks is illogical since the main point of discussion between the two countries is that suspension. From an Iranian standpoint, why would they throw away their bargaining chips before sitting down at the bargaining table?</p>
<p>We are making the classic foreign policy blunder with Iran: pushing a country to do exactly what we don’t want them to do. Iran is not terribly close to a deliverable nuclear warhead. The CIA’s best estimates are perhaps a decade from now. IMO, we should be exploring every opportunity to narrow the diplomatic gulf with Iran rather than driving the wedge deeper and deeper.</p>
<p>ABC News reported this week that the President has been convinced that a pre-emptive military strike against Iran is not feasible at this time, although Cheney continues to push for it. Bush signed an order for covert, non-lethal CIA efforts to destablize Iran.</p>
<p>If Bush/Cheney have ANY concerns for the GOP’s chances for The White House and/or Congress in '08, they had better not stage any sort of military action against Iran. The American voting public is fed up with the idea of our continued military involvement in the Middle East—much less escalated involvement.</p>
<p>Thanks. I follow the IAEA and other assessments of Iran’s nuclear program quite closely.</p>
<p>The operation of sufficient centrifuge cascades to produce one weapon’s worth of enriched uranmium does not a delieverable weapon make. For example, Iran has not, to date, enriched any uranium beyond the stage required for a reactor.</p>
<p>Nor have they tested a nuclear weapon of any type, let alone miniaturized such a weapon to the point where they could deliver it to a target.</p>
<p>This is not a trivial engineering task.</p>
<p>Iran’s short term motivations for their uranium enrichment program are political, as outlined above. They do not currently have, and will not have for a period of several more years, the ability to actually use a nuclear weapon.</p>
<p>Specifically, Iran is seeking to use the perception of near-nuclear status to increase its political standing, primarily in the Middle East, i.e. Iran wants to be viewed as a “big dog”. One of the unintended consequences of our failed Iraq occupation is that we have increased the political standing of Iran in the region, as clearly evidenced by the concern being expressed by the Saudis and others.</p>
<p>Frankly, I think it might well benefit the United States to communicate to Iran that we are willing to grant them “big dog” status as part of a larger package of economic and military discussions beneficial to the United States’ interests in the region, i.e. the United States would be well served by a working relationship with Iran.</p>
<p>“They do not currently have, and will not have for a period of several more years, the ability to actually use a nuclear weapon.”</p>
<p>The world’s intelligence community proved how unreliable they were when they were predicting Iraq’s pre-1991 capability to be “years down the road”. Only after the Gulf War and the inspections teams had access to what he was doing did they realize that he had a “Manhattan Project” sized effort going on that was very close (a year or two) to developing a bomb. It turns out that he was a master of deception, including importing components that had dual use so that they would fly under the radar of the intelligence community. (Does that sound familiar with respect to the aluminum tubes which were acknowledged by all that they had dual-use capability?)</p>
<p>As far as fitting a bomb in a missile, that is the least of our worries and represents pre-9/11 thinking. We could only hope that the only delivery system for a nuclear weapon were by missile which can be tracked by satellites to ascertain the (soon-to-be-former) country that was launching it. If we have learned anything from 9/11 it should be that conventional means of war and weapons delivery represent the least threat to us.</p>
<p>It was not acknowledged by either the US nuclear experts or the IAEA experts. In fact, the nuclear experts in both the United States and Europe knew that those aluminum tubes were not suitable for uranium enrichment centrifuges. In fact, the UN inspectors knew that the tubes were the exact dimensions for building an Italian designed surface missile that Iraq had used in its military for years. Furthermore, the UN inspectors knew that the size of the orders for the tubes matched the number of tubes that the Iraqis had used or spoiled over the prior decade.</p>
<p>The IAEA scientists were shocked when the CIA report on the tubes listed centrifuge designes that did NOT match the dimensions of the tubes, but excluded the known rocket launcher that did match the tubes exactly. They viewed the report as an outright deception.</p>
<p>It is true that Hussein was attempting to build a crude nuclear weapon in 1991. However, it was not a project based on the industrial-grade technology, such as centrifuge enrichment, as the Iranians are openly pursuing.</p>
<p>Again, it is not easy to make a nuclear weapon detonate. The Iranians have not tested a device, successfully or otherwise. Their enrichment program is a big concern to the United States. That is why it is so frustrating to see a US foreign policy that is not making every effort to stop it and, in fact, is further motivating the Iranians to pursue the status and deterrence of a nuclear weapons program.</p>
<p>“It was not acknowledged by either the US nuclear experts or the IAEA experts. In fact, the nuclear experts in both the United States and Europe knew that those aluminum tubes were not suitable for uranium enrichment centrifuges.”</p>
<p>Actually, this is false. From page 98 of the Senate Intelligence Committee report:
It goes on to say that the DOE and INR thought that they were more suitable for other applications, but they don’t refute the notion that they could have dual-use capability for use in a nuclear program.</p>