The threat of nuclear arms is the most potent fear mongering tactic that the Bush administration has used in justifying a pre-emptive strike, anyone remember the "Don't let the smoking gun be a mushroom cloud" analogy used prior to the Iraq war?

In reality a nuclear armed Iran is several years, if not decades away. Even then it lacks the proper delivery system that would in anyway pose a threat to the Israel let alone the US. Further more, it even pointing something missile shaped in the direction of Israel would result in the entire country being flattened to dust by the 5 carrier groups that circle in the Persian gulf restlessly or a surgical strike by IDF much like the one on Iraq's nuclear facilities.

Nuclear arms is not something the majority of the Iranian population wishes to even possess (we're talking about a nation which relies almost exclusively on it's oil exports to survive economically) but is dumbstruck by the hypocrisy of US backing other nuclear states like India, Pakistan and Israel which still keeps its program closely guarded albeit 'open' secret.

I wouldn't be suprised one bit if the failure of the surge will be blamed by the White house on Iran, so it can justify expanding the war there, extending the war right up to January of 2009. This is of course without due thought to what will it mean for US force capability, but then planning and insight is not something the Bush Administration is known for.

I recommend reading Charles Peña's article - "Nuclear Fear Factor"

what are you gonna do, farhad? bomb iran with your treehugging liberalism?
better to nuke the place and be done with it. can't risk that smoking mushroom gun cloud.
and we should scare russia too, that would be great, wouldn't it?

</sarcasm>

ahhh heck i hope i live to see my children look back on this era with incredulity.

"Daddy, why did people vote for George Bush?"
"They didn't, son. They didn't."

This hippie-wishing away of all threats in the world (besides Bush, of course) are really starting to wear thin. Liberals played this same denial game with the murderous soviet regime throughout the cold war, pretending nothing was wrong while 100 million worldwide were murdered by communism. As a natural extension, the same cold-war lefties naturally deemed the Surge a failure...both before it began AND AFTER it's working.

So Iran has "no delivery system" for weapons? What were the statistical odds of 9-11 happening? The world is too small to pretend invulnerability. For any nation.

Only the paranoid survive. If you wish peace, prepare for war. If leveling Tehran is what it takes to awaken the "large Iranian middle-class" not to let genocidal dickheads speak for them then so be it. If anyone deserves a bloody nose for decades of sh;t-disturbing, it's them.

The Prophet Mohammed, incidentally, favored preemptive strikes on his enemies. Perhaps it's time to "celebrate diversity" and wage war like he did, instead of waiting for another attack.

^ that's just bollocks. you have to ignore american foreign policy and world history entirely to make it fit.

violence creates violence. only the weak and stupid lash out, because they can't think of anything else to do, and they completely fail to see the situation from the other side.

QM have you ever lived in a different culture and tried to understand it?

How do you ignore the enormous profits made in war? You really think it's about protecting us? Keeeeyripes.

Wearing "thin" is it? Oh well I guess the only option is to take a leaf out of mohammed's book and level tehran, right? that would probably not escalate into a worse shitstorm, right?

You just want permanent and increasing war, that's the only conclusion from what you say.

So are you in the army or just spouting shit from behind a plastic keyboard?

on a lighter note:
i lol'd http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/29/bush_portrait_rumpus/

As always QMs argument consists of nothing but assumptions, conjectures, and malicious retreading of history rather then basing anything in reality.

The National Intelligence Estimate has clearly stated that the surge has failed to bring about the most important objective of the 'surge' to allow drawdown in US combat forces letting the Iraqis take over, and this is after General Petraues toned down it's findings. Generals in Iraq operate in quick spurts of over blown security, political and press delegations are taken in on DOD/Pentagon secured dog and pony tours of the country, with high security provided by US forces boosted further PowerPoint presentations behind the secured walls of the Green Zone. Top commanders are differing on their own assessments about the way forward. The House is going to hold it's own hearings on the Iraq war because it probably cannot trust the White house anymore. Thus the picture being presented is false.

But that doesn't really matter because the same policy will stay in its form until about April 2008 at least, I don't see any surprises as about the testimony from Petraeus and Crocker coming up on September 11th (or whatever date it is now), just more of "Give us time and we will achieve success", much like what we heard in Vietnam over and over again until the US had no choice but to leave.

Which to me ultimately reads more like a fervent hope then any real strategic plan or foresight, I mean we supposedly 'accomplished the mission', 'turned the corner', were on the verge of success so many times before, yet goshdarnit we just missed it every time mostly at the expense of Iraqi and American lives.

At the end of the day a maintenance of the current strategy in the long term will result in two very obvious consequences;

US ground forces will capitulate as you cannot simply extend tours to 15 months and expect people to go back for the 5th or 6th time, the draft would have to be re-instated to provide more ground forces (for Iraq, Afghanistan and any planned incursion in Iran). More reliance would be placed on private military contractors to provide additional force components.

The expenditure towards the conflict would simply sap the US economy eventually, as it's foreign debt obligations increase further, and as the administration pulls more and more funding into the Iraq war without any logical consequence or trickle down to the actual forces doing the fighting. I mean the US will not fail catastrophically, it will just mean that spending on everything else will just vanish. Higher taxes are obviously out of the question, so that would mean more borrowing from other nations.

Bush plans to ask Congress next month for up to $50 billion in additional funding for the war in Iraq, which would come on top of about $460 billion in the fiscal 2008 defense budget and $147 billion in a pending supplemental bill to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Meaning the war costs come to roughly 3 billion every week. Who pays for that eventually? the US taxpayer who is already on track for a $59 trillion obligation. Now there is talk of a confrontation with Iran.

Strategic oil resources are an important unmentioned factor in all this, the US doesn't want Iran influencing the actions of any Iraqi goverment structure that could possibly come into effect, yet it believes that that it is the only one that stands in the way of such a thing occurring, even as it's spent nearly $20 billion in supplying arms to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, Kuwait and other smaller GCC nations.

All the war drumming against Iran in the US is only helping Iranian goverment clamp down further on political dissenters because it can point out a clear foreign threat that is gathering - eliminating civil liberties, attacking free press, and intellectuals by labeling them as foreign agents trying to destabilize the goverment. So in many ways both the Bush and Ahmadinejad are reaching their own objectives, Bush gets a pass on the Iraqi war by labeling Iran as a new threat, Ahmadinejad gets to garner more power and install more cronies into the goverment replacing technocrats.

But then again you probably read Blackfive so I wouldn't bother going into too much detail lest the facts overwhelm your preconceived assumptions.

QM: wipe out a whole city with nuclear weapons, killing millions, in order to dissaude the rest of the people in a country from (supposedly) supporting genocide.

Jesus. You're an idiot.

Let's look at QM's points.

1. If levelling Tehran is what it takes then it should be done.

The truth is that levelling Tehran will not accomplish this, it will in fact serve to fuel more resentment toward America's foreign policy and anti-americanism in the middle east and around the world. History tells you this, so does common sense, so does a even a mere handful of political knowledge.

2. We can't predict what a rogue nation will do, what were the odds of 9/11 happening?

President Bush received specific warnings about attacks in New York and Washington. It included "FBI judgments about patterns of activity consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks; as well as information acquired in May 2001 that indicated a group of Bin Laden supporters was planning attacks in the United States with explosives."

3. "The Prophet Mohammed, incidentally, favored preemptive strikes on his enemies."

This statement is entirely ignorant and here's why. Pre emptive strikes in the context of a battle or a war are a tactic used throughout the history of warfare. Invading another country illegally and calling it a 'pre emptive strike' is like me setting fire to your car in case you might run over a pedestrian.

QM has used a statement of religious fundamentalism to call for the murder of men women, children and babies and I am F*CKING DISGUSTED by it. It's the worst type of uneducated ignorance and blatant racism and QM should withdraw it.