Utterly Meaningless

Out of curiosity, how do you propose we keep Iran from developing nukes?

Give the Israelis the coordinates.

It’s this new fucking invention called diplomacy. Of course, since the cabal in the WH have completely trashed the reputation of the US, to the point that we are not trusted to keep our word, that may be beyond hope.

That being said, if I were a nuclear scientist in Iran, you can bet that I’d be doing everything in my power to push a nuclear program as hard as possible.

Watch for his new site, insta-assassin.com This week’s Newsweek has an interesting article about how Iran helped us in Afghanistan, then two weeks later GW named them to the axis of evil, which emboldened the hard liners that didn’t trust us in the first place.

And the speechwriter has claimed that Iran and N. Korea were added to cover up the fact that Bush had already decided to invade Iraq. IOW, the “Axis of Evil” was coined to be a soundbite.

Now NK is a nuclear power and Iran may be attempting to do the same.

Worst. President. Ever.

No argument there, but brinksmanship is a part of the diplomatic game. This CFR article seems to have it about right:

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We’re squeezing Iran financially and moving some pieces around the board to indicate what we’re capable of doing militarily, so now they’re saber-rattling to shore up support at home in an attempt to enable the current crew to survive politically through the inevitable nuke climbdown.

so now they’re saber-rattling

I hope you’re right but fear otherwise. Remember, this crew gave Saddam a deadline to capitulate and then bombed his home hours before the deadline. These are also the same warmongers who pushed the line that Saddam wouldn’t let the inspectors in months after they were already there and finding nothing.

I don’t know if it’s some sick version of millenialism or just a neocon wetdream, but they seem to have their hearts set on Tehran.

The official claimed the bombs were designed and manufactured by the Tehran-backed guerrilla group Hezbollah, based in Lebanon, and smuggled to Iraq via Iran. He blamed the smuggling of the bombs on the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, answerable to Iran’s highest executive body, the national security council. He also suggested that the Iranian government’s motives were “to tie down the ‘coalition’ in Iraq”. (Ewen MacAskill, Simon Tisdall and Richard Norton-Taylor, ‘UK accuses Iran over killings of soldiers,’ The Guardian, October 6, 2005)

That same article also indicated that the current President of Iran overplayed his hand with the Holocaust denial bit and has lost support of the Mad Mullahs that really run the country.

Sorry, I wasn’t clear — I meant that the Iranians are saber-rattling for the home audience (witness Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric over the last few months), though it’s true enough that we have been too. But since both sides have softened somewhat over the last few days, I think ours is having the desired effect.

I certainly do hear you on the Tehran hard-on GWB seems to have.

You were clear. I just can’t C&P correctly. It should have been this part: moving some pieces around the board to indicate what we’re capable of doing militarily

“It’s this new fucking invention called diplomacy. Of course, since the cabal in the WH have completely trashed the reputation of the US, to the point that we are not trusted to keep our word, that may be beyond hope.”

Iran still has yet to rescind their declaration of war against us. There is significant evidence that the current Iranian president was personally involved in storming our embassy there. He’s repeatedly and publicly stated his desire for the U.S., Britain, and especially Israel to be destroyed when major western media aren’t present, but pretends that he’s all peace and love when they are.

The talking game is just a stalling tactic. They use it because it’s been proven time and again to be the most effective weapon against us. They don’t have to defeat us militarily if all they have to do is go on TV and say “we just want peace on earth” and half the U.S. vehemently starts attacking the other half out of a desire for it to be true.

Just look at how angrily you responded to my question. You didn’t even answer it really, you gave a reponse and then said it wouldn’t work. Seems like there are people looking at the state of the world today and trying to make rational suggestions, and people like you who can’t see past your hatred for Bush (or anyone who might agree with him on anything more significant than flavor of toothpaste) far enough to do anything but attack decisions made in the past with vulgarity.

Do you have anything positive to say anymore or have you let your hatred define you like so many other bloggers?

Show me one piece of evidence that Iran is really attempting to build nuclear weapons. Until you can (and I know you can’t) the saber-rattling out of DC is unhelpful to say the least.

And are you suggesting that Reynolds’ suggestion is rational? State-sponsored murder/assassination/terrorism? I’m pretty sure we have a list of countries that are supposedly “evil” who do those very things.

Ah, so your answer is that they aren’t trying to develop nukes, so we don’t need to worry about it? Seems to me that I don’t have all the information, and neither do you. The difference is I don’t by default assume that everyone with a different political opinion than mine is a lying warmonger and/or insane.

If Reynolds has come to the conclusion (correctly or not) that the only means to stop Iran from developing nukes is by force, then only targeting those who can actually make it happen rather than invading and bombing those not responsible seems perfectly rational to me. Call it terrorism if you want, but it seems a little different than intentionally blowing up a school.

Really? Murdering civilians in order to force a government to change its behavior isn’t terrorism? I guess the dictionary needs revision. And how do you know that the government will target the right scientists and engineers? Oh, I forgot– they NEVER get intelligence wrong.

“The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.”

Destroying a government’s means to produce a nuclear weapon isn’t intimidation or coersion. It’s not killing person A in order to instill “terror” in person B, it’s killing person C because person C is making a nuke.

Suicide bombers are civilians too.

Suicide bombers are civilians too.

Non sequitur.

Destroying a government’s means to produce a nuclear weapon isn’t intimidation or coersion. It’s not killing person A in order to instill “terror” in person B, it’s killing person C because person C is making a nuke.

Again, you’re assuming thje government 1) Can ID the correct scientists and 2) Target him and only him. I don’t have nearly that much faith in their competence. More likely, lots of people would die in order to scare off the other scientists. I’m pretty sure that’d be a working definition of terroristic activities.

“Non sequitur.”

Hardly. You keep referring to nuke builders as civilians and implying that it makes it “terrorism” to kill them.

And there you go, changing your argument. Initially you claim it’s “full blown dementia” to want to kill scientists who are building nukes. Then later you argued that, even assuming force is necessary, the suggestion to kill the few people directly responsible for building nukes rather than risk many more lives in an invasion is terrorism. Now you’re pretending what you were really arguing was that it wasn’t possible to do and so the actual implementation of the suggestion would be to terrorize scientists, which is a straw man.

And you’re still avoiding the original question. If this is a bad idea, what’s a good one? And no, throwing out an idea and then saying it “may be beyond hope” doesn’t really count as a good idea.

I categorically reject the premise that we have to do anything. We played that game 4 years ago.

As Bush said “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me… you can’t get fooled again.”

Who remembers that far back, Daryl!

Certainly not our government officials. Who all seem to need some of that gingko memory enhancer stuff.

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Nance

You know how I listen to the news anymore?

First, Bush or one of his gang makes an announcement — like yesterday’s press conference.

Then I wait.

And it usually doesn’t take long. A day maybe.

I wait for the lies to be discovered.

Then there’s the backtracking period. Then the action that was planned, based on lies, is pursued anyway and I am left to wonder why the admin bothered to make an announcement in the first place.

Nance

Well, Tim’s reasoning resonates with me on this one (not that I know what to DO about it, wouldn’t it be great if critical thinking skills were more contagious than fighting is?) —
“The talking game is just a stalling tactic. They use it because it’s been proven time and again to be the most effective weapon against us. They don’t have to defeat us militarily if all they have to do is go on TV and say “we just want peace on earth” and half the U.S. vehemently starts attacking the other half out of a desire for it to be true.

Just look at how angrily you responded to my question. . .”

Iran still has yet to rescind their declaration of war against us.

Glenn Greenwald had a good bit on this nonsense today:

(3) In response to a post which Blue Texan wrote, which criticized the suggestion made by Glenn Reynolds that the U.S. deploy death squads to kill Iranian scientists and “radical” mullahs, Blue Texan received an email from right-wing blogger Jeff Goldstein in which Goldstein voiced one of the standard lines heard from those who crave war with Iran: “And Iran declared war on us when they took hostages from our embassy in 1979. So they are indeed at war with us, for whatever that’s worth to you.” As Blue Texan replied:

By the way, if Iran has been “at war” with the United States continuously since 1979, why did the Reagan administration sell them weapons? It doesn’t seem like a good idea to sell a nation you’re at war with, you know, actual weapons and stuff.

We gave Bin Laden and the Taliban weapons also. In fact, we give a lot of weapons to other countries which I think is kind of dumb considering how often they turn out to be enemies.

However, that doesn’t detract from the truthfulness of my statement. Iran has NOT rescidended their declaration of war against us. It’s quite revealing that you consider a simple factual statement as “nonsense”. Are all facts not supporting your viewpoint nonsense?

Fine. Red herring, then.