A disgusting vat of filth that no self-respecting intelligent person would wade into.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man
Like Ty said, I disagree to some extent.S_A_M

I achieved nothing.

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by Spanky
Wow. Really. So do you think they will use it on Isreal once they get it?

I didn't mean to say Iran would have one for sure, just that the U.S can't _coerce_ them to keep them from buidling one.

Lots can happen between now and then. Diplomatic efforts may buy time, although we'd have to swallow a few Iranian loads.

I expect Israel would certainly try some military action (as Sebby said) if Iran gets too close -- but the program is now very spread out and in hardened facilities, so (unlike what Sebby said) a few bombs won't set Iran back to square 1. This is not like Osirak in 1986.

Originally posted by Spanky
I think before Iraq, military action against Iran was pretty dicey. The only real way to get the weapons would be to invade. Before we were in Iraq, where would have we invaded Iran from?

Amphibious landings. That's why we have Marines. And airborne assaults.

Originally posted by Spanky
I think Iran's number one desire is to see the US leave humiliated. Even if that means a total mess. Then Iran will move in to set up a Shia theocracy, just like the one they have in Iran. The Sunnis will never go for it and there will be war for the forseable future.

Maybe so. Another potential long-term cost of a war that has so far brought us few benefits.

S_A_M

[Tyrone Slothrop]

I'm no huge fan of Peter Beinert, but this column seems particularly interesting in light of the ongoing conversation about nationalism, ethnic & religious identity, and the middle class:

• We Broke It
  by Peter Beinart
  Post date 12.11.06 | Issue date 12.18.06
  
  Across ideological lines, American politicians and pundits are finally coming to a consensus on Iraq: It's the Iraqis' fault. "We gave the Iraqis their freedom," pronounced liberal California Senator Barbara Boxer on November 16. "What are they doing with this freedom? They're killing each other." The next day, conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer heartily concurred, writing: "We have given the Iraqis a republic, and they do not appear able to keep it."
  
  It's easy to see why this line of argument appeals to both left and right. For liberals, blaming the Iraqis justifies a U.S. withdrawal: If the Iraqis are incorrigible, then there's nothing U.S. troops can do. For conservatives, it excuses the Bush administration: If the Iraqis are incorrigible, this catastrophe is their fault, not ours.
  
  It's a soothing, self-justifying argument, but it's dead wrong. The United States has not given Iraqis their freedom because freedom requires order, which the United States--from the very beginning--did not provide. And the United States has not given Iraqis a republic because a republic presupposes a state. Max Weber famously defined the state as the institution with a monopoly on legitimate violence, and, by that definition, there has been no Iraqi state since the United States invaded more than three years ago.
  
  Shia and Sunni Iraqis are not turning on one another because of ancient, primordial hatreds. They're turning on one another because when the state fails in its most basic task--keeping you alive--you turn to any entity that can. Imagine you're in prison. The state (embodied by the prison guards) doesn't protect you, and the hallways are controlled by racial gangs. If your survival depends on it, you'll develop a neo-Nazi or Nation of Islam identity awfully fast.
  
  That's what is happening in Baghdad today. For most of the twentieth century, while Kurds mourned the state they were denied after World War I, relations between Iraqi Sunnis and Shia were good and national identity was strong. It's true that Iraq was created from three Ottoman provinces (centered in Basra, Baghdad, and Mosul). But, as Iraqi historian Reidar Visser has observed, those three provinces were not homogenous--each was ethnically diverse even before Iraq was born. And, once it was, in 1921, nationalism overwhelmed Sunni-Shia divisions. As Rutgers University's Eric Davis noted in his book, Memories of State: Politics, History and Collective Identity in Modern Iraq, Sunnis and Shia not only rose up jointly against the British in 1920 (along with Iraqi Christians and Jews), they actually prayed at one another's mosques. The original leader of Iraq's Baath Party--now synonymous with Sunni domination--was Shia. And, in the 1980s, 90 percent of the Iraqi troops who fought Shia Iran were--you guessed it--Shia. As Visser notes, in all of Iraqi history, the Shia South has never launched a broad-based movement to secede.
  
  After the disastrous Iran-Iraq war, however, the Iraqi state began to weaken. War bankrupted the country, leaving it unable to maintain the welfare state it had constructed during the oil-rich 1970s. The Gulf war made things worse, as U.S. bombing decimated Iraqi infrastructure. And, in the 1990s, sanctions turned Iraq's proud middle class--the historic bulwark of Iraqi nationalism--into paupers, forced to sell their heirlooms for ration cards while Saddam Hussein built palaces. To sustain themselves, many Iraqis turned to religiously based charitable groups. When Saddam was overthrown, these religious organizations were best positioned to fill the political vacuum.
  
  But, if Iraqi nationalism was weaker on the day we invaded than it had been two decades before, it was still quite strong. As Kenneth Pollack has noted, when the National Democratic Institute asked Iraqi focus groups in the summer of 2003 which identity suited them best, a large majority eschewed Shia, Sunni, or Kurd in favor of Iraqi. "Iraq is not the Balkans," insisted Phebe Marr, author of The Modern History of Iraq, in April 2003. "There really isn't traditional enmity or hostility between Sunni and Shiite communities."
  
  Then the United States overthrew Saddam's weak, brutal state and replaced it with virtually no state at all. In poll after poll, Iraqis said they were happy Saddam was gone but terrified at the lack of security. A Zogby survey in August 2003 found that almost 30 percent of Iraqis had friends or family killed in the war or its anarchic aftermath. Basic services like water and electricity remained scarce as the U.S. reconstruction effort foundered because of corruption and lack of security. Unemployment hit 50 percent.
  
  In this dismal, often Hobbesian environment, those Iraqis who could (the more secular middle class) fled. Among those who remained, sectarian entrepreneurs like Moqtada Al Sadr leveraged their preexisting networks to provide services, jobs, safety, and--increasingly--revenge. As sectarian militias offered the protection that the state could not, sect began replacing nation as the primary identity of many Iraqis. That shouldn't surprise us. Identity is not static, and, in war zones, as anyone who followed Sarajevo in the '90s can attest, it can shift very fast. "Once Iraqis are safely ... settled in Amman," notes Iraqi-born scholar Hala Fattah, "bonds of civility [between Sunni and Shia] reemerge."
  
  It may be too late for the United States to provide the security required for those bonds of civility to return to Iraq. But we should, at least, have the decency to acknowledge that it was Americans (not Iraqis) who bore the responsibility under international law to provide security after Americans (not Iraqis) overthrew Saddam. It was we who failed and then handed Iraqi politicians the poisoned chalice of a government that did not sit atop a state. To be sure, Iraq's elected leaders are an uninspiring bunch. But the state fell, the army was disbanded, chaos reigned, the insurgency began, reconstruction faltered, and the die was cast in 2003-- before Iraqis first went to the polls.
  
  When Donald Rumsfeld said, as looters ransacked Baghdad while U.S. troops watched, that "freedom's untidy," Democrats rightly denounced his comments as an abdication and a disgrace. Now, more than three years later, it is just as disgraceful for Barbara Boxer to echo them. If we need to leave; we need to leave. But let's not pretend the defeat is anyone else's but our own.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

And apropos of Peter Beinart, here's a post quoting him at length that Spanky might like, if he can tolerate momentarily siding with Jimmy Carter on something.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
The Iranian "nuclear threat" is illusory. See "Iraq Nuclear Threat of 1986."

Also the Iraq WMD threat of 2003.

[Shape Shifter]

The bad news: the comments sections is now closed.

The good news: the comments can be seen here.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by Sidd Finch
Also the Iraq WMD threat of 2003.

Funny. I meant that to highlight how effectively Israel destroyed Iraq's nuclear facility in 1986. I can only assume now I was writing something very different subconsciously.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
Funny. I meant that to highlight how effectively Israel destroyed Iraq's nuclear facility in 1986. I can only assume now I was writing something very different subconsciously.

Nah, I was just teasing. I caught your drift -- though, as SAM (?) pointed out, eliminating Iran's facilities will be a bit harder than knocking out a reactor.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
And apropos of Peter Beinart, here's a post quoting him at length that Spanky might like, if he can tolerate momentarily siding with Jimmy Carter on something.

What baffles me is the idea that Isreal can keep the West Bank and Gaza and still leave the Arabs there? What makes the Isrealis think that the Arabs will ever be happy with an Isreali occuption of any kind.

And what is with putting settlement right in the middle of Arab occupied land. What are these people thinking? This makes sense if you are going to expel the Arabs, but if not do these people think they are ever going to get along with their neighbors?

As I see it there are two options. Abandon the west bank and gaza. Or continue the occupation while purging the native inhabitants and filling the area with Jews.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by Sidd Finch
Nah, I was just teasing. I caught your drift -- though, as SAM (?) pointed out, eliminating Iran's facilities will be a bit harder than knocking out a reactor.

Never underestimate the Israelis. I think they succeed in wars where other nations would fail because losing just isn't an option for them.

They'll do it. I can't see Iran getting the bomb and Israel just shrugging and going along with our silly plan of sanctions and diplomacy.

The only issue in the air about Iran's bomb making is when the facility gets bombed. It's really sad because the Iranian people could and should be a reasonable ally in the spreading of democracy.

The ugliness of radical Islam is ruining a decent people in the Iranians and dragging us all toward a war in the Middle East. It's hard for me not to blame the religion for that. It's really tragic.

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
I achieved nothing.

C'mon Hank -- embrace the Dog of Love!

S_A_M:rock:

[SlaveNoMore]

Sidd Finch
Nah, I was just teasing. I caught your drift -- though, as SAM (?) pointed out, eliminating Iran's facilities will be a bit harder than knocking out a reactor.

As pointed out elsewhere, Iran's facilities are probably hardened and embedded such that typical Israeli raids won't dent them.

However, this won't prevent Israeli raids on standard infrastructure (radar, military bases, oil wells, bridges, etc) which would make those nukes a bit more ineffective.

[SlaveNoMore]

Ah, gotta love those Palis. When there are no jews to kill, they just kill their own:

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Palestinian gunmen killed three young sons of a senior Palestinian intelligence officer Monday, pumping dozens of bullets into their car as it passed through a street crowded with schoolchildren in an apparent botched assassination attempt that could ignite widespread factional fighting.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the drive-by attack, which left the schoolbags and a small plastic bag with a sandwich covered in blood.

But it's Israel's fault, I'm sure.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
Never underestimate the Israelis. I think they succeed in wars where other nations would fail because losing just isn't an option for them.

They'll do it. I can't see Iran getting the bomb and Israel just shrugging and going along with our silly plan of sanctions and diplomacy.

The only issue in the air about Iran's bomb making is when the facility gets bombed. It's really sad because the Iranian people could and should be a reasonable ally in the spreading of democracy.

The ugliness of radical Islam is ruining a decent people in the Iranians and dragging us all toward a war in the Middle East. It's hard for me not to blame the religion for that. It's really tragic.

What if the people of Iran want the bomb to deter the United States from attacking them? Does that mean we have to bomb them in the name of democracy and peace?

[Cletus Miller]

Originally posted by Spanky
What baffles me is the idea that Isreal can keep the West Bank and Gaza and still leave the Arabs there?

Hasn't Israel left Gaza? And what's the alternative to leaving them there? Bus tickets to Damascus?

What makes the Isrealis think that the Arabs will ever be happy with an Isreali occuption of any kind.

I don't think that they care about anything other than what they believe is necessary for self-preservation. Why would the Israeli's care about the happiness of a group of people whose leaders (democratically-elected and otherwise) have repeatedly called for the destruction of Israel?