I was reading a news article last night on the nuclear Iran issue when I came across one of those comment-posts that follow the article. It title was, “Nuclear Iran is a Red Herring,” I would appreciate anyone’s comments on the text of the comment. Is there any truth to this?

It is Iran’s determinatioin to switch from petrodollars to the Euro for payment of its oil that has Bush’s jockey shorts in a bunch. It was Saddam Hussein’s switch to the Euro circa 2000 that was the real tipping point for the invasion of Iraq. A switch to Euros by other Opec nations which is likely will have a devasting effect on the U.S. economy. no longer would the importany nations have to hold on to dollars to pay for oil. Dumping their dollars before they lose value via inflation makes them less valuable around the world as well as in the U.S. U.S. Bonds held by China and others will be dumped…

Statements like this really get under my skin. I sometimes wonder if “progressives” have any idea how much time and effort goes into preventing civilian casulties. In any targeted airstrike we analysize the location of the target and its surroundings – then…
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I do understand that Brandon. I have listened to some intelligence folk who made a big deal of that. Furthermore, I do believe them. I believe that there is a lot of effort put in there. But the simple fact of the matter is when the value of the target is high enough, the bombs fly. They have to. It makes sense. It is wise military strategy. One might argue that even if 16 innocents die as a result of this action, how many more will if we don’t - furthermore - how many of those will be American soldiers.

My point in saying that was to:
A) not subscribe to the thought that soldiers on the ground are making errors in the rules of engagement. There is no evidence that this is the case on any scale. Individual situations happen, but it is not the troops on the ground that make up the mass of civ. casualties. The majority of the civ. deaths are caused by bombs. They don’t get the benefit of a judgment call in that situation, are far more deadly, and if some teenagers are walking by at that moment, they are goners.

I don’t even think of it as controversial to be honest, because that is the way people want to fight this war. You hear it over and over - smart strikes - which do happen, there are good strikes that are pretty contained. But, honestly tell me that when you drop a 500 pound bomb of the best explosives in the world that bad stuff isnt BOUND to happen, despite our efforts to make sure we do our best…

Secondly,
I say it because you cannot assume that any strike will be clean in Iran either. Consider what we are targeting! Nuclear material. Now maybe all of you can tell me that we have this really nasty stuff in our bombs that will totally eliminate any radiation. But my thought is: BIG FAT DIRTY BOMB. I just want to at least for a second, think of the PEOPLE in this country. And to be less than cautious about our airstrike thinking shorts them.

To this end- you always need a diplomatic strategy. Because if you can make it succeed you get no one dying.

Whether this is possible is the question. But agree for a moment that in THEORY it is best to negotiate out of these things rather than attack.

Brad

1) Did North korea balk on the agreement or did we? I beleive that North Korea responded to our lack of delivery by raising the issue of Nukes again as this was their promised return for abandoning them the first time.

2) Can we engage Iran at all diplomatically? I believe we have to. We cannot have a zero in the diplomacy column guys, CANNOT DO. I don’t know if that is the answer - diplomacy to solve this issue - but I do know that without us, europe is not in a position to deliver what Iran may want.

The fact of the matter is that the Bush administration does NOT have a coherent strategy for diplomacy. He has the Houston Oilers “Run and Gun” philosophy. The state department has become a threat department.

It may be that you folks were always right, and that military action is mostly preferred to dilpomacy. But I am simply stating that

A) You must HAVE a diplomatic strategy
B) Negotiations are give and take - strategically it is wise to negotiate in good faith. This is somewhat suspect I believe)
C) The first strike doctrine works against A) and therefore is a BAD doctrine. Consistent with what I say about Bush is that he and cheney are BIG supporters of this doctrine. It is a fundamental issue I have with both of them

It didn’t fail with Iran because the US negotiated with them - the UN and EU asked to lead on that. And they got nowhere.

Iran declared war upon the US when they took our embassy and held every American in the nation hostage. And you think we should send them aircraft parts for planes we sold before then? Iran never formally delivered their declaration of war and no substantial action ever followed.

The Clinton administration made the nuclear deals with North Korea. They broke them and Clinton complained but did little. When it finally became clear from N. Korea’s own statements that they were not abiding by the agreements we finally stopped sending them aid. And you think that is why they behave as they do?

Finally you seem to think that we should not follow the letter of trade agreements but the spirit so that other nations will be happy. That is total nonsense.

Every other nation immediately runs to the arbitration board at the slightest chance of using legalities to help their trade. Are we to simply not show up and default?

My point is that diplomacy and endless talk has actually made things much worse, not better. Shrewd nations are using it to stall and not meet treaty obligations. I don’t know what can improve things. But it will not be sending parts for warplanes to Iran or oil to North Korea.

And it will not be telling our trading partners that they need not follow the parts of treaties they do not like.

This presupposes Iran would follow IAEA protocols although admittedly, it would be difficult to get around them. This however, is a paperwork matter and could be dragged out for months - such as Saddam did with the reactor at Al-Tuwaitha. UNSCOM was constantly having to cite the Iraqi’s for being behind in their reports regarding the 500 tons of yellowcake being stored there. What was probably bureaucratic incompetence was seen as a deliberate attempt to avoid their responsibilities.

That said, since the Iranians have two heavy water “research” reactors - one of them as I said run by the military - there would be little to prevent them from playing a little switcheroo with the fuel rods. From what I understand, the Argentine’s tried something similar a few years ago and the only reason it was caught was due to a blabby employee.

I will not be surprised if we do very little to stop the Iranians from getting the bomb. But I suspect that we will work very hard from here on out to bring down the regime and try and replace it with a more secular and hopefully democratic state. At this point, it’s just about all we can do.

BTW - you should get your own site if you don’t have one already. You give great rants.

The “act of war” was not a comment about sensibilities so much as a need to use language to express the gravity of that course of action. Too many so-called “hawks” I see in the media pass military action off as if it were an easy, simple matter. It also relates to international law, but I didn’t mention that because we should never let international law completely remove options from our table. However, we have no real legal right attack Iran because we think they’re building a bomb. That issue doesn’t bother me, but it comes into play when we have to deal with allies and other countries who do take international law as gospel.

No we couldn’t stop Iran’s neighbors from getting the bomb - but nonproliferation has failed in the region and worldwide already. Unfortunately, what Iran wants to do - or rather, what they say they want to do - is completely legitimate under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Iran DOES have the right under that treaty to master the nuclear fuel cycle and enrich fuel for use in reactors. It’s the huge gaping flaw in that treaty. To be honest there are many countries in the world who have the technology to make a bomb in a matter of months. Their civilian programs provide all the necessary technology; all they would need is to enrich some uranium and get a viable bomb design. Anyway, I could go on and on about the NPT, but I think everyone agrees that it’s been a failure.

As for the Russian offer to provide uranium for Iranian reactors - that is a viable solution, but one the Iranians have rejected. Russia, the US and other countries provide uranium for reactors in other countries, and there is very little danger of Iran recapturing the plutonium, or seeding the reactor with U-238. The spent fuel is analysed by the provider country and IAEA, compared with reactor logs, etc. Any such activity to get plutonium is easily detected. This is exactly why Iran has rejected this course of action. It would actually be much cheaper for them to get their fuel from Russia, as Russian has plenty and Iran wouldn’t have to worry about long-term storage and reprocessing of spent fuel. But again, Iran rejected that offer for obvious reasons.

Finally, I must take issue with Brad about airstrikes and civilians getting killed. What you state is simply false. The vast majority of civilian deaths are due to ethnic, religious, or terrorist acts. Airstrikes that cause major civilian casualties are when a piece of ordnance goes awry or the wrong target is attacked. Also remember that this is an insurgent war. Can the family that feeds, shelters, and houses terrorists be called “civilian?” In insurgent warfare, the lines between who is a “civilian” and who is not isn’t easily defined (If you read about guerilla/insurgent organization, you’ll find that the lowest level, often called the “mass base” are often no more than “civilians” who are sympathizers who provide shelter and supplies, but don’t actively conduct attacks. Many of the “civilians” we’ve killed fall into this category)

Case in point is the latest attack we conducted in Pakistan. While it’s very tragic that children were killed in those attacks, the parents of those children are to blame for inviting targets into their midst.

More than ANY other country, we try our best to avoid killing the innocent. I have seen strikes called off and the enemy escape because we were unwilling to kill innocents. Our opponents are completely the opposite. They think nothing of killing 20 children if they can get one American. These are the same people who take over a school - attach explosives to children, and shoot them in the back when they run away. It still boggles my mind that any person has the mental incapacity to gun down a scared child.

I’ve read some of the after-action reports from Falluja. Insurgents there kept some families from fleeing the city before the battle and used them as human shields. They’d tie them up on the ground floor and when our boys came in to clear the house they’d roll grenades down the stairwells or hold the kids in front of them while shooting at our guys. In many of those cases, we have no choice but to kill the civilians, but you need to bear in mind who is responsible for their deaths.

I really get tired of people on the far left blasting the American military for civilian casualties while never mentioning the scores of civilians our enemies kill daily. It’s bad in this country, but even worse in Europe where our troops are often portrayed as reckless at best, and murderers at worst, while the insurgents are just “fighting the unjust occupation.” No fighting force in the world takes more measures to prevent civilian casualties than ours - why do you think the insurgents surround themselves with civilians and hide in mosques? Because they know we are hesitant to attack them there and kill those civilians. They know our ethical values and use them against us daily. Yet when a tragedy happens or a mistake is made in a confusing and violent situation, we are the ones to blame their deaths. Ok, rant over.

Statements like this really get under my skin. I sometimes wonder if “progressives” have any idea how much time and effort goes into preventing civilian casulties. In any targeted airstrike we analysize the location of the target and its surroundings - then we look at the civilian concentration around the target at different times (8:00am,12:00pm,7:00pm, etc.) So, say the target is across the street from a mosque and a school - the school is populated from 8am to 5pm and the mosque is populated from 5am to 10pm - the school and the mosque are N and NW of the target, respectivly. We would program the missile to aproach the target from the S at high trajectory (to prevent shrapnel) - at 1am and choose the warhead size based on the distance between the target and the school mousque. Do you remember when we decided to take out the Information Ministry in Baghdad a few days into the campaign? That was a solid concrete warhead - no explosives - aimed at the satilite dishes on the top of the building - there were zero casulties and there was people in the building!

An overwelming majority (at least 90%) of the civilian casulties in Iraq are not caused by Americans, period. They are caused by the insurgents (roadside IEDs) and the Jihadis (exicutions, suicide bombers, VBIED (vechicle borne improvised explosive device).

Your taking the NoKo line on the fuel oil deliveries is puzzling. Didn’t we stop deliveries AFTER they threw out the IAEA inspectors and “restarted” their nuke program?

I use quotes around restarted because most experts say they were cheating all along. And this is why negotiations are not going to work.

You need two people to negotiate in good faith. Both NoKo and Iran see negotiations as a stalling tactic and are not serious about reaching any agreement that would thwart their nuclear ambitions. The NoKo’s were processing uranium as early as 1998 according to the IAEA - this is while a couple of their sites were under surveillance.

It doesn’t matter what agreement is reached with Iran. If Russia gets to enrich their uranium, all they have to do to complete the process of making bomb grade fissile material is to take U-238 and bombard it with neutrons which transforms it over time into plutonium. This can be done in any nuclear reactor but is best done in heavy water reactors. Iran has two of those and only one would be monitored by IAEA. The other is “military” reactor and would not be under IAEA jurisdiction.

Mr. McNabb:

You are correct in almost everything you said. I read a piece published in the Congressional record that estimated a successful invasion-occupation of Iran would take more than a 700,000 troops - which means we would need NATO and probably Egypt and the Gulf States to come along; admittedly impossible.

As for Iran’s neighbors getting the bomb, we could hardly stop them after allowing Tehran to build theirs. Read that SSI study especially Part III that deals with the regional problems of a nuclear Iran.

As for “an act of war”…That may have had meaning in a pre-nuke age but not now - except perhaps to the delicate sensibilities of some of our citizenry.
Doing what needs to be done in spite of a hostile world should be a given. Nothing we can ever do - except give up our soveriegnty - will ever get the world to “like us.” We could pull back every US troop to our shores, dismantle our military, kowtow to the UN, kiss Chirac et al’s ass, and people would still hate us.

That’s the price we pay for being the biggest kid on the block. And frankly, since the process of becoming popular again will not only compromise our security but also damage us economically as we allow the rest of the world to trample all over us (moreso than we do now) I frankly could care less that other countries would like to see us subsume our national interest in the name of comity.

We’ll let the Democrats handle that when they get back in power.

I have said in several posts here that for Iran to have a nuke is a VERY BAD THING. But for us simply to say “it’s all their fault” or “they are EVIL” dismisses the fact that we have not and continue not to have any diplomatic options because of careless choices that we have made.

Let me be clear - We need to prevent Iran from getting a Nuke. Period. End of story. OK?

Now what? Do we bomb them to smithereens. Shit, while we are at it, why not initiate a first strike with a Nuke?

Airstrikes kill lots of civilians. Of all the civillian casualties in Iraq, most are not by our soldiers, but by bombs. We would do well to remember that as we ponder our plan. We can not afford to carelessly attack without world support. I am hearing more of that. That is good.

We would do well to let go of the first strike doctrine. It does no good but to make countries into opportunists when we are distracted.

Threatening to wipe Israel off the map is old rhetoric, it is a mind set that many groups over there hold. It does not at all help.

By the same turn, threatening to wipe out any government we want to because we feel they are a threat (at our sole discretion mind you) is relatively the same thing.

They want to wipe Israel off the map, we want to wipe Iran off the map - isnt the concept about the same - even close?

The Rhetoric is at a high level. We need to make it come down, and no friggin soccer match is going to accomplish that. We need a stellar diplomatic effort led by the united states state department (sidelined in recent years) to create conditions that will stop the development of nukes in Iran.

Like North Korea, they need to be bought out. Only this time, perhaps we should pay the bill in good faith.

One last thing. We always demand as a condition that X happen before we begin negotiations. In this case it will be that they abandon their nuke ambitions before we even talk. This sounds great for politicians, but never accomplishes anything. We both hold cards, better that everyone steps into the diplomatic ring to decide who will give up what.

It is a better environment for everyone to negotiate.

It doesnt sound tough, but it is a wiser choice.

Clearly the Iranians want something. We can provide. We want something. They can comply.

Negotiations really can be a simple matter with lots and lots of details.