Steve 41oo wrote:hi blatham, hope you're all doing fine
This is a frightening story. I saw Farenheit 911 on Brit tv last night. A nuclear attack on Iran would be madness. But then look at some of the people who are still part of Bushco.
There is insanity around. I no longer know if its me them or the wider world.
In an article in the influential British political magazine Spectator I read today that "Iran really will be next...James Forsyth says that if Bush doesnt stop Tehran's bomb, the next President will".
Iran's nuclear industry is widely spread and some of it deep underground. Somebody somewhere may well conclude that nuclear weapons are the only device that will destroy them. The US is going to get condemned anyway.. you may as well get condemned for something you did rather than something you hope you did but cant be sure.
hi steve...I'm doing fine, thanks
The consequences of an administration and military in the US actually using a nuke would be more severely negative than any other act they might commit - to their personal reputations, to their potential personal legal jeopardies, to their party/ideology's prospects in the future, and to the economy. Further, other than the real fruitcakes in Israel, I believe that nation understands it would suddenly face something like a
certainty of the same act perpetrated upon them.
I think it is much more likely that the deciders would purposefully leak the notion of such a step so as to, by way of contrast, make a conventional attack look reasonable. Or, that the whole set of moral prohibitions against nuke use that has been built up in our lifetimes is being put into question - purposefully - in order to facilitate significant contemporary expenditures by the US government to military/industrial elements.
I'm not familiar with Forsyth but his surmise just doesn't make sense to me. The only folks who are so extreme are really all associated with the neoconservative crowd, and that crowd's influence will not survive the next election.