Well Now This Should Start A Nice Fight......

Hmmm - I think Iran is a way tougher proposition than Iraq.

But still....

I agree. Of course having a base of operations to strike in any direction from, say like Iraq, will be helpful. The reinstatement of the draft should make it possible to send a shitload of American boys and girls over there......then there'll be the cooperative conscription of Iraqi boys and girls.....all will be well until the inevitable Waterloo.....or Armegeddon, whatever you choose to call it.....that's my opinion....I'd love to, pray to, hope to be wrong....

It makes sense to me. The clerical thugs running Iran are cut from the same cloth as the clerical thugs that were running Afghanistan. It would also explain why Iran has been busting it's butt the past year trying to create a nuclear weapon, it guarantees "respect" in the international community. ie they are scared. What Bush et al do not seem to understand is that the majority of the Iranian population are sick and tired of the people running their government and give a fair chance would run them out. Invading would simple create a nationalist reaction.

Do you think if bushinc did understand that, (and I believe they do) that they would give a damn or they would let it influence their agenda?

I think bushinc likes to fight, wants to fight, and are helpless to restrain themselves from operating as they do, just like the school bully. Simplistic perhaps, but as I've said before the world runs, in the end, on playground rules.

And possibly the same scenario repeating.

The US (and Britain) arguably created the Mullah run Iranian government, by ousting the elected leader in favour of the damned Shah - whose rule created such a backlash that the Mullah stuff got all mixed up with nationalism - and made the opposition to the Shah VERY anti-American. And VERY socially and religiously reactionary.

So - invade Iran? Get the government toppled again? Hmmmmmm......

I'm not too thrilled that these ass wipes start wars that they don't fight...they just send out other peoples children to the slaughter...theres not a dimes worth of difference bewtween any of them.......

BPB
BPB, I agree with the article that Iran was involved with al Qaeda and indirectly with the 9/11 attack. Do you suppose we attacked Iraq due to a misspelling of Iran and simply got the two countries mixed up?

The problem I see is that if the US were to attack Iran, all those young people who are turning against their government would be forced to their defense if their country is attacked.

It seems to me the best way to change Iran is to encourage and support the younger generations who want government change. Changing it themselves is the best and most sensible way. To attack Iraq would result in the opposite outcome.

Sadly, we cannot count on Bush et al to understand this if they are elected to a second term.

BBB

All of this presumes that the current administration gives two sh!ts about the American people and terrorism. All of this presumes that a due concern for the sponsorship of terrorism motivated the invasion of Iraq, as opposed to simply having been a pretext--a pretext for a policy in place well before September, 2001.

Re: Well Now This Should Start A Nice Fight......


"Paranoia strikes deep, into you heart it will creep"

You would have us believe the bipartisan 9/11 Commission is actually an agent of "Bush Inc.," deliberately placing false accusations against Iran in a report which challenges the administrations suppositions about Iraq, just so "Bush Inc." can formulate an excuse to invade Iran?

Even if positive proof appeared that Iran was directly linked to 9/11 appeared on the front page of the NY Times, there are any number of daunting practical and political hurdles the Administration would have to clear before they could launch an invasion of Iran in less than 24 months. Of course, Bush has to be reelected four months from for consideration of an invasion to have any practical meaning.

It is a fair criticism of the Bush Administration that by justifying the invasion of Iraq with questionable intelligence which now has little to no chance of being borne out, it has raised the bar to an extreme height for the "proof" it would need to present to justify military action against a more direct and immediate threat (e.g. Iran or North Korea).

The "proof" laid out by the 9/11 Commission of ties between Iran and al-Qaida come nowhere near to crossing that highly placed bar.

I don't think there's a single Democrat in Congress who would support an invasion of Iran, and quite a few who would scream bloody murder about it.

A large number of Republicans would think long and hard before supporting such an invasion, and many would decide they could not.

There would likely be riotous demonstrations in the streets of San Francisco and Seattle, let alone London, Madrid and Islamabad.

A second Coalition of The Willing could not possibly be formed. Even England, Australia and Italy couldn't be expected to join in.

You might argue that the administration ignored a similar level of resistance in invading Iraq, but that would not be remotely true.

This is not to say that the rather paradoxical statement by the Telegraph is not true: "Hawks within the administration want a concerted effort to overturn the regime by peaceful means," but who, other than the Mullahs and other Middle Eastern despots have a problem with this?

It also doesn't mean that this statement (which interestingly is accompanied by virtually no substantiation) "Some Bush officials are privately contemplating a possible military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities before Russian fuel rods are delivered next year," is not true.

Neither, though, represent anything even close to a real suggestion that President Bush and his cabinet are contemplating an invasion of Iran.

This doesn't even begin to address the practical problems of mounting the military resources necessary to launch a full scale invasion of a country given that our current resources are stretched quite thin and any attempt to reinstate a draft would be met with stiff resistance.

I appreciate that you believe Bush is one or steps away from declaring Martial Law and sweeping away all of these hurdles with a wave of his dictatorial fist, but that too is a reflection of paranoia run wild.

Two years or so from now, assuming Bush is reelected, circumstances may allow a serious consideration of further military exploits, but until then it would take a direct attack on US soil with unambiguous and direct connections to a foreign nation.

and meoww hiss to you as well Finn.

I believe that there will be a popular uprising in Iran leading to a civil war long before we need to invade,

Right now, we probably have agents undercover in Iran feeding rebels arms and information.

It will be interesting to see what evolves in Iran.

I'm with McG.

Iran faces their own popular revolt. I know we're in there, giving aid to the kids. I hope that's enough.

I will say I'm thrilled with the Commissions, and the Butler report. Especially about the 16 words--which were TRUE. Wonder how Joe Wilson's lawsuit is going...

I'm also with McG

(dunno about civil war ... hope not ... but otherwise)

nimh--

I saw your Uganda thread on Google!

Isn't aiding the young Iranians "realpolitik"? (Sincere question.)

Need?
This kind of attitude on the US part is not helpful in making friends.

Nimh - do you really see that happening anytime soon?

I know a more progressive government was voted in - but quashed. Do you think unrest is getting anywhere near a decisive stage? Where do you think the military in Iran will sit?

The biggest aid to the "kids" in Iran that I think we can give in their revolution against fundementalists is to avoid things like calling Iran an "axis of evil".

Things like that bolster the fundementalists through nationalism and fear.

Oooooww well its not like I'm an expert of any kind about the country ... at all. In fact, if anything I should be a little discredited after I had it all wrong a little while ago; after the hardliners re-grabbed hold of power by stitching up the elections, I really did already expect a revolt of some kind. After all, earlier clampdowns by Khamenei's people had led to fierce student rebellions, and the students obviously enjoy the sympathy of the urban population (most of it too young to have lived through or remember 1979) ...

But it fizzled. Perhaps the population had already been numbed by the deadlock of the previous years, when the democratically elected President and parliament kept slamming their head into the juduicial/legislative wall of the conservatives that dominate the bodies whose power overrode theirs ... perhaps Khatami had already made so many compromises, was so half-hearted about opposing the conservatives' new blatant grab for power, that people just became demoralised, resigned, disgusted by it all ... I dunno.

I do think that, even if a new period of stagnation seems to have started now, the conservatives will not be able to hold on to power for a whole many more years. The Iranian population is young - half the population is under 25, or something amazing like that. And they've exhibited great impatience in the past few years. And of course - whenever they were offered a reasonably free choice in elections, such as in the ones before the last, they massively voted in reformists and progressives. Culturally, too, most of the young people seems to have long shrugged off the mullahs' admonishments - the only way the regime holds on to power now is through intimidation and through spreading the sense that resistance is no use, anyway - after all, look at how it went last time. Good enough spiel - but it cant work forever.

Yep, thats what I'm thinking too.

But I am more flexible when it comes to providing undercover support to opposition groups, even if its just getting them ways to print stuff, computers perhaps ...

It's complicated, because on the one hand, the homegrown opposition (and I'm talking the new generation's civic opposition, not the armed opposition that appears to be dominated by rather dubious sorts itself) can do a much better job of undermining the mullahs and conservatives than any attempts by the Americans themselves could succeed in from the outside. (US efforts at radio propaganda broadcasts and so on haven't been too convincing in the region thus far ...)

But on the other hand, if a movement is all too visibly supported from outside, it will get into immediate trouble, plus possibly discredited in the public's view.

Still, there must be some way to smuggle some help into the country ... and I'm sure the Americans are already doing so from Iraq ... now hope they're doing it in the right ways.


Depends on why you do it ...

I'd do it because I think their cause is a just and a necessary one - not simply as a way to get an enemy of America out of the way ...