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Tue 23 Nov, 2004 06:51 am
From the Jerusalem Post, of all places - siad to be from a London Observer story - which I will hunt for - still - seemed worth posting:
Report: US discussing strikes on Iran
By DOUGLAS DAVIS
LONDON ? Pentagon officials are said to be discussing possible military action to neutralize Iran's nuclear weapons threat, according to a report in London's Observer. US administration sources are quoted as saying that air strikes ? "either by the US or Israel" ? to wipe out Iran's fledgling nuclear program would be difficult because of a lack of clear intelligence about where key components are located.
Instead, sources quoted by the paper said the Pentagon is considering strikes in support of regime change, including attacks on the leadership, as well as on political and security targets
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The new "modeling" at the Pentagon, with its shift in emphasis from suspected nuclear sites to political target lists, is said to be causing deep anxiety among officials in Britain, France, and Germany, who last week appeared to have negotiated a deal with Teheran to cease work that could contribute to a nuclear weapons program. But Washington is said to be skeptical about the deal.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1101010793582
Oh god, when will it stop? I can't believe this.
This is a New York Times editorial from Nov. 20
This is not an Op/Ed article but the opinion of the Times editorial board
EDITORIAL
Groundhog Day
New York Times Published: November 20, 2004
Stop us if you've heard this one before. The Bush administration creates a false sense of urgency about a nuclear menace from a Middle Eastern country. Hard-liners talk about that country's connections to terrorists. They portray European diplomatic efforts to defuse tensions as a feckless attempt to appease a rogue nation whose word can never be trusted anyway. Secretary of State Colin Powell makes ominous-sounding warnings about new intelligence, which turns out to be dubious.
That is how President Bush rushed the country into an unnecessary conflict with Iraq in his first term, and we have been seeing alarming signs of that approach all week on Iran.
Let's be cleareyed about this: Iran has an active nuclear program, has not tried terribly hard to hide it and has been dishonest in its dealings with the West. But nothing we have seen suggests some new, urgent development in Iran that would impel American officials to start talking about "the military option." In fact, the most recent developments have been encouraging. Last week, under the threat of a looming U.N. deadline, Tehran said it would freeze all uranium and plutonium processing and invite back international inspectors.
It was a welcome step, resulting from efforts by Britain, France and Germany, and signaled that even the hard-liners in Tehran are susceptible to economic appeals. If the negotiations over Iran's nuclear programs go well, Europe promises to resume talks on a preferential trade agreement. If they don't, it will be time for international economic sanctions. After meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Mr. Bush went out of his way to praise and endorse the Europeans' efforts.
But on Wednesday, Mr. Powell suddenly offered scary sounding talk about new intelligence that supposedly showed that Iran was not only working on enriching uranium, a big step toward making a bomb, but was also working on ways to attach such a weapon to a missile. His alarmist tone was a bit puzzling, since everyone has already agreed that Iran has nuclear ambitions, and it's hard to imagine a country wanting to own a nuclear bomb without exploring ways to use it. The world has also known for years that Iran was testing guided missiles.
Puzzlement turned to alarm yesterday when The Washington Post reported that Mr. Powell's comments were based on unverified information that had been brought to the United States by a previously unknown source whose reliability and authenticity had not yet been vetted. That certainly did bring back old memories - of Mr. Powell assuring the world that Iraq was developing nuclear weapons, based on fanciful intelligence reports about aluminum tubes.
Steven Weisman of The Times reported that administration hawks were also talking about fresh intelligence on Iran's support for Hezbollah, which the world has known about for decades, and Iran's support for insurgents in Iraq, another old story. The hawks seem to be already starting to throw cold water on the prospects for a negotiated solution to the Iranian nuclear problem while trying to open the door to contemplating a military option. An administration official told The Times that Mr. Powell was trying to avoid meeting with the Iranian foreign minister at a conference both men are to attend in Egypt next week.
Small wonder, then, that the Europeans started to accuse Washington of trying to undermine diplomacy with Iran, just as the Bush administration thwarted their efforts to resume the U.N. inspections of Iraq - inspections that we now know had been highly effective.
Iran has long been a target of the hawks in the administration, who are undoubtedly feeling their oats after the election. But we hope that President Bush has learned enough from the Iraq adventure to understand the dangers of using flawed intelligence to create a false sense of urgency about a national security threat.
Obviously, a nuclear-armed Iran run by its current brand of extremists, who have twisted religion to support terrorism, would be a cause for real concern. But there is no military solution here. Iran's scattered and secretive nuclear program cannot be bombed out of existence. And even if the United States had not stretched its military to the limit in Iraq, invading Iran, a country of nearly 70 million people, would be a catastrophic mistake.
The Bush administration has said that stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons is at the top of its foreign policy agenda. That's where it belongs. But it's a goal that can be pursued only through truly multilateral diplomacy, in which the United States works with its European allies, rather than trying to undermine them, and the Europeans are prepared to stand behind Washington with a credible threat of economic sanctions when they are justified. It is not an excuse for war or even for pretending that war is a rational option.
crap -
quick, attack Iran, they're talking about stopping their enrichment program and we won't have an excuse in the near future!
There were no mass destruction weapons in Iraq after all. There were neither links between Sadam and Al Quaeda. Despite the Iraq War has not been the finest hour of American diplomacy, I still think it was a necessary and righteous action. Maybe the war arised due to economic interests, but a more complex and subtle analysis leads to the following conclusion: American neoconservatives were aiming at the creation of a democratic state in the Middle East- a region were almost everybody is under the despotic rule of an Ala blessed king or a ruthless dictator whose main objective is the entire annihilation of Israel. Iraq will also be a state comitted to international free trade, instead of the PECO ( a vilanous organization which is responsible for the most harmful economic crisis of the last 30 years ). So, once Iraq had retrieved peace, a big battle will have been won in the war against terrorism ( yes, all these governements are strong supporters of terrorism).
Well, take a look at Iran.
-Ruthless dictator( mullahs)(official objective: destroy Israel and the Jews allo ver the world)
+
-Strong commital to the PECO
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-Development of technology which is mainly used to produce NUCLEAR WEAPONS. This means tactical nukes and, if we wait a little bit more, a few ICBM.
+
- By the time the International Community had tried to stop this program trough non violent means, it will be too late. Iran will be able to blackmail the free world. For example, they would obly us to suspend aid to Israel. That would be an unbearable burden
SO
If they DO NOT AGREE to dismantle their program due to the economic and diplomatical pressure of International Community
PRE-EMPTIVE STRIKE on Iranian nuclear facilities is the best solution.