Bill, why do bother with Ledeen? You are much too smart for him. The man is an outright liar and a propagandist. This is not the first time his rhetoric has not stood up to any sanity test. Let's look at it here:
> Just a few months ago, Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze held a press conference in which he announced that his country's leading nuclear experts were in Iran, working on the mullahs' bomb.
Really? I searched and I could not find any references where Mr. Shevardnadze confesses to helping Iran make bombs. This sounds like an outright lie to me.
> Within the past two months, leaders of Iran's Revolutionary Guards were informed by the country's National Security Council that the country would soon have nuclear weapons, and there are some well-informed people who tell me that the regime is hoping to be able to test a device by the end of the summer.
Yah right! Who are these informed sources? CIA? NSA? Foreign Allies? And what shall we think of Mr. Ledeen when there are no nuclear tests by the end of summer?
> Whatever the accuracy of these various estimates and assessments
How nice! Having stated these "estimates" as clear facts and truth, he now attempts to make himself look objective before feeding us the next big lie.
> there is no doubt that the leaders of Iran's shaky mullahcracy view nuclear weapons as an insurance policy, both against American action and against their own alienated masses.
Come again? How is this an insurance against the people? If there is an uprising in Shiraz, they are going to nuke their own city?
> We should do the same for the Iranians as we did for the Philippinos against Marcos, the Yugoslavs against Milosevic, and the Czechs, Hungarians, and Poles against the Soviet Empire.
And what is that? I hear a lot of words but very few concrete suggestions.
> a democratic Iran will not be inclined to commit hara-kiri by launching a nuclear first strike against Israel, nor will it likely brandish its bombs against the United States
Neither does the theocratic one in Iran. Don't get me wrong. I wish to see them all burn in hell. But don't see it anywhere in the cards that Iran will initiate a nuclear attack against Israel. It is not as if Israel loves Iran any more than Iran loves Israel. So why isn't there any talk about Israel nuking Iran? Because for similar reasons, it too isn't going to happen.
> the Iranian regime is arguably the most anti-American on earth.
More than the Taliban were? Or Saddam? Or Libya? Or Syria? This view completely ignores the help Iran provided prior and during the Afghanistan war. It seems to me not too long ago there was genuine progress being made between the two governments.
> Let's support the people, and help them bag the regime.
This is the only part of his essay that I agree with. Coming from Ledeen though, I wonder if it means what normal English read of it would mean. |
