I think that all the yammering about Iran is simply a way to do an invasion, a huge bombing campaign against civilians, what have you. Then again, they may be within months or years of having the capability to enrich uranium which is a phenomenal upgrade on the danger scale.
Then again, how can ANYONE realistically believe that:
1. The US has a clue as to what is going on in Iran or NK (when did their 400% increase in nuclear weapons fall out of the media?)
2. This government would ever tell the truth to us if it had the slightest chance of getting away with a lie?
It's the 'crying wolf' syndrome and it makes everything so much more dangerous. Having been burned once, there is little or no chance that even Britain would support a war against Iran.
3. I don't think Iraq is a US protectorate because it's such a complete disaster. I think we're trying to make it our 51st state except on those days that we want to turn the clock back and not be there in the first place. It's also quite possible that the mess in Iraq makes Iran MORE POWERFUL rather than less.
4. Even if we thought that Iran had the capability to enrich uranium next week, what we do about it at this point? They've learned how to spread out their facilities after Israel bombed the ones in Iraq so Israel can't take them out. We don't have troops enough for Iraq much less for a country with 3 times as many people. Would Europe say yes to an invasion? Would Bush do a preemptive strike and use those tactical nuclear weapons to wipe out civilians by the boatload?
Dunno.....Remember the 90s and Pax Clintonia? I blame Monica Lewinsky and Bill for this.
5. All the yammering about Iran doesn't have to do with WMDs anyway because when it really counts Bush just ignores the problem in favor of going on vacation:
"...For whatever combination of reasons, the Bush administration has not given high priority to this whole set of tasks. The fact is that if you look at their behavior, it’s not behavior that’s consistent with feeling that this an urgent, imminent threat. Initially, they came in and proposed cutting the money for Nunn-Lugar. Then because of Senator Lugar, an important Republican, and others, they restored the funds back to about the Clinton level. But after 9/11, when you would have thought that we would see a great acceleration of this activity, fewer potential nuclear weapons in Russia were secured than in the two years before 9/11. That seems just crazy, but that’s a fact.
MJ.com: Apart from Russia, where else might terrorists get nuclear materials?
GA: Unfortunately, there are a number of answers to the question. First, Pakistan. We know that they have 50 nuclear weapons, approximately, and they’ve made material for another 50. A.Q. Khan turned out to be simultaneously the world’s leading black marketer in nuclear weapons, materials, bomb designs, and consulting services, and he had developed a global network for supplying this, which he supplied -- at least -- to Iran, Libya, North Korea, and perhaps even to terrorists. Many people in the Pakistani military and intelligence services are very sympathetic to bin Laden. There’ve been two attempts within a second or second and a half, of killing [Pervez] Musharraf, the president, just in the past year. So Pakistan is a ticking nuclear time bomb.
Then there' s North Korea, which has been producing plutonium every day now for the last year and a half. The U.S. has done nothing about it, hardly even noticed it. And then there are risky research reactors in about twenty developing and transitional countries like Uzbekistan and Belarus.
MJ.com: How much are we spending on nuclear safety compared to other defense spending?
GA: We spend $550 billion, approximately, on our whole national security effort: defense, homeland security, intelligence, the war in Iraq. We spend about $10 billion on missile defense this year and we’re spending about $1 billion on this activity. So, if this is, as President Bush says, the greatest threat our country faces, the fact that we’re spending a very small percent of one percent of the total effort would seem out of proportion.
MJ.com: You argue that the war in Iraq has made us less, not more safe from the threat of a nuclear attack.
GA: It’s a complicated argument because one’s got to weigh the positives and the negatives, but I would say the big facts are the following. First, Iraq has consumed all of the attention, all of the energy, all of the high-level focus, all of the diplomatic leverage, all of our military capabilities, and a lot of money. It’s kind of sucked the air out of attention to any other major task.
Second, while we’ve been in Iraq, what has been happening in North Korea? North Korea has seen that we were not been paying attention to [them] so they’ve been racing ahead with their nuclear ambitions. While we were getting ready to go to Iraq in January, North Korea withdrew from the non-proliferation treaty, kicked out the IAEA inspectors, turned off the video cams that were watching the 8,000 fuel rods that contain enough plutonium for six more bombs, and have been reprocessing these fuel rods every day, making more plutonium. They’re soon going to have enough more plutonium for six more bombs. We’re now faced the specter of a country that is sometimes half facetiously called Missiles “R” Us becoming Nukes “R” Us.
And then Iran, which also has serious nuclear ambitions, has, while we’ve been distracted, been racing ahead to try and finish its factories that will allow it to enrich uranium and reprocess plutonium. It’s just about to get across those lines as well, and if it gets across those lines, there is no further policeable line between that and them having nuclear weapons..."
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