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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (270057)	1/27/2006 5:39:27 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Respond to of 1573435

How much more terrorism will both the CIA and Mossad inflict upon European "wimps" to goad them into their Iranian crusade? Blowing up a French oil refinery perhaps? Or another subway bombing in Britain? Or an "al-qaeda" bombing of the next soccer world cup in Germany this summer? Jeff Jacoby: Don't go wobbly on Tehran The Boston Globe FRIDAY, JANUARY 27, 2006 BOSTON 'It is not on the table. It is not on the agenda. I happen to think it is inconceivable." That was the British foreign secretary, Jack Straw, in September, telling the BBC what he thinks about the use of military force to prevent Iran's homicidal theocrats from acquiring nuclear weapons. Last week Straw went further, declaring that even economic sanctions would be an overreaction. "I don't think we should rush our fences here," he told a conference in London. Much better to turn the whole thing over to the UN Security Council, so long as any action it might take "is followed without sanction." What he recommends, in other words, is a Security Council resolution with no teeth. That'll fix the mullahs' wagon. To be sure, not every British politician has been so weak-kneed. Michael Ancram, a Tory member of Parliament, has called for Iran to be - brace yourself - expelled from the World Cup tournament in June. Barring the planet's foremost sponsor of terrorism from soccer matches - now there's Churchillian grit. Ancram says it will send "a very, very clear signal to Iran that the international community will not accept what they are doing." Sure it will. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's rabid president, must break into a sweat thinking about it. Not to be outdone by Britain in the going-wobbly department, Germany's foreign minister assured a television audience on Sunday that Berlin "will refrain from anything that brings us a step closer" to military action against Iran. Frank-Walter Steinmeier warned against "a militarization of thinking" on how to keep one of the world's worst regimes from acquiring the bomb. "Rather, we should see that we use and exhaust to the best of our powers the diplomatic solutions that remain available." Fortunately, not everyone is off in Cloud Cuckoo Land when it comes to dealing with Tehran. Israel's acting prime minister, Ehud Olmert, put his government's position bluntly: "Under no circumstances," he said on Jan. 17, "can Israel allow anyone with these kinds of malicious designs against us [to] have control of weapons of destruction that can threaten our existence." As the Jewish state has good reason to know, dictators who publicly vow to commit mass murder generally mean what they say - and are generally not deterred by threats of "diplomatic solutions." Israel is widely assumed to be at work on plans to destroy Iran's nuclear program. Iranian rulers have repeatedly declared their intention to wipe Israel off the map, and Vice President Dick Cheney said publicly more than a year ago that Israel "might well decide to act first" and attack Iran's nuclear facilities in its own self-defense. But it isn't clear that Israel could pull off such an operation, which would be far more complex than its strike on Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981. Unlike Osirak, which was a stand-alone facility, Iran's nuclear facilities are dispersed among dozens of sites. Many are hidden underground. Israel could not hope to carry off such a sustained military effort against targets a thousand miles away. Which is why, if Iran's nuclear program is to be demolished by force, it will have to be done by the United States. That "if" is still a significant one. It is not yet unreasonable to hope that Tehran can be forced to back down by a combination of economic sanctions, political isolation, and diplomatic heat. The best solution of all would be regime change, brought about by Iran's restive population of dissidents and democrats (aided by clandestine U.S. support of the kind that helped dissidents behind the Iron Curtain in the 1980s). But if a nonmilitary strategy is to have any chance of success, it must be very clear that military action is Plan B - and that the United States is quite prepared to wield that "big stick" if Iran will not abandon its atomic ambitions. The Bush administration - and, increasingly, leading Democrats - have been speaking out with growing urgency about preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear threat. What is not stressed enough is that Iran is not just a potential menace - it is a clear and present danger right now. The radical Islamists in Tehran bankroll the world's deadliest terrorists. They foment violence in Iraq. They lied for 18 years about their nuclear activities. They persecute democratic activists and oppress women. They declare that their goals are "a world without Zionism or America" and "the destruction of Anglo-Saxon civilization." It was they who began the war we are in - the global conflict between Islamofascism and the West - with their seizure of the U.S. embassy in 1979. Fanatic, apocalyptic, totalitarian, the mullahs who rule Iran see their destiny as waging jihad and extending theocracy across the entire Middle East. Under no circumstances can such enemies be permitted to acquire nuclear weapons - or to doubt that we will do what we must to make sure that they don't. (Jeff Jacoby's column appears regularly in The Boston Globe.) iht.com

To: Road Walker who wrote (270057)	1/27/2006 6:15:04 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Respond to of 1573435

Re: The relationship with Mexico is going downhill fast. As fast as that with India? Indian foreign secretary calls in US Ambassador www.chinaview.cn 2006-01-27 16:11:59 NEW DELHI, Jan. 27 (Xinhuanet) -- Indian Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran called in the U.S. Ambassador David C Mulford here to convey to him that the remarks made by him with regards to India's vote on Iran were not conducive to building a strong partnership between the two nations, Indian Foreign Ministry said here Thursday night. The foreign secretary informed the ambassador that India's vote on any possible resolution on the Iran nuclear issue at the IAEA would be determined by India's own judgement of the merits of the case. Concerning the proposed India-U.S. civil nuclear energy cooperation agreement, the foreign secretary reaffirmed India's stand that both countries needed to work in the spirit of the July-18-2005 Joint Statement signed by the Indian Prime Minister and U.S. President in the U.S., and in strict conformity with the reciprocal commitments contained therein. The ambassador expressed his sincere regrets, saying that his remarks had been taken out of context. It was not at all his intention to question India's right to take decisions on various issues on the basis of its own national interests. Shyam Saran and Mulford agreed that the two sides would work closely together for a successful visit by President George W. Bush to India. Wednesday, Mulford had said in an interview that if India did not vote against Iran's nuclear programme, the fallout on the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal in the Congress would be "devastating" and the initiative will "die". "We have made it known to them (India) that we would very much like India's support because India has arrived on the world stage and is a very very important player in the world," Mulford had said in the interview. "If it (India) opposes Iran having nuclear weapons, we think they should record it in the vote," he had said. news.xinhuanet.com