I didn’t vote because the questions are skewed.  I’m convinced bush will go to war before the election in ‘06. He will do it in an effort to maintain control of congress in the ‘06 elections.  He knows diebold, and inside help at the precincts will help him, but he also knows the American People are overwhelmingly against him and the war.  He knows if Congress is taken over by the Democrats in ‘06 his Gang will be thrown out of office, and he will be impeached.

I know if he stays in power through ‘06 all is lost.

oceanye

Iran may be much more threatening to the U.S. than Saddam ever was. Saddam’s terrorist role was an adjunct to his own defense and not his day job. Unlike the Cold War days with the Soviet leaders or present day North Korea’s dictator, all of whom prefer to continue living, Iran’s president seems to be a genuine Islamic extremist which sees glory in death.

He may only be posturing, but according to “Cobra ll,” a recent book about the run up to the Iraq War, Saddam’s duplicity either convinced Bush, or gave him the cover for invasion (it matters little to the result). Evidence shows that while Saddam continued to deny WMD possession to the UN and US, at the same time he was leaking that he did have WMD in order to forestall Iran and Shiite attacks.

Other countries have expressed more concern about Iran’s nuclear ambitions and there may be a chance at something less than war.  Anything less than a massive attack could be like opening a hornet’s nest.

Bush’s/Rumsfeld’s like of credibility will be like the “Boy who cried WMD” to even many of his former advocates. We should keep in mind the Mark Twain comment — “Once a cat jumps on a hot stove, he will never do it again. But he won’t jump on a cold one either.”

To jump, or not to jump, that is the question.

No way, no how. Iran is a totally different terrain--mountains, not flat desert like Iraq-- and they have a much larger armed forces. Plus, Iran has strategic alliances with Russia, China, Brazil, and the EU. And there is no way in hell we have the military capability now, our forces are stretched way way too thin.

This Iran nonsense is just fearmongering and diversionary tactics to keep people from looking at the crooks in Washington and the hell this American handbasket of ours is rapidly falling into.

Surely Bush isn’t stupid enough to attack Iran. Where will he find the cannon fodder to die in his quest for world domination. Hitler was a threat to Europe. The US has become a threat to the entire world. We are a rouge state. Who can blame Iran or any other nation on Bush’s hit list from developing nuclear weapons.

Perhaps a few other questions are in order before coming to a conclusion.

1. Is war a rational act?  Yes__ No__ Sometimes__ Never__

2. When people are afraid, will they tend to be more or less rational?

3. If someone believes (either through misinformation or hubris) he knows how others will react isn’t risk of a wrong choice increased?
• Saddam didn’t think the U.S. would attack.
• The U.S. (Rumsfeld/Tennant) thought Iraq would be a short, easy war and a democratic model for the area.

I expect we will try for more international cooperation (UN or NATO) and then issue warnings and/or sanctions. This may be seen as a line in the sand by Iran and bring a belligerent reply — or, if recent comments have been just testing western resolve, cool the rhetoric for a bit.

That would bring a temporary pause, not a solution.

If or when there is an attack on Iran it will more likely be a massive strategic bombing than an invasion. We don’t even have enough troops to do the Iraq War pacification phase effectively.  This has been pointed out before (a few generals including Colin Powell), during and after — most recently by several other retired generals. This approach could also be expected to warn North Korea to sit tight and shut up.

Fear need not be rational to be a great motivator. The 9/11 attacks will be in the forefront once more in the new movie and 24/7 discussion.  The polls already show popular support for prevention of Iran obtaining nuclear weapons .

Whether it is “fair” for Iran and others to desire these weapons is irrelevant. If I thought someone was planning to attack my home — I would not offer him a gun equal to mine. Would you?

It seems to me, that it is inevitable that some idiotic rogue state is going to figure out a way to wreck havoc on neighboring states. Chemical, biological, nuclear, the method is not as important as the fact that some group of so-called human beings are going to consider this a “GOOD” thing. So Ahmadinejad wants Isreal “wiped off the map”. His grab at a “nuke” might do it. WOW, he really cares about the Palestinians, doesn’t he? He is not a direct threat to America, but we need to train our sites on Iran. WE SHOULD NOT ATTACK PRE-EMPTIVELY OR UNI-LATERALLY! I don’t believe Pres. Cheney agrees with this summation, nor his subordinates, Bush or Rumsfeld. I’m tired of this tension. We have a generation that has not seen, directly, what nuclear holocaust is all about. Why not let it happen and hope that mankind can then go forward in peace and harmony. Lord knows that ain’t happening now. Jeeez, I hate to be so negative, but this species has not shown me anything to be positive about for a long while.
Blessed are the self-righteous.......I guess !!!!

>Im convinced bush will go to war before the election in ‘06 He will do it in an effort to maintain control >of congress in the ‘06 elections.

Never happen in a million years. We are not going to war with Iran.

A really lousy set of questions. So if I believe Bush will attack Iran, it is because they deserve it? Who’s writing this shit, Jon Stewart?

Thanks, Seamus. Unfortunately, there will be a next time.

Read this!!

The Proposed Iranian Oil Bourse
Krassimir Petrov, Ph.D. 
January 15, 2006

Abstract: the proposed Iranian Oil Bourse will accelerate the fall of the American Empire.

http://energybulletin.net/12125.html

What a poorly formulated series of possible responses.  The most likely answer, in my opinion, is that yes, we will go to war against Iran.  It will happen for essentially the same reason we went to war against Iraq: an effort by the Bush administration to galvanize Bush’s floundering, directionless presidency.  It will give Bush and his cohorts the opportunity, once again, to smear as unpatriotic, anyone who disagrees.

chuckville,

Doesn’t have to be Iran - attacking Iran of course would be idiotic; but then consider who willl make the decision.  Bush WILL start a war somewhere to maintain control before the 06 elections - either that or some ‘terruble act of terrorism’ will occur in our Country - conveniently a month or so prior to the election - and will serve the same purpose..

oceanye

I can’t imagine the United States can contemplate an invasion/attack on Iran. Moral considerations completely aside, you do not have the resources left in the Pentagon’s arsenal or in the treasury. Iraq and Afganistan are more than a handful.
As for Iran, I am no apologist for their extreme form of government, but shouldn’t they be justified in feeling a little paranoid? Were they not named to the “axis of evil”? And two of their neighbours, invaded and governments toppled by the US within the last 5 years.

WTH
Iran’s not going to attack anybody’s home, not even mine that is far closer than yours, so stop fabulating !

We’ve got enough real shit to worry about without this concocted stuff.

To return from Mr Reid’s science fiction to earth: the technology of making nuclear weapons is not obscure. The Iranians claim to have enriched uranium to the “3.5 per cent level”. This is enough to use as nuclear fuel, but nowhere near enough for nuclear weapons. That requires up to 90 per cent enrichment, with 50 to 100 kilograms of it to make a single bomb. The Iranians say they have 164 centrifuges. But thousands would be needed to get a significant amount of weapons grade uranium. Experts say it would take five years or more to produce an atomic bomb from domestic processes.

The biggest danger of nuclear proliferation is not that rogue states will learn how to enrich uranium enough to build nuclear weapons but that already enriched uranium stocks will leak out to terrorist groups. A terrorist group that obtained 50kg of highly enriched uranium would probably be able to make a nuclear device. But it could make it anywhere — in a garage in London, for instance. The answer to this is not to bomb Iran, but to reduce such stockpiles (mainly in Russia and the United States) to a minimum, and make sure they are under iron control.

People who support military action ask: how do we know that Iran isn’t lying when it says that its uranium enrichment programme is intended only for civilian use? Surely, this is a clear case for invoking the precautionary principle: the risk may be slight but the consequences of ignoring it may be catastrophic. But no one is arguing that the risk should be ignored. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty now also allows for intrusive inspections. Hans Blix has written: “If you want a control system that gives a maximum of assurance, you can . . . require that inspectors have the right to go almost anywhere, any time, and demand any kind of documents.” Iran has accepted this protocol and operating under it the International Atomic Energy Agency has found no evidence that it is developing a weapons programme. However, the protocol could be strengthened for states such as Iran whose leaders make Hitlerian pronouncements.

Given that it is possible, though difficult, to put in place a series of checks on Iran’s nuclear ambitions, our leaders need to weigh very carefully the equivocal comfort that a so-called preventive strike may buy against the massive costs of mounting one. It is as certain as it can be that a strike against Iran would inflame Muslim hatred throughout the Middle East and beyond. It would interrupt oil supplies and disorganise the world economy. It would swell the insurgency in Iraq, multiply the numbers of “terrorists” and strengthen their determination to exact a terrible vengeance, especially on Israel. It would be against every counsel of prudent statesmanship. The danger is that we will drift into war because we lack the will and imagination to create institutions to make peace safe.

“The threat posed by Iran has been grossly exaggerated” will be debated tomorrow at the Royal Geographical Society in one of a series of Times debates. http://www.intelligencesquared.com

i borrowed this from robert skidelsky in todays sunday times.

This innane poll is matched only by the editor’s note following the first letter in the current issue (May 2006) titled “What about Fidel?”.  It has me wondering, what about ITT?

Rather that write a coherent response to the issue raised by the letter writer --of Cuba and Fidel’s centrality to all that is unfolding in Latin America-- whoever was editor of the May’s letters page had to insert her own comment about Cuba being a miltary dicatatorship as if it were some sort of necessary clarification of fact.  If it were my hometown paper, I would be incensed.  Why should I make an allowance for ITT?

The writer of the current poll has chosen a peculiar slant that is really hard to figure out but which has disallowed the rest of us any gauge of our opinions.  Perhaps she takes a perverse pleasure in constucting a flawed poll to make obvious to all the inherent bias that lies in the choice of questions.  That is the only way I can make sense of it.  Maybe it is some sort of inside joke.

Both are insulting.  Does ITT not value the opinions of its readers?

Crispino, I feel the same and didn’t vote as none of the responses satisfied my opinion. I would have liked to destroy the ballot in protest.

I have seen a similar poll recently here in the Canadian media about the new Conservative government banning the media from covering the arrival of dead Canadian soldiers from the misadventure in Afghanistan.

The responses they provided for the poll, both in the matter I mention and this poll on ITT, almost seemed to be calculated to sidestep the real issue.

Insulting, to say the least.

As Opeluboy says Who’s writing this shit ????

Whattheheck (and anyone else who imagines that a preemptive or preventive attack on Iran could be a good thing),

With respect,

Whattheheck, you say, Whether it is “fair” for Iran and others to desire these weapons is irrelevant. If I thought someone was planning to attack my home — I would not offer him a gun equal to mine. Would you?

Are you afraid of Iran? Are you sleepless with nightmares of Iranian bombs falling on your head?

How do you think the average guy in Iran feels. Do you think he is afraid of the USA and has nightmares about American bombs falling on his head?

Kill them because one day they may kill you?

Even if Iran were to acquire even one nuclear bomb, or even more, rest assured that the USA has hundreds if not thousands times more and a far greater ability to deliver the death and destruction than Iran has.

Does that let you sleep all snuggly in your bed at night?

Try to develop some empathy and stop thinking of them as the other and thinking of them as one of us.

with more respect ...

And that’s entertaining the notion that they are trying to develop nuclear weapons. It has certainly not been proven that they are.

They have the right to develop uranium enrichment under the NPT. That is a fact. Where’s the trust?

Where is the consistency when dealing with and assisting other nations considered allies when it comes to their nuclear programs? Good for some but not for others?

How about Mutually Assured Destruction?

That sort of trust maybe if the other is impossible?

I am just trying to understand.

... and a nod to Seamus.

Thanks for admitting the responses were, if not a little lame, at least lacking.

Do we get a new poll to better assess opinion amongst your faithful readers?

(I don’t like your multiplicity, nor your duplicity, of choices, Mr.Blogmeister.)

Forget ‘o8---It depends on who’s going to be President in ‘o6 !!!

I think that Bush, Cheney, Rice, Hastert and on down through the Secretary of Agriculture will all be impeached for stupidity (at least) by December ‘o6.
We’ll have special elections in January ‘07. 
Gore & newly-Democratic McCain or Kerry-Clinton will win against a newly Republicanized Lieberman & Howard Dean, and then we’ll send in some clowns to cheer up Ahmadinejad.  He’s too depressed for a nucular
(pron: NU-klee-er, you dumbsh*t-you-know-who-you-are)
strike capability. 

I don’t think he wants to be president anymore, anyway.
Khamenei says nukes are an abomination, so they have a better chance of hooking up to whirling dervish power. 

But I really think that the power of remote prayer will finally be perfected by our cataclysmic PatRobertsons real soon and they’ll get ahmadinejad delisted (and decapitalized) when the Bushies go back into the bushes.

Now how’s that for an essay question?

This is a ridiculous poll.  who gives you the choices?
The answer is ‘Yes, Iran is not a threat, but Bush wants to control the oil reserves in the Middle East and Africa.  “

Yeah, choices that are not really choices.
Gee sort of like American elections.

Yep, we can choose the lesser of 2 evils.  Gore Vidal was correct: We have one party here: Big Business, with the Dems the weaker link.

You know, the point is being missed.  If Iran acquires nuclear weapons, they will use it as a shield to ramp up conventional terrorist strikes on us all.  The grand “international community [pronounced with a French accent]” will not be able to do a damned thing then, we will be at their mercy.  I think the very detailed nuclear warhead design contained on a laptop smuggled out by Iranian dissidents to the IAEA is proof enough of their intent.  It is not a question of if, just a question of can we hit’em hard enough to decapitate the regime and end their nuclear program.  I think covert ops supporting key Iranian dissident groups and air support would be enough to cave the mullahs, any thoughts?