Am I the only one who thinks history is repeating itself?

From Yahoo news

Come on now, would our president really lie to us?

It makes much more sense that this report is wrong.

liberal media ldo

top of nytimes.com:

Not really. The NIE leading up to the Iraq war said Iraq had WMD. My best guess is that the intelligence community isn't letting themselves get rolled by the Administration this time.

lmao,that's an awesome little chart thing. WTG NYtimes.

The interesting question to me is this: If Bush decides to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities (real or alleged), would he go to Congress for approval like before the Iraq war? Or would he claim authority to do so without prior Congressional approval? I really cannot see Congress giving the green light this time, so the latter might be his only option.

I usually don't buy the stronger media-bias claims, but this story has so many angles that it's very interesting to see which ones get played up. FWIW, "Report contradicts Bush on Iran nuclear program" doesn't seem like a very fair headline.

OMG the only reason a progarm halts is because it is finished! we didn't halt the manhattan project until is was finished, did we?

OMG WE MUST BOMB AT ONCE@ NO TIME FOR DEBATE! RED ALERT!

Jeez, what happened in 2003 that could have ever made Iran stop its nuclear program?

I can't imagine why any country in the world would view our attack on Iraq as a reason to not progress with a nuclear program, since the one rogue nation led by a crazy dictator that DOES have nuclear weapons is the only one we largely ignore...

North Korea isn't an analogous situation for many reasons, most obviously being that NK is basically a Chinese puppet and already has nuclear weapons.

Iran didn't have nukes yet, and weren't very close to it yet either. From their perspective, we were just "crazy" enough to take down their neighbor for less "egregious offenses". Hell, people in the US were/are scared of us invading, why wouldn't Iran be? It seems like it would be a reasonable strategy to scale down their nuclear program temporarily until "the heat is off" or whatever.

There are several problems. First of all, you assume that "scaling down" would somehow help, as if that helped Iraq. Second of all, who's to say when the "heat is off"? It's not like the violence in the region is going to stop anytime soon, it's not like we're on our way out of Iraq, it's not like Israel is about to stop existing and it sure as **** isn't as though we are about to stop using foreign oil.

- Scaling down the program, whether or not it may help, would definitely be a logical course of action from the Iranians. I'm not saying that it is a good idea, but it is a possible course of action for the Iranians.

- "who's to say when the "heat is off"?" the iranians??..... again, debating the effectiveness of the strategy is wasted effort. It still is perfectly reasonable to assume that watching their neighbor getting their **** handed to them caused a change in their course of action.

None. He'd just give a green light to Israel to start bombing and when the US bases in the region would be attacked, would be presented as a question of self-defense.

"Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war: Neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country." - Hermann Goering, Hitler's #2 man

boracay, question-

if you were 100% sure that Iran had nuclear weapons, would Israel be justified bombing those facilities under self-defense?

FYQ

owsley-

no, because Israel has never threatened to destroy Iran as a country, nor have they ever supported or took part of any prior military action designed to destroy Iran as a country. Iran has done both to Israel, and to ignore or dismiss that fact to equate the two situations is intellectually dishonest/ignorant.

Iran has taken military action against israel? news to me. wow you make stuff up.

Meh, reasonable mistake. Iran was like one of the only countries in that region to not attack Israel during the war in the 60's (6 day war?)

you realize they're not arabs, right? you know where iran is on a map, right?

btw you notice bush in his ww3 speech changed the whole thing he back off from saying gotta stop iran from getting nukes to saying we gotta stop iran from *having the information necessary to get nukes*.

wow that's a pretty low standard, I mean the information about how to make a nuke bomb was on the whitehouse.gov own website not too long ago I think.

It's starting to really get thick.

Persians are not Arabs, and Iran has never attacked Israel (and Israel has never attacked Iran): which makes me wonder why Iran supplies arms to Hezbollah and Hamas, which do periodically attack Israel. It also makes me wonder why Iran is so rabidly opposed to Israel and why Iran's leaders have repeatedly called for wiping Israel off the map. It's almost as if Iran is more anti-Israel than any Arab groups are.

I don't think the USA has, or will have, justification to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities based on the potential Iranian nuclear threat. I do think Israel will have existential justification to do so as Iran's fissile material program proceeds, or that Israel will at least will have legitimate reason to view it as an existential threat and will likely take any defensive action deemed necessary.

If Iran wants to avoid getting bombed by Israel, Iran ought to tone down the rhetoric and make nice a little bit or else Israel will have every reason to think that Iran may well indeed one day try to wipe Israel off the map once it gets nukes.

On a related note, how many think Iran won't re-start its nuclear weapons program once it produces and owns plenty of fissile material?

My view is that the USA won't have the moral right to bomb Iran but Israel probably will at some point have the moral right to do so. If a neighbor is continuallly spouting off about wiping you out, and is doing the research necessary to produce the material to make the bomb that can do so, you will have the right of self-defense to preempt that threat. If Hitler's neighbors had known what he was up to they would have been justified in preempting Germany's threat too. The two situations are in many ways different but the principle is that a perceived and likely genuine existential threat justifies extreme measures in self-defense. Let's note that such a threat did not exist in the case of Iraq and the USA; the USA was not existentially threatened by Saddam's regime. Iran is doing a great deal to make Israel feel highly and existentially threatened. Iran's bellicose (and perhaps politically driven) stance and rhetoric may end up costing it dearly.

If Iran would have just minded its own business and not taken it upon itself to be a leader in anti-Israel rhetoric and actions, this wouldn't even be an issue. The only connection Iran has to the Arabs and Palestinians is a shared hatred of Israel (a modern-day Islamic tradition, it seems) and a commonality in greater Islam.

If decades ago the USA had stayed out of the Middle East politically, there probably wouldn't have been Islamic Revolution in Iran during the Carter years and all this would be less of a concern now. (hint hint, maybe Ron Paul's non-interventionism is actually the wisest long-term strategy).

Just my thoughts and thanks for reading.

well you realize israel funded/fundss hamas too, and that some orthodox jewish groups are themselves against israel.

iran "wipe off map" is propaganda. I mean remember the iran makes jews wear gold stars thing a la the iraq incubagtor thing? how many times we gotta fall for it?

the whole thing is propaganda.

It could indeed be propaganda, but if Israel feels sufficiently threatened by Iranian rhetoric and Iran's further development of fissile material, it will likely be "bombs away!" on Iran. So the Iranian regime is walking a tightrope over a very deep chasm with their bellicose rhetoric.

Hezbollah.

Apologize. lol