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Originally posted by chrisisall:
One last present from the Bush administration?
If it can be done, I bet he'll do it!
(They got ICBM's for their WMD's....uhhh, right?)

Chrisisall

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Originally posted by SignyM:
I used to be outraged by the Bush crime spree. Now I just view it all in a kind of paralyzed horror.

I'm betting that he's going to pop the cork a few months before the 2006 election. But do you think the American people will fall for this again? And if not, what will "the people" do? Protest? Stay away from the polls in droves or turn out and vote Democrat? And what will Bush do? Jigger the electronic vote (again)? Allow a terrorist incident? Or will the powers behind the throne assasinate their lame-duck no-longer-popular Presidential puppet? Either leads to martial law.

I don't think people realize, but we really had a coup in the USA. It was masked by the fact that the President and his "war on terror" was very popular post-9-11 and for a few years after. But the velvet glove will come off the iron fist pretty soon.

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Free as in freedom, not beer.

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Originally posted by Fletch2:
Let's talk alternate realities for a moment.

Imagine a world where the self serving delusions of Achmed Chalabi, as pushed by Richard Pearl and friends had actually come about. Iraqi's had welcomed the US forces as liberators with flowers, democratic government had proved easy to establish and what Sadamist insurgents there where had proved to be easy to deal with.

Could you imagine that Iran would still have an enrichment program? I don't, I imagine that they would have dropped that idea in an instant.

Iran's current possition comes about because it knows that with Iraq unstable the US hasn't the resources to stop it. I think Iran's president is also deliberately trying to provoke some kind of Israeli attack in order to shore up the Islamic State and pull the wind from the sails of the reformers.

How else would you explain the enrichment claim earlier this week? Most experts had said that Iran needed 5 years before it was in a possition to make a bomb. If that were true neither the US or Israel would need to act immediately, it could be years before a confrontation was nescessary, years where the reformers in Tehran would make steady progress towards reform.

Now if you wanted a weapon and you happened to be ahead of the "experts" timeline the sane thing to do would be to make your progress the highest national secret. After all you would only need a couple of years to finish off a weapon. Let your enemies think they have 5 years to act in, use their complacency for your benefit.

So why tell them you are ahead of schedule when you still don't have a weapon? It's stupid unless your real goal is to get them to take action against you. Nothing boosts nationalism and the current regime more than an external attack. The bigest threat to the current Iranian regime isn't Israel or the US but their own people and the calls for reform.

Do we play patsy for these folks and give them what they want or do we try and bolster the forces for change inside?

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Originally posted by G1223:
Well there is always the nickle and dimed diplospeak that will have us giving Iran a ICBM just to make them happy. After all we need to appease the Arab world and let them nuke Israel and then stand around and wait for Israel to die. Then we can wait for them to go after India or punish Europe for setting up Israel in the first place.

The long and short you either stop Iran because we know they are dangerous. Or you allow all their evil acts to happen and then do like England and France did in 1939 make a heroic stand after giving away Austira and Czechslovakia. Except it was the US that appeased the dictators rather than other nations.



TANSTAAFL

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Originally posted by GinoBiffaroni:

And as far as WWII is concerned... if the Europeans should have rushed to kick off a war, why did the US wait a year and a half to pick a side ? why did they continue to sell steel and other war supplies to both sides up to the point they had to enter the war ?

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Originally posted by SignyM:
I used to be outraged by the Bush crime spree. Now I just view it all in a kind of paralyzed horror.

I'm betting that he's going to pop the cork a few months before the 2006 election. But do you think the American people will fall for this again? And if not, what will "the people" do? Protest? Stay away from the polls in droves or turn out and vote Democrat? And what will Bush do? Jigger the electronic vote (again)? Allow a terrorist incident? Or will the powers behind the throne assasinate their lame-duck no-longer-popular Presidential puppet? Either leads to martial law.

I don't think people realize, but we really had a coup in the USA. It was masked by the fact that the President and his "war on terror" was very popular post-9-11 and for a few years after. But the velvet glove will come off the iron fist pretty soon.

---------------------------------
Free as in freedom, not beer.

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Originally posted by fredgiblet:

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Originally posted by GinoBiffaroni:

And as far as WWII is concerned... if the Europeans should have rushed to kick off a war, why did the US wait a year and a half to pick a side ? why did they continue to sell steel and other war supplies to both sides up to the point they had to enter the war ?

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Simple, the same reason why the British and French didn't try to stop Hitler earlier, World War 1 was the "war to end all wars", none of the European countries wanted to face the prospect of another war (except Germany). No one wanted another war around that time, in fact I have heard some people say, though I haven't investigated it myself, that Roosevelt knew that the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor and he allowed it to give the Americans a push into WW2. We knew which side we would be on but the people in general did not want to go to war and did not want to p*** off either side. But this is coming from what I remember from when I went through a WW2 phase a few years ago so I could be wrong.

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Originally posted by fredgiblet:

No one wanted another war around that time, in fact I have heard some people say, though I haven't investigated it myself, that Roosevelt knew that the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor and he allowed it to give the Americans a push into WW2. We knew which side we would be on but the people in general did not want to go to war and did not want to p*** off either side. But this is coming from what I remember from when I went through a WW2 phase a few years ago so I could be wrong.

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Originally posted by SignyM:

Iran. Well, they MIGHT have nuclear weapons some day! Meanwhile, North Korea has the nukes and the ICBMs to go with them, and we 're doing.... what???

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Originally posted by reaverman:
If they had massive stores of some valuable material (maybe, ya know, good ol' black gold), Bush would be there in a heartbeat

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Originally posted by Fletch2:
I think people are looking at this the wrong way. They think this is tactical, that the day after the war all the big oil field suddenly get signs that say "owned by Exxon" outside them.

This is strategic, it's about there being oil for America 20 or 30 years down the road. Thanks in part to sanctions Iraq has stacks of unexploited oil reserves, so much so that when the Saudi oil industry is just a fond memory they will still be pumping oil in Iraq.

Going forward the US would like a friendly regime in charge of that oil, one that if it's not US controlled is not US hostile. The theory -- let's call it the Pearl theory -- is that democracy will help spread around the oil money in a way that an oligarcy won't. That this in turn will create an economy that supports a middle class, that this middle class will want to buy US goods and services and like most middle classes the world over be more interested in stability than war.

In addition such a Arab middle class would come to see that they have more in common with Israel than they think, they will through nescessity forge economic ties that will make war less likely and strip Islamists and anti Jewish Palestinians of support and funding.

And then we all go to Disneyland!!!

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Originally posted by Rue:
BTW - almost a year ago I was posting that the question would be Syria or Iran. I'll dig up the posts for those who've forgotten. I thought Syria made a better (softer) target b/c Iran would require tactical nukes. And nobody would be THAT crazy.

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Originally posted by GinoBiffaroni:
Hell, I don't even think its about the US getting the oil...

I think they just want to deny it to India and China, slow down the two fastest growing economys before they leave the US far behind.

Maybe screw Europe a bit too...





" Over and in, last call for sin
While everyone's lost, the battle is won
With all these things that I've done "

The Killers

http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/killers/allthesethingsthativedone.html

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Panama. Ah, yes. Unbeknownst to us, Noriega was a major drug runner. MAJOR. In fact, all by his lonesome he was destabilizng the USA! So we invaded Panama (not Colombia) and the drug traffic didn't slow a whit.

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Originally posted by piratejenny:

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Panama. Ah, yes. Unbeknownst to us, Noriega was a major drug runner. MAJOR. In fact, all by his lonesome he was destabilizng the USA! So we invaded Panama (not Colombia) and the drug traffic didn't slow a whit.

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and you might want to add to that, that Bush Sr and his top officals were were working hand in hand running Drugs and making deals to help fund the contras. Matter of fact didn't Bush Sr arrange a marriage with one of his sons to marry one of the daughters of some Big Drug lord?

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Originally posted by GinoBiffaroni:
You know, by Bush's logic with all the bluster and threats the US is making and going by the logic and actions already committed...Wouldn't Iran be justified in putting a nuke in a freighter and setting it off in a US port city in a litte " Pre-emption " on their own ?

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Let's see, the reason for invading Grenada was because of the presence of Cuban troops. Not that the US medical students studying there ever noticed....

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Panama. Ah, yes. Unbeknownst to us, Noriega was a major drug runner. MAJOR. In fact, all by his lonesome he was destabilizng the USA! So we invaded Panama (not Colombia) and the drug traffic didn't slow a whit.

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Afghanistan. I think Rue covered that very well. Meanwheil the orginal pretext for invasion- OBL- is alive and living in Pakistan.

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Iraq. Pictures of mushroom-clouds danced in our heads- thanks to Cheney, Rove, Rice, Rumsfeld, and Bush.

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Iran. Well, they MIGHT have nuclear weapons some day!

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Meanwhile, North Korea has the nukes and the ICBMs to go with them, and we 're doing.... what???

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Originally posted by GinoBiffaroni:
You really think somehow people will start to like the US after all this

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