The US shouldn’t be talking to these bastards. They ought to be taught there is a dear price to be paid for this sort of thing. Taking out their electicity grid would be a good start.

Yes, JC, but why did they fail? They failed because their ultra-right political masters kept angrily asking “who ya gonna believe, us or your own damn lying eyes?”. If the CIA should be ditched because of these errors, what does that say for those masters – the sponsors of “Team B”, “Iraq as a counterwieght to Iran”, and Dick Cheney’s “Office of Special Plans”

You can’t say Iran isn’t involved in terror acts when they are supplying arms to the Hez, an officially recognized terror group and helping to cause havoc in Iraq. This of course doesn’t include the links to the bombing of the Jews in Argentina and Kobi towers. They are up to their neck in bad shit.

I wouldn’t take the Iranian lunatic prez as proper representative of the people either, but he is a leading figure of a dangerous regime.

They are currently running a “Holocaust conference” in Tehran at the moment gathering facts as the whether it actually happened. Amazing.

We don’t know if they were involved in 911, what we do know is they are up to their necks in terror activities and have been in the past, starting with the hostage taking in the late 70′s.

Even if they weren’t involved with 911, they seem to be doing their best to gain nukes. This is something we should never tolerate as it will come back to haunt us in the near future. No, containment wouldn’t work with this regime.

I wouldn’t take the Iranian President as representative of Iranians any more than I would the US president as representative of Americans.

I haven’t heard of any holocaust deniers convention there and I’m sure it would’ve got some attention. Was David Irving invited?

As to bombing NYC or Washington, as I recall it none, ie not one Iranian, was involved either in the atrocity or in providing shelter for those that were. I wish we could say the same for some of our friends like Saudi and the Pakistan ISI.

Furthermore the argument that Iran was helpful after 911 doesn’t wash. If we are to believe that then one would have to argue that Iran going for nukes, threatening Israel every other days and holding a holocaust deniers convention was the result of US policy.
This guy you were listening to is simply a propagandist for the mullacracy and the lunatic prez they installed.

The consensus was generally one of confusion and annoyance with the US. After 9/11 the Iranians co-operated in helping to vanquish the Taliban from Afghanistan and would have continued in the hunt for and destruction of Al Qaida. There was self-interest in that. They viewed the Wahabbe Sunni followers (which included Alqaida and the Taliban, and some elements of Saudi Arabia and the Pakistan military) as highly dangerous fanatics threatening not only the Shiite religion of Iran but the stability of the whole region. But there were also a number of the elite pleased to re-open dialogue with the US and the West.

So they were shocked and disappointed to find Iran included with Iraq and North Korea in Bush’s ‘Axis of Evil’ speech. It didn’t seem a good return for the olive branch they had extended. And calling off the hunt for Al Qaida in favour of invading Iraq didn’t seem all that consistent with the aims of the War on Terror.

Iraq had been effectively disarmed by the sanctions programs and the ‘no fly’ zones over the previous decade, at least as far as threatening the neighbours and the rest of the world went. So it was understandable that relations cooled again.

The problems with Iran seem to have been deliberately blurred by the US with the War on Terror anti-Islamic feelings and anti-Arab feelings (which is galling since they’re not Arabs). Given that relations with Israel have always been uneasy, there is a strong suspicion that there was an Israel push to have Iran and Iraq included on the US belligerence list.

When you consider the havoc wreaked on Iraq, and the amount of oil reserves at stake in both countries, you can hardly blame the Iranians for wanting to be fully armed against such an attack. If that means going nuclear so be it. Israel has the bomb, after all.

It’s a messy situation. But it would be dangerous to assume that the leaders are a bunch of madmen. They’re quite capable of acting in their country’s best interests. The joker in the pack is the Bush Administration. And Israel is not a great help towards a diplomatic solution either.

1 How advanced is any Iranian nuclear weapons program?

We don’t know. But judging from their reactions to ongoing inspections and the goodies promised to them by the Euros, we can only surmise that their ingestions aren’t good. But sooner rather than later when they have nukes. It’s better odds.

2 How reliable are more alarmist claims from pro-war elements of the Bush administration?

We don’t just have to rely on the “alarmist claims’, we judge their behavior with the IAEA inspections and their lack of certification. They were offered enriched uranium and always turned it down. Moreover they laughed at the Euros inducements.

3. Are there viable alternatives to a pre-emptive strike?
The Euros never got very far with their incessant talking. It looks like there is none unless we just turn a blind eye and prolong the agony until a later time.

4 Does Iranian President Ahmadinejad actually have any intention of menacing Israel despite his bellicose posturing to the Islamic peanut gallery?

We don’t know. But since the holocaust the Jews would be best advised that when a maniac threatens destruction of Israel it is best to take him at his word.

5 Would a Cold War-style “Mutually Assured Destruction”

These guys are turkeys and it would be best to be rid of the bloody agency sooner rather than later.

Your question ought to be, how can the US tolerate a nuked up Iran threatening the destruction of near neighbors and wanting to throw its weight around the region? The idea of a nuked up state acting as a terror master around the world is intolerable for the US and the West.

If Iran doesn’t comply with IAA requests, we should take out the nuke sites and if that doesn’t work nuke the area where the sites are located. Anything else is asking for deep trouble further down the road.

I am open to suggestions as to how we can live with an Iran that has nukes and sponsors terror around the world. The Argentinean government has or is about to issue a writ against the previous Iranian lunatic who was involved in the bombing and deaths of 70 Jews in BA. The Kobi Towers bombing has also been clearly linked to Iran. Iran also supports the Hez with rockets so that it can attack Israel.
This regime has been at war with the west since the revolution. It is better we recognized that sooner rather than later.

Containment doesn’t work for terror masters.

It’s not what some think-tankers advocate, it’s what Washington decides that matters.

Wurmser has a thinktank background, but he’s currently Vice President Cheney’s principal adviser on the Middle East.

Does anybody think that an Administration and a Republican Party desperate to get out of the huge mess that is Iraq is going to start another war –

I mean, what does it matter if some dorks are advocating nuking Iran tomorrow? It’s not what some think-tankers advocate, it’s what Washington decides that matters. Does anybody think that an Administration and a Republican Party desperate to get out of the huge mess that is Iraq is going to start another war — nuclear, this time, if you please — with a hostile Senate looming and lame duck in the White House? For Pete’s sake.

Hersh certainly seems to acquired a corner on the unattributable quote.

You wouldn’t really expect any journalist to name informants who are ex intelligence or Pentagon officials. By this standard we should all have dismissed and totally ignored the Watergate scandal because “Deep Throat” was an “unattributable quote”. Journalists who invent their sources get found out and sacked. Hersh has had a top level journalistic career lasting 40 years, because he always makes checks his sources, and always protects their identity where they request it. Journalism couldn’t function otherwise, any more than the legal profession could function without some version of legal professional privilege.

Of course nuking Iran is being discussed as a last-ditch possibility. Why shouldn’t it be? Contingency planning is a long way from ‘hatching a plan’ to do it tomorrow arvo.

Both Muravchik and Wurmser are advocating bombing of Iran as a definite and immediate necessity, not just a “last-ditch possibility”. Why don’t you bother to read the articles I linked before making comments that are manifestly wrong? If they were merely canvassing last-ditch possibilities I wouldn’t have a problem (as my previous comment made clear).

Hersh has form on this. I’m surprised anyone takes him seriously.
What do you mean by this? Care to nominate a specific instance so we can examine the evidence? Or do you prefer the glib, totally non-specific dismissal?

Why wouldn’t we take this situation seriously? Here we have a pundit from the American Enterprise Institute advocating the bombing of Iran, and a fellow AEI alumnus in David Wurmser, who happens to be the Vice President’s principal Middle East adviser, similarly advocating such a policy, but adding a demand for forcible regime change in Iran as the only solution to the Iraq disaster. Incidentally Cheney’s wife is also an AEI senior fellow, so we’re not talking here about some fringe loonie from the boonies, but someone who does indeed have the ear of the Vice President if not the President. For anyone who can’t be bothered reading the Muravchik articles that I linked but still wants to believe that he and Wurmser are just talking about “last-ditch possibilities”, here’s an extract from one of Muravchik’s articles:

It is now clear that neither Moscow nor Beijing will ever agree to tough sanctions. What’s more, even if they were to do so, it would not stop Iran, which is a country on a mission. As President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad put it: “Thanks to the blood of the martyrs, a new Islamic revolution has arisen”

Of course nuking Iran is being discussed as a last-ditch possibility. Why shouldn’t it be? Contingency planning is a long way from ‘hatching a plan’ to do it tomorrow arvo. Hersh has form on this. I’m surprised anyone takes him seriously.

The fact that I’m questioning whether it’s a great idea to nuke Iran (though not rejecting it outright as a possibility if the danger was sufficiently clear, present, drastic and unavoidable by any other

The question of what is to be done about the Iranian nuclear threat is a legitimate and serious one and we shouldn’t dismiss any ideas on the basis of whether they come from neocons, paleocons or otherwise. But I don’t see what the relevance of the fact that Ahmejinad is a Holocaust denier is.

“the lady doth protest too much, methinks”

We will agree to disagree but I think you do need to examine your approach to the Iranian regime. Having visited WW2 concentration camps recently, to blithely dismiss the threat posed by a regime led by a man who openly and repeatedly denies the holocaust I find particularly disturbing.

You’re probably right, but it’s a sin of which you can’t accuse Hersh himself (as opposed to the unnamed European diplomat. In the very next paragraph, Hersh quotes his equally unnamed senior intelligence official making an observation which draws the comparison with Saddam’s public posture and suggests a reason why Ahmadinejad might conceivably be adopting an equally bellicose posture without in fact having an active, advanced nuclear weapons program at all:

There are, however, other possible reasons for Iran’s obstinacy. The nuclear program–

“But the Iranians would not have launched themselves into a very dangerous confrontation with the West on the basis of a weapons program that they no longer pursue. Their enrichment program makes sense only in terms of wanting nuclear weapons. It would be inconceivable if they weren’t cheating to some degree

This says more about the thought process of ‘Westeners’ than it does about those in the Middle-East.

The point you’re attempting to make (if any) isn’t evident. Muravchik is a self-labelled “neocon”, as is Cheney adviser David Wurmser (like Muravchik, he hails from the American Enterprise Institute which along with PNAC, is undeniably a major centre of neoconservative thought).

Equally, anyone who knows anything about the origins of neoconservative thinking is aware that many of those now associated with neoconservatism emanated from the Democratic Party (e.g. Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith), while others (especially the Kristols) were from considerably further to the left. However all are now Republican barrackers and all were strong advocates of the Iraq invasion. None of these people AFAIK have a problem with being labelled neoconservative. Labelling Cheney as such is slightly more problematic only to the extent that he is a lifelong Republican rather than someone who embraced conservatism after starting out much further to the left. But for most informed observers who use the expression (as opposed to those who just use it as a “catch-all” slur), the “neo” in neocon refers not to the fact that its adherents have embraced conservatism from the left, but because of the distinctive elements it adds to more traditional strands of conservatism, especially a much more militarily aggressive/expansionist stance (as opposed to the traditional Republican foreign policy “realism” exemplified by James Baker, Colin Powell and even Bush Senior) combined with a messianic drive to “democratise” the third world (or at least the Middle East) and a willingness to embrace big government tax-and-spend (or rather borrow and spend) policies to achieve it. Cheney very much fits that mould, and moreover happily admits to being heavily influenced by the thinking of Irving Kristol. The Iraq invasion wass quintessentially a defining neocon project that simply did’t fit with other older strands of conservative thinking in the US, and the same will be true of any future Iran bombing adventure.