IRAN
Fatback
6,746 Posts
After watching the Frontline program, reading the Kyl/Lieberman stuff and the louder drumbeat over the past 3 months. I think the USA will bomb sites in Iran before Bush leaves.How is this a good thing?
Comments
I can't see how this is acceptable either:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071026/ap_on_sc/primates_in_peril
i been out for a minute. link please.
are you referring to Syria?
I think that's a reference to how Israel bombed Iraq's nuclear site before.
This has been discussed several times. There is no international conensus on whether Iran is out to build a bomb or not plus the Bush administration is adverse/incompetent when it comes to diplomacy so they're not likely to change many minds to their side. (My opinion is that they do want one.)
Cheney and the neocons are chewing at the bits to bomb Iran, but Rice and Gates are opposed. They've tried to trump up the Iran threat but to no avail. They even tried the women are oppressed there to try to drum up support for regime change. Ahmadinejad for all his babbling isn't even in control of the military, Revolutionary Guard, and wouldn't have his thumb on the trigger if they ever got a bomb anyway.
If a bombing does go down they'll probably frame it as a response to Iraq. The U.S. has been talking about Iranian influence in Iraq more and more over the last year or two. The sanctions the U.S. just imposed were partly justified by saying Iran was sowing havoc and supporting attacks on the U.S. in Iraq. The U.S. has actually had discussions about Iraq with Iran, but in the last meeting the reps from the two countries just read accusatory statements to each other and nothing happened. Unless the U.S. is willing to talk about everything (bomb, sanctions, etc.) the meetings will go nowhere, another sign of a lack of diplomatic finesse.
An attack will also probably have little actual affect. Iran's nuke facilities are spread out and some are underground. Hitting some Revolutionary Guard camps can be repaired. The radicals will be empowered, the public will rally around the government because they overwhelmingly support the nuke program.
This is all wrapped up in Cheney and the neocons misguided belief that military force alone can solve problems. They think we're winning in Iraq, Iran can be bombed into submission, and if you didn't know, they also believe that Syria is ripe for regime change and that it would be a cakewalk to invade, overthrow the government, and set up a new government, so says Cheney's just retired neocon national security advisor. Sound familiar?
y'all peep this:
this is pretty suspect. ...
f*cking haters.
whether any of this actually means anything is another story....don't believe the hype.
yeah but peep the pics (I posted them above)...the obvious question is "what did they have to hide?"....plus Syria is a police state with tight press control; really you can't take anything they say at face value.
I'm not, I'm just saying that they now acknoledge that they got bombed.
why are you changing the subject?
did you see the Frontline thing? I'm trying to verify the claim that the US squandered opportunities to work with the previous regime. although the "supreme leader" calls the shots, it was suggested that these moderates were given a chance, but when the US told them to eat dick, that was it.
Center for Strategic and International Studies report on new sanctions:
http://www.csis.org/component/option,com_csis_pubs/task,view/id,4134/
National Interest Journal on same thing:
http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=15906
New York Review of Books about how Iran and Iraq are intertwined:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20651
New Yorker piece about White House wanting to attack:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/10/08/071008fa_fact_hersh
Interview with Cheney's former Middle East advisor who just retired saying that U.S. needs to have regime change in Syria and taking on Iran from Daily Telegraph:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/10/05/wiran105.xml
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20070301faessay86202/ray-takeyh/time-for-detente-with-iran.html
Foreign Affairs book review covering book on power relations within Iran:
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20061101fa...ions-right.html
Council on Foreign Relations report on sanctions:
http://www.cfr.org/publication/14640/sadjadpour.html?breadcrumb=%2Fregion%2F404%2Firan
Debate on sanctions from Council on Foreign Relations:
http://www.cfr.org/publication/14500/can...on%2F404%2Firan
Interview with Gary Sick on Iran:
http://www.cfr.org/publication/14309/sick.html?breadcrumb=%2Fregion%2F404%2Firan
There's a subject?
I'm pretty sure the New York Review of Books article mentions a blown opportunity for the U.S. and Iran to negoatiate, and there might be something similar in the New Yorker piece as well.
The latest Esquire also features the blown Iran story. The source for much of this is Flynt Leverett, who worked at the Nat'l Sec Council 2002-3, and his wife, Hillary Mann, who worked at the UN during the lead up to the Afghan war and had lots of high level contacts with Iranian diplomats. Of course, Iran was very helpful in getting the Northern ALliance to work with us during the invasion. Remember that these are Republicans who are making these charges.
Here's some more Leverett/Mann links.
Times Op-Ed
Esquire Article
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/complete/la-fg-usiran31oct31,1,5780175.story?coll=la-iraq-complete
yeah, but don't forget that the 2002 NIE basically made the Bush case for war (aluminum tubes, pursuit of nukes, production of chemical agents).
I think the intelligence agencies are trying to be very careful about what they say, especially about countries like Iran and North Korea because they've been called out about their bad reporting on Iraq. The last NIE on Iran said that Iran was working on a bomb despite the international pressure. This is a direct turn around, which to me, seems to point to new information and being willing to admit that they're wrong, something they refused to do for months and months after the Iraqi war was over and their estimates of the WMD were false for everyone to see.
false
But back to the topic. Bush and Co. knew all of this over a year ago, but kept pounding the War drums--culminating in Bush's over-the-top WW3 statements. Now we can see the Iranian regime for what they are, a bunch of shit talking pussies.
fair enough. I just think it's important to consider the source. I don't have a lot of confidence in NIEs one way or another after the Iraq disaster.
also, people often view the NIE as some definitive consensus document representing the best intel, which it isn't necessarily. the NIE is more often than not the product of internecine BS among the various agencies within the US gov't, and is very much susceptible political pressure.
No, there were some dissenting opinions in the NIE on Iraq, but the basic thrift of it was that Iraq had WMD, and that it was expanding its program beyond what it had during the first Gulf War. The arguments were over the details like whether the aluminum tubes were evidence, but the general opinion of WMD was shared by all except for maybe the State Dept's intelligence bureau.