pseudonous

I think you misunderstand what I said. Give an example of one of those conditions being met.

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"One is most dishonest to one's god: he is not allowed to sin." - Nietzsche

NotConvinced

[quote=pseudonous;20107]Direct Evidence Iran provided support resulting in the increased death of Americans.

AB517

Not yet, we are not ready today
(next 5 yrs alteast if we want to do Irac right).

If they change, which I think they mite be. we will see then.

pseudonous

Can you be more specific? Perhaps include a website that mentions this or something. I am not aware that there is direct evidence that Iran provided direct support to an organization which attacked us. Thanks.

__________________
"One is most dishonest to one's god: he is not allowed to sin." - Nietzsche

NotConvinced

Well hey, did the research, and....doesn't seem to happen too often, but when it does, I'll admit to it...I was wrong about the direct evidence, none has been presented to us. Ofcourse that doesn't mean no evidence exists, but as of currently I don't believe it exists. So by that logic, your grounds for declaring war on Iran were not met, however if any of them were to be met in the future, I believe the one we dealt with in question would be the most likely.

I don't favor a war with Iran, but what I hate to hear, is people ruling out any kind of military action whatsoever. I also hate to hear people voice their opinion of "not going to war with Iran only because of what's happened in Iraq." New situation. Many mistakes were made with Iraq, and we have the chance to not repeat them. Also, just because our record with pre-emptive wars isn't so hot, doesn't mean we have to rule them out. I believe it means we have to be a hell of a lot more careful and absolute about any we think to engage in, and I also believe that there's an extremely small chance that we'll ever need to engage in one in the near future.

echos

Given all we know now, how could one<Bush> make such an insane choice.

to_hobbes

My dad is from Iran, so I'll just post my thoughts. He came to the US in 1977. He had lived in the US for a mere 2 years before his country evaporated from the face of the earth and was replaced (with the help of the US) with a breeding ground for evangelical Muslims. Ahmadinajad has absolutely no power, it is the religious supreme leaders who control everything. It's like a Big-brother socialism except replace "Big-brother" with the word "Allah", and the poor secular Irans (a good chunk of the minority, as I understand it) can't do a damn thing about it.

Imagine that there is a country on this earth more powerful than the USA and they use their secret agencies to install evangelical leaders in every corner of the US government. OK, if you are a conspiracy theorist, you might think that is what actually happened in 2000. But it really did happen for Iran.

So it didn't come as much of a surprise when one of my Dad's friends, also born and raised Iranian, said "Go ahead and attack! The Iranians will turn tail and run!" But that friend of ours has been living in the US for some 30 years, it is possible that he has no clue about how strong anti-US sentiment is amongst Muslims.

I don't believe that we should attack. Attacking another country middle-eastern country, even if it were somewhat justified, would not help improve the current situation at all.

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(By the way, it's all in your head.)

Jacob

to hobbes,

That's a very interesting perspective. Thanx for sharing it with the forum.


Jacob

__________________


Religions, movements and even nations
are constructs invented by humans.

They only take on meaning
if humanity chooses to accept them.

WilliamBlue

Maybe a stealth attack on the nuclear production plants themselves, set them back a few years, we could claim that they had an accident . Plus they would know that we were paying attention.

__________________
When you dance with an elephant it's up to you to not get stepped on.
How can we be so arrogant and egotistical to believe that the whole Universe was created just for us?

Skepticologist

Geez! Why didn't we think of that in terms of Iraq's WMD 5 years ago, or in terms of South Vietnam as one of the dominos about to topple in Southeast Asia more than 30 years ago?

Seriously, given the mindset of the necons of today, and the hawks (because the term neocon hadn't been invented back then), it's a mystery to me.

After all, if you're disposed to cook the intelligence to fit your world view or your greedy self-interest, why not just make it up entirely?

Or did you miss the latest National Intelligence Estimate that, despite the political pressure almost certainly exerted by the Bush administration, flatly stated that Iran abandoned its weapons-based uranium enrichment program in 2003 (there may yet be hope for the hopelessly inept intelligence community, if not for the just plain hopeless current administration)? You and a lot of other Americans similarly missed, or ignored, pre-Iraq-invasion intelligence clearly demonstrating that Saddam Hussein had aborted his WMD program and that he had no ties to Al Qaeda. Depending on your age, you could have similarly missed The Pentagon Papers, released by Daniel Ellsberg of the Rand Corporation and written and published by the journalist David Halbertstam. I just happened to pick up a copy in 1971 that had been deposited in a box at the Oakland Army Depot by a soldier returning from Vietnam while I was waiting on a flight manifest to take me to that jewel of the South China Sea.

The conventional wisdom in place at these points in recent history was the very macho When in doubt, bomb. And, apparently, you continue to subscribe to the same kind of mindless approach. Never mind the thousands of American soldiers who have died or been permanently disabled, or the countless innocent civilians who have suffered a similar fate, for absolutely no gain. It all goes to show that if you can scare someone badly enough, whether by employing the specter of the domino theory, WMD, ties to Al Qaeda, or secret nuclear facilities that can escape the same kind of surveillance that will likely catalog this message as soon as it's sent, you can get them to sign on to anything.

As for me, to the NSA analyst at Ft. Meade MD who'll be reading this within the next few minutes, I'll sign off with a very big and bold FOAD!

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"I am an agnostic; I do not pretend to know what many ignorant men are sure of."

Clarence Darrow