That was remarkably free of hyperbole and inflammatory angst.  Radical Extremist (i.e. violent) Islam is an increasingly obvious threat to all non-muslims and a lot of moderate muslims as well.

Iran and Syria are going to fail to see this until they get bit.

Still I don’t see economic sanctions as better than military action.  The people who starve, go without housing/food/medical care are not the wealthy or those in power.  It’s the common person who suffers and they can be easily convinced that their suffering is due to external oppression instead of internal leaders making stupid decisions.

To Bukko:

Who said anything about nuclear attack?

DU isn’t an issue. NATO, IAEA, and others, all agree. Nukes on Japan? Indeed.

Your understanding of global realpolitik is lacking. The world is maximalist in nature, meaning, they bandwagon. The world, I know you don’t believe this, sees Iranian extremism as a serious problem. So, the end result is this: The world can’t, and won’t, and they don’t want to, turn their back on the United States. Even with the US being at a subjective political low in the eyes of many world citizens, it still isnt’ NEARLY as low enough to see a gigantic shift from maximalist to minimalist geo-politics.

As far as Iran with “inside” Iraq plans, give me a break. As with any military operation, conventional or guerilla style, there are areas in which must be taken care of, logistics, propaganda, etc, for any effective military campaign to be successful. The idea of Iran committing some form of inside-Iraq guerilla campaign when the US can easily recruit both Kurdish and Sunni powers to fight a perceived Shia threat from Iran, is a joke.

And yes, I still like the odds of 20:1, or even 50:1, in the worst-case scenario. The US’s warplans have always been outnumbered, from WW1 to WW3. Combined Arms always defeats a single-aspect military campaign.

They said 50 dollar oil would collapse the US. Then 75. What will ‘’collapse’’ the US markets? Probably nothing. We will adapt. “We” meaning the world. Thats the last thing the OPEC wants to see happen, is foreign nations reluctant to invest in THEIR oil supplies, when they can easily invest monies into their own native oil supplies. (Read: US investing heavily in Canadian Tar Sands and US SHale OIl)

But don’t worry, you can continue to wear your tin-foil hat, and watch for the black helicopters.

the US is still on the top level of civil/political/economic freedoms.
We still have one of the least corrupt governments on the face of the planet.

Average Global freedoms have increased since Bush’s election in 2000
Sources: Freedom House & Transparency International

You people who are so hot for a nuclear attack on Iran are absolutely insane!

Forget for a moment about the immorality of killing millions of people with nuclear weapons. Forget the planet-wide environmental damage from spewing tons of radioactive dust into the atmosphere. Forget the black mark that will forever be attached to the name “America” for being the only nation in the history of humanity to kill people THREE TIMES with nuclear weapons (Japan 1945, “dirty bombs” of depleted uranium against Iraq and Serbia in the 1990s-2000s and then nuking Iran.) None of that apparently means anything to you. So let’s talk economics.

Do you think the rest of the world is going to sit idly by when the U.S. blasts another country? China is going to cheer and say “We’ll keep making cheap plastic crap for you in exchange for your trade deficit dollars”? Saudi Arabia will say “We’ll keep pumping oil. Whatever you say! We’re so scared, master.” The Europeans will say “We’re still your friends, despite the radioactive fallout on our fields and tourist attractions.” Russia and Pakistan WON’T say “Those Americans are crazy! We’d better give our terrorist buddies a few small nukes so they can take the U.S. down a peg.”

And do you think that Iran doesn’t have the groundwork laid INSIDE IRAQ for a balls-to-the-wall blitz against U.S. forces there? You saw what their Hezbollah flying monkeys did to Israel with Iranian anti-tank missiles and battle plans. You don’t think there are literally millions of Iraqis who will erupt against the less-than 100,000 effective combat troops over there? Sure, U.S. troops are good fighters, but odds of 20-to-1 will still produce a lot of deaths on the “1” side when they have to fight for every drop of petrol, each morsel of food and all those bottles of water they truck in from Kuwait. Oh, you war-mongers support our troops all right…

If your childish “let’s kill ‘em all” fantasies played out, you would WISH for oil to be as cheap as $100 a barrel. The entire world economic system would crash. Bad for the U.S., not quite so bad for angry poor countries that don’t have as much to lose. YOU will suffer, war-wishers. You don’t care about killing other people, but you won’t be able to fill up your SUV. Oh, the horror!

Normally the opinions of a bunch of bloodthirsty wankers who can only wage war with their keyboards wouldn’t bother me. The trouble is, your simplistic, delusional mindset is mirrored in the halls of power. You people have no ability to do anything dangerous. But President Cheney and War Minister Rumsfeld think the way you do. They care more about playing to your crowd than to those of us in the reality-based community. Maybe you’ll get the war of your dreams. Then you’ll realise they were nightmares…

This most certainly can be resolved by military force.  It just won’t be until the problem is so agregriously out of hand that it requires WWII level loss of life.

That was another radical movement that required military suppression.  And while the short term consequences were horrific on a mindnumbing scale, the adversaries of those conflicts have been at relative peace for 50+ years now.

Military action isn’t always the wrong answer and it’s pretty clear these people are far too willing to kill each other (right now) for diplomacy to have any chance at all.

This doesn’t surprise me. Targeting Hezbollah, and thus, Lebanese support structures is a legitimate act of war considering the condition for which Israel must act.
We can debate the aspects of the very said action of targeting legitimate military-civilian infrastructure until we are blue in the face, but we still must face the fact: If Hezbollah really is an embedded political-civil-military aspect of the Nation-State of Lebanon, then all targeting, no matter how horrendous they may be, are considered legitimate. Israel is fighting for its existance, and Hezbollah is fighting for regional Religious purity (meaning, No Jews).

Getting back to the Bush Administration supposedly supporting the actions: I hope so.

While many in the psuedo-intellectual community (read, the Left and the Media) wants to believe that Iran-Hezbollah-Terrorism-Climate have nothing to do with eachother, it is exactly that. Indeed what is stated above, Bush and Co could be using this to gauge the engineering prowess of the Iranian engineers.

If a future strike comes around against Iran, the knowledge gathered by Israeli bomb-damage estimation teams will be very important to create an effective bombing and special-forces campaign against Iran.

Some people say the US can’t strike against Iran: Hogwash. We still have 12 carrier strike forces, 150+ heavy bombers, and any numerous routes of entry into Iran: Afghanistan, India, Turkey, Iraq, the sea, etc.

Don’t underestimate the power of a combined Special-Forces / Bombing capability. Even if we get only 50% of the Iranian nuclear capability, it would still put them back a very long time, if not indefinately.
If, and this is a big ‘If’, Iran decides to intervene militarily in Iraq, they would be playing in the US’s backyard, no matter what they like. that would conviently allow the US forces to switch from their current mission (that they aren’t that good at) of “peacekeeping” to “combat Forces”, in which even a skeleton US force structure would be able to damage badly the poorly-equipped Iranian military.

But anyways, this situation wont’ be solved militarily: It will be solved economically. The only true successful method of stabilizing any region is to add economic incentives NOT to fight. Andas we know through Friedman’s work, Economic Freedom = Civil, Political Freedom.

Just my .02

Dusty R

Jason Emerick is a xenophobic racist? He passes on the warmongering false reports as if they were fact. There is no, zero, evidence that Iran wants to attack anyone.  There is overwhelming evidence that IsraelUSA plan to attack Iran.

Of Course they did. As everyone knows Lebanon is the back door to Iran. And since Hezbollah is a problem for Israel if there are Israelli air strikes in Iran, Hezbollah had to go, as a preparation for war with Iran.

The Iraq war is already lost, so as The Bush administration continues to position the milliatry to take the blame for the loss there, expect to see the Iraq war down played in the media. It’s already over except for the dying. And who wants to be the last solider to die in a lost war?

Next comes Iran, and best of all for the Bush administration, will be the fear and panic it generates, which will give them more power over the American public, more power to control the media, despense with rights, and ignore the law.

Let’s see...Hersh breathlessly reports that the US is cooperating closely with Israel and carefully studying the effect of Israeli air strikes on the Iranian designed and built Hezbollah bunkers in South Lebanon. 
The military option against Iranian nuke facilities will always be on the table.  That’s prudent and, given the increased range of Iran’s delivery systems, is very likely also on the table of pretty much every military establishment in Europe as well.  Iran’s current President believes he is being directed by the “hidden Imam” to bring about the great cleansing of Islam (no Sunni’s, Jews or Infidel need apply).  He defines “loose cannon”.  No one in Israel, Europe or the US who has the responsibility for their own national security is going to do anything but plan for denying Iran the nuclear option by any means necessary.
This is news???  What’s next...insider information that the Sun rises in the East?

“People’s memories being what they are, Bush just might get away with it.” Aren’t we already fighting in Iran? Some country with a funny name like that. I bel;ieve it when Big Brother says we have ALWAYS been at war with Eastasia…

This situation can be resolved diplomatically:

Kill them all and let God/G-d/Allah/Haile Selassie/Aten/Brahman/Shang Ti/Elah sort it out.

The real test of the success of the policy adopted by Israeli strategists is whether the state of Israel will be able to establish and maintain de facto control of southern Lebanon up to the Litani River under UNO aegis, with the only forces that has proven able to resist Israeli aggression and occupation being effectively ousted from the region. Then, when the next opportunity to go to war presents itself, Israel will move in once again, occupy the territory, and subject those residents that have not previously been forced out by the bomgs and the raids to the same kind of abuse faced by the Palestinians in the 22 % of Mandate Palestine occupied by the Israeli state in 1967.One thing is certain, the UNO will no more protect the rights of Lebanese then it has the rights of Palestinians, and the US will see to it that no more Security Council Resolutions resembling 242 and 338 will be passed, even those these latter have had no discernible effect on Israeli conduct....

Bush creating a pretext to attack Iran; imagine that! But then he is the ‘War President’ so he must have a war to keep his title.  Too bad he isn’t the Wise President.

.........History Repeats just as in all xxxxxx!

Peter Pace the New “Westmoreland General”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060814/ap_on_re_mi_ea/us_ iraq_11;_ylt=AoD.f8NSoC0PmbcA1v6HQsJX6GMA;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04 NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl

Pace: Bigger U.S. force may stabilize Iraq By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer
Mon Aug 14, 3:54 AM ET

MOSUL, Iraq - Iraq could be stabilized faster if the United States increased the size of its force, but the costs would outweigh the benefits, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff said Sunday.

Gen. Peter Pace said in an interview at the conclusion of a two-day visit — his first since surging sectarian violence triggered talk of all-out civil war — that his meetings with U.S. commanders and their troops left him convinced that the Pentagon is correct to focus its effort mainly on training Iraqi security forces.

He said the current American force of about 133,000 troops is the right size for that training mission and for the more deadly work of containing the insurgency and helping reduce sect-on-sect killings.

“More U.S. and coalition forces could get the job done quicker, but that would mean dependency much longer for the Iraqi armed forces and the Iraqi government,” he said, speaking in a recreation room for U.S. troops as a searing summer sun set on a day that took him from Baghdad to Fallujah to Mosul.

During a question-and-answer session with troops in Baghdad on Saturday, Pace said U.S. officials had hoped as recently as July that they could reduce the U.S. force by two brigades, or about 7,000 troops, this fall. But with the surge in sectarian killings, the force was instead increased by two brigades.

Pace returned to Washington early Monday.

Pace said his encounters with U.S. troops at each stop in Iraq reinforced his belief that they are proud of what they are doing and satisfied with what they have accomplished. But he also said he had detected among them “some frustration at the Iraqis for not yet grasping the opportunity that’s in front of them.”

He was alluding to the failure of rival Shiite and Sunni sects to reconcile their differences, stop the sectarian violence that has gripped Baghdad in recent months and establish an effective government.

The troops feel, “We’re doing our part. When is the (Iraqi) governance part going to kick in? And that’s a fair question.”

Pace preached patience.

“It’s too early to pass judgment on a brand new government,” he said, referring to Prime Minister Nouri al-Malaki.

In Fallujah, once a key stronghold of the insurgency and still troubled by almost daily murders of policemen, a few Marines posed questions to Pace that suggested a creeping doubt about what their sacrifices have gained.

How much more time, one Marine asked, should the Iraqi government be given to achieve the political unity necessary to stabilize the country?

“I guess they have as long as it takes — which is not forever,” Pace replied.

Pace argued that setting a deadline for the United States to withdraw its support would risk pushing the Iraqis into political decisions that are unviable. On the other hand, he said, “You do not want to leave it open ended.”

Another Marine wanted to know if U.S. troops would stay in Iraq in the event of an all-out civil war. Pace repeated what he told a Senate committee last week: a civil war is possible, but not expected. He did not say what the United States would do if it actually happened.

Another asked what the United States would do if the Iraqi government did not support extending the U.N. resolution that authorizes the presence of American and other foreign troops in Iraq. Pace said the Iraqis already have said they favor extending the U.S. mandate, which expires in December.

One Marine wound up his question about the pace of U.S. troop deployments to Iraq by asking, “Is the war coming to an end?”

Pace didn’t answer directly. He said Pentagon officials and military leaders are trying to keep enough troops in Iraq to achieve the mission of training Iraqi troops to take over the security mission, while avoiding having so many that it creates an Iraqi dependency.

Hersh: U.S. Aided Israel as Prep for War on Iran

You can’t separate Hezbollah from Lebanon.  This continued effort to make Israel look bad (just because you don’t like Bush) does make for poor reading.

Collin

http://www.evangelicalperspective.blogspot.com

This conflict CANNOT be settled militarily.

We have to be more creative than that ... but the Neocons - Rapturists - Zionists (the NRZ’s) are yelling, “Bring it on!”

Is it any wonder that the world worries about us when we elect a president like GW?

In one respect the Armageddonists are right. That battle will cleanse the world ... trouble is, it’s the jellyfish who will have another go at, not the human race.

From: http://ncswede.blogspot.com/2006/08/on-middle-east-con flict-between.html