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Ear to the Ground

Nuclear Proliferation at a Crossroads

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Posted on Sep 2, 2007
Kim Gye Gwan
AP Photo / Keystone, Salvatore Di Nolfi

North Korean negotiator Kim Gye Gwan is surrounded by reporters as he heads to meet with his U.S. counterpart in Geneva on Sunday.

If the Bush administration is now in peacenik mode with North Korea, why not more aggressively follow the diplomatic track with Iran?  As a result of a startling turnabout by an administration committed to wage war against “rogue nations,” it turns out offers of aid and diplomatic recognition might work wonders in stemming the spread of the nuclear threat.


BBC:

“We have more than 3,000 centrifuges working and every week a new set is installed,” Mr [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying by Iranian news agencies.

“[The world powers] were thinking that with each resolution the Iranian nation would retreat. But after each resolution the Iranian nation presented another nuclear achievement.”

The installation of 3,000 centrifuges is seen by Iran as a key medium-term goal—which it had hoped to reach by March this year—for its nuclear programme.

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By kevin99999, September 3, 2007 at 11:18 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

Nuclear non-profileration is an important international objective but it should apply to all countries including the U.S., otherwise there is no legitimate basis for nuclear non-profileration.

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By rbrooks, September 3, 2007 at 10:08 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

Here was me thinking that Dr. Strangelove was fiction:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/artic le2369001.ece

Seems obvious that an attack on Iran will have the same purpose, and the same effect on the Middle East, as 9/11 had in the U.S. - empowering the extremists and disabling whatever movement there may be in Iran toward getting rid of them With that in mind, it also seems obvious that Ahmadinejad may actually welcome an attack and may be happy to help provoke it. Not that he needs to organize a provocation; Bush and the Pentagon will have that covered. All he needs to do is keep obliging Bush by running his mouth.
Iran is the big story now. Now, before it’s too late, we need to be reminding the country how we got into Iraq and pointing out that it’s all happening again - and that this time the blowback will make Iraq look like a tea party.

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By Robert, September 2, 2007 at 6:29 pm #
(641 comments total)

August 31, 2007

Executive Rampage

The War Criminal in the Living Room

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

“The media is silent, Congress is absent, and Americans are distracted as George W. Bush openly prepares aggression against Iran.

US Navy aircraft carrier strike forces are deployed off Iran.

US Air Force jets and missile systems are deployed in bases in countries bordering or near to Iran.

US B-2 stealth bombers have been refitted to carry 30,000 pound “bunker buster” bombs.

The US government is financing terrorist and separatist groups within Iran.

US Special Forces teams are conducting terrorist operations inside Iran.

US war doctrine has been altered to permit first strike nuclear attack on Iran and other non-nuclear countries.

Bush’s war threats against Iran have intensified during the course of this year. The American people are being fed a repeat of the lies used to justify naked aggression against Iraq.

Bush is too self-righteous to see the dark humor in his denunciations of Iran for threatening “the security of nations everywhere” and of the Iraqi resistance for “a vision that rejects tolerance, crushes all dissent, and justifies the murder of innocent men, women, and children in the pursuit of political power.” Those are precisely the words that most of the world applies to Bush and his Brownshirt administration. The Pew Foundation’s world polls show that despite all the American and Israeli propaganda against Iran, the US and Israel are regarded as no less threats to world stability than demonized Iran.

Bush has discarded habeas corpus and the Geneva Conventions, justified torture and secret trials, damned critics as anti-American, and is responsible, according to Information Clearing House, for over one million deaths of Iraqi civilians, which puts Bush high on the list of mass murderers of all time. The vast majority of “kills” by the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan are civilians.

Now Bush wants to murder more. We have to kill Iranians “over there,” Bush says, “before they come over here.” There is no possibility that Iranians or any Muslims who have no air force, no navy, no modern military technology are going to “come over here,” and no indication that they plan to do so. The Muslims are disunited and have been for centuries. That is what makes them vulnerable to colonial rule. If Muslims were united, the US would already have lost its army in Iraq. Indeed, it would not have been able to put an army in Iraq.

Meanwhile the US media focuses on whether Republican Senator Larry Craig is a homosexual or has offended gays by denying to be one of them. The run-up for the public’s attention is why a South Carolina beauty queen cannot answer a simple question about why her generation is unable to find the United States on a map.

The war criminal is in the living room, and no official notice is taken of the fact.”

http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts08312007.html

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By QuyTran, September 2, 2007 at 5:34 pm #
(843 comments total)

The nuclear threats aren’t coming from N. Korea or Iran but from Israel. Bush ought to prepare bomb Israel instead !

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By Non Credo, September 2, 2007 at 2:28 pm #
(1143 comments total)

It’s perfectly obvious why the difference: Israel.

Because they are generally inclined to hatefulness and belligerence, the neocons enjoyed talking tough about NK, but ultimately that’s not what’s important to them.

They only care about perceived “threats” to Israel. So they’re tidying up the North Korea matter, getting it off their desks - in preparation for what they REALLY want: a massive US bombing of Iran.

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