Text 15308, 655 rader
Skriven 2007-06-06 16:55:38 av Josh Hill (1721.babylon5)
     Kommentar till en text av rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated
Ärende: Re: unions
==================
On Wed, 06 Jun 2007 07:53:32 GMT, "Vorlonagent"
<nojtspam@otfresno.com> wrote:

>
>"Josh Hill" <usereplyto@gmail.com> wrote in message
>news:cl9b6318ej24jaat3i4s1vdntl4rpna4ss@4ax.com...

>On Tue, 05 Jun 2007 04:56:22 GMT, "Vorlonagent"
><nojtspam@otfresno.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>They're only probationary members of the nuclear club at this point.  They
>>don't get the full prestige of being a nuclear power.  Nor implied the
>>invulnerability that comes with having a bomb.
>
>I don't think the last is true, given that no one wants North Korea to
>hold their next nuclear test in Tokyo. They have their data: the
>probability of a second dud is fairly low.
>-----------------------------
>
>That's overreaching in my view
>
>Obviously we want to play it cautiously, but without a test,
>nobody--NOBODY-- can be sure the NKs can build a working bomb.  You assume
>the NKs know what went wrong with the first test and while they may, it's
>not a sure thing.  I mean it's not like they can examine what's left and
>learn anything useful.

It was a test, so I assume the thing was wired to data recorders. I
assume they can also set them off without the nuclear fuel to test
timing and the like. Should narrow down the cause of the failure
pretty quickly.

>You CAN build a uranium bomb without a test (the South africans did), but a
>uramium bomb is much simpler to construct.
>
>The NKs can drop a dirty bomb on Tokyo and that's the best threat you can be
>sure of.  (but then they could do that in 2003).

It doesn't matter: no one is going to take the risk that a second
attempt will fizzle.

>>>>'In the master document, Iran talks about ensuring "full transparency"
>>>>and other measures to assure the U.S. that it will not develop nuclear
>>>>weapons. Iran offers "active Iranian support for Iraqi stabilization."
>>>>Iran also contemplates an end to "any material support to Palestinian
>>>>opposition groups" while pressuring Hamas "to stop violent actions
>>>>against civilians within" Israel (though not the occupied
>>>>territories). Iran would support the transition of Hezbollah to be a
>>>>"mere political organization within Lebanon" and endorse the Saudi
>>>>initiative calling for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian
>>>>conflict.
>>>>--------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>>>...and you believe them?
>>>
>>> I don't think that's the real question. Iran isn't a monolith: they
>>> have doves and hawks, reformers and conservatives just as we do. We're
>>> popular with the Iranian public, and we know that there are voices in
>>> the Iranian elite who have been asking why they're still at odds with
>>> the United States when we've taken care of their worst enemies, Saddam
>>> and the Sunnis and Al Quada and the Taliban. And Iran took /our/ side
>>> after 9/11.
>>
>>Who talked about "full transparency"?  The iranian government?  The best
>>use
>>for the paper it's printed on would be either wiping one's butt or
>>firestarter (make sure you know which use you prefer and print on
>>appropriate stock)
>
>We don't know that, and we won't know that if we don't negotiate.
>-------------------------------------------------------------
>
>No point.  There is nothing we can gain from this Iranian government.  No
>promise we can extract that we can reasoably expect they'll honor.  Iran and
>the mideast have a long enough track record that we don't need to naively
>follow after evey silky-smooth turn of phrase that sounds like moderation
>from our enemies.  They'll say all the right things ("Full transparency")
>but that is worth nothing.  You are being sold a bill of goods.

You appear to be reaching conclusions here that aren't based on any
solid evidence, just an a priori assumption that the Iranians will
cheat to the point where an agreement becomes counterproductive. But
we don't know that, and we won't know that if we don't try. As Ronald
Reagan said, trust but verify.

>They want you to do exactly what you're doing: hearing the codewords that
>make you think the guys running Iran can be reasoned with and as a result
>make it harder for the US to act against Iran when and if that time arises.
>They can't be reasoned with.  Not under the certain circumstances.  We have
>little credibility by which they would either respect an agreement or fear
>to break it.  Before iraq, we had none.  We could have more, but the leftist
>news outlets and politicians have done their level best to minimize it by
>opposing and undermining the war at every turn and by any means at their
>disposal.  Bush mistakes in iraq haven't helped things either.

I see no evidence whatsoever that the Iranians can't be reasoned with.
The country is run by an ideologue, yes, but there's no sign that he's
irrational. In fact, he appears to have reigned in Iran's less than
rational president.

I find your assertion that "leftist" politicians and the "leftist"
press opposed and undermined the war at every turn mind boggling.
Congressional Democrats supported entry into the war. The press lay
down and played dead.

What did happen is that thanks to the bungling, corruption, and
overreaching of the White House, we lost the war. You can't blame
others for that failure, except insofar as it might have been
prevented or averted before consequences became dire had the press not
been so anxious to rally round the flag in the wake of 9/11 that it
acted like Pravda, and had Congressional Democrats not been so scared
of losing elections that they refused to ask tough questions.

>When the US restores a reputation for being strong, resolute and very
>dangerous to cross, THEN we can negotiate with the iranian clerics with some
>expectation of good faith. Until then, they'll negotaiate to keep action
>against them stalemated and continue to deliver arms and money to
>terrorists, including to those in Iraq.  And continue to seek a nuclear
>weapon.  Such a reputation is not built by running away from Iraq.  If we
>want to negotiate in the mideast credibly, we must destroy organized
>resistance in Iraq.

We can't destroy organized resistance in Iraq without a million men,
and we aren't going to get a million men, because the public isn't
going to send its children to die in someone else's civil war.

You have to be realistic. Half of this mess came to be because Bush
and his neocons weren't realistic. We were an /empire,/ they said. We
could do anything, they said. The natives would strew flowers before
our feet, they said.

Never mind Vietnam.

Never mind the Israeli experience in Lebanon.

To achieve success in war, one has to know the strengths and
weaknesses of both the enemy and of oneself. They were not realistic
enough to understand those. What's worse, Bush and Cheney
systematically cut off and punished those who /were/ realistic.

"Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that
anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and
hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever
must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master
of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events." -
Churchill

"When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go
and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war. War
settles nothing." - Eisenhower

>We may wish to hold talks with opposition leaders in private and see what we
>can do to help topple the clerics fro power but those negotiations would be
>highly unofficial.

The policy of not talking has failed every time Bush has used it.
That's hardly surprising. An attempt to accomplish something may end
in failure; the failure to make the attempt certainly will.

>Unfortunately, experience has shown that we can't trust the
>Administration's claims about intelligence or who supports Al Qaeda,
>so we're in the dark as to what's actually happening. Which being
>said, why would Iran support Al Qaeda? Al Qaeda is fighting against
>the side they favor in Iraq, the Shites.
>-------------------------------------------------
>Al Queda is fighting for their own side.  Al Queda wants Iraq as a staging
>area, not unlike what Afghanistan was for them.  They aren't anything more
>than allies of convienence with the shiites.  They bombed the Golden Mosque,
>remember?  They fight for the (radical) shiites because they get their money
>from iran.

Al Qaeda is fighting /against/ the Shiites.

>If they think it suits their interests, Iran may reach this or that
>accommodation with one or another Al Qaeda operative, Middle Eastern
>style (we ever-provincial Americans tend to forget that Middle Eastern
>society is better defined by Scheherazade's scheme than by western
>notions of forthright action). But that's not the same as saying that
>Iran supports Al Qaeda.
>-------------------------------------------------
>They do.  They aren't comitted to Al Queda's cause, no, but Iran does
>support Al-Queda.

I haven't seen any evidence of that.

Al-Zawahiri on Iran:

"Such as the slogan 'America, the Great Satan,' which became the
slogan 'America, the Closest Partner,' and such as the movements which
used to claim that they were carrying the message of Islam to liberate
the Muslims in Iraq from Saddam the Baathist, but are now sending
messages of surrender to keep the forces of Bush the Crusader in the
Muslims' lands."

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/05/05/al.qaeda.tape/index.html

>Bottom line: I think you're overlooking Iran's self-interest, the
>regime's sensitivity to pressure, and the diversity of opinion within
>the Iranian elite, a diversity that was present even in the days
>following the revolution, when an anti-American course was not a
>given. We have what appears to be a real opening. But as so often the
>Administration chose to overlook the signs of a thaw and set
>unrealistic requirements for opening negotiations, thus undercutting
>the progressive elements within Iran.
>---------------------------------------------------
>We have no "opening" of the sort.  We have Iran spinning neat-sounding lies
>for you to latch onto.  It's fodder to earn and reatin your sympathy so as
>to reinforce talks that block action.

Again, I don't see any evidence of that.

>This Administration never gets the carrot and stick thing right. They
>bluster rather than applying measured pressure. They refuse to
>compromise, they refuse to talk, and so eliminate the possibility of
>progress. They overplay our hand, turn a position of overwhelming
>strength and strong support into one of weakness and isolation. And as
>the failed consequences of their hubris have become increasingly
>obvious, they've been retreating like Napoleon's troops from Moscow,
>settling in every case for less than we could have had at the start.
>Iran is a good deal less afraid of us than they were a few years ago,
>before we snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in Iraq and
>stretched the army to the breaking point.
>-----------------------------------------------------
>That's strange.  Bush's political foes are those who are calling for a
>retreat.  Bush isn't retreating.

The American /public/ is calling for a retreat because they see no
possibility of success and don't want to fight another country's civil
war. Ditto Congressional Democrats, and, increasingly, Congressional
Republicans, who pretty much read Bush the riot act a few weeks back.
Ditto the bipartisan Baker commission. Bush has lost touch with
reality.

>  It's more like the Tet offensive, which
>the US media blew up into a US defeat when it was nothing of the sort.

The Tet Offensive was /the/ defeat of the US: as a friend who was
there at the time working for RAND put it, it's when we knew that the
war was lost. Because while we did fight off and essentially destroyed
the VC, we also learned that our efforts to pacify the country and
pound the North Vietnamese into an agreement hadn't succeeded and
weren't going to.

>Cut and run from Iraq is the path to failure, with Iran and the mideast.

No, the Bush Administration's policies are the path to failure. They
are fighting, as Kerry put it, the wrong war in the wrong place at the
wrong time. They've left he Army, in the words of Colin Powell, nearly
broken. They've made us hated, feared, impotent. They've left Osama
Bin Laden running around in Pakistan. They've failed completely to
address the keystone of Middle Eastern terrorism, the Arab-Israeli
conflict. They've undermined the forces of moderation and friendly
regimes. They've increased, rather than decreased, the world's
dependency on Middle Eastern oil, thereby insuring a steady stream of
money to groups that want to kill us, and to countries like Iran. It's
far and away the worst American foreign policy failure I have ever
seen, and I'm old enough to remember Vietnam and Carter's hostage
crisis.

>But the theocracy isn't monolithic, immune to public pressure, or
>without self-interest.
>-------------------------------------------------
>Yes it is immune.  By and large, yes.  And mostly monolithic for our ability
>to deal with it.  Clerics in the courts routinely veto legislation they
>don't like and nothing is or can be done short of violent revolution, which
>nobody will start because nobody will back it unless it is a sure bet to win
>(the US has the same problem in iraq).  The mideast mindset moves along the
>lines of accomodating, even appeasing, the powers in their lives.  The
>powers, in turn have nothing but the other powers to check their excesses
>and often press any dominant position with great corruption and casual
>violence.

>Thus a fearful-appearing group of clerics can and does run roughshod over a
>mostly-passified majority.  Iran's self interest is to be THE power in the
>mideast.  Most of the power blocs in iran sinply want a large piece of a
>larger pie.  They want to win the power game (inside iran and out), not
>table it for something more equitable to all.  It's a very
>dominant-submissive, top-down situation.  It is this way throughout the
>mideast and what the US is trying to end by taking down saddam's iraq and
>putting up a democracy.
>
>Yes, there are people fed up with the clerics, but there's no way to tell
>when critical mass will occur for action.  It could be tomorrow or 20 years
>from now.  Either way there's no official negotiating we can undertake with
>anyone among the fed-ups.

The accommodation of the street to power is only half of the story:
the other half of it is that Middle Eastern power accommodates the
street. It's a subtle balance, and it's one that must be recognized if
one is to deal intelligently with the region.

Also, you've overlooked the fact that the Iranian elite is /not/
monolithic, that it is self-interested, that it has common interests
with the United States, and that it values its own survival and has
been reacting to our threats on that basis. Unfortunately, Bush has
been frittering away our position while refusing to take advantage of
some very clear overtures. As with everything he tries to accomplish,
his methods are strangely askew. He's in a world of his own, as
Secretary O'Neil put it. He's like a badly made key that never quite
fits the lock. 

>You misunderstand.  I never suggested a boycott of iranian oil.  But I bring 
>these points out to show why there is little to fear from an *iranian* 
>refusal to sell.  They need to keep the black gold flowing far more than we 
>need them to.
>
>And no, oil is not the best bargaining chip against iran, only the most 
>obvious.
>
>The iranian economy is in a shables.  Apparently the Prophet didn't speak 
>many useful passages on economics.  Iran imports a huge amount of the 
>gasoiline its people use.  I forget where it's 40% they import or 40% they 
>refine locally.  An embargo of incoming gas would be highly effective.
>
>if you want to be especially mean, an air strike on their big refinery would 
>be equally catastrophic, but has all the negatives of a strike on thir 
>centrefuges.
>
>Then there is the South Africa solution, which is even more elegant and less 
>sledgehammer: Disinvestment in companies that do business in Iran.  The US 
>has already made it illegal for US companies to do business there so this 
>would hit companies in europe or elsewhere.

We have so far been unable to garner sufficient support for meaningful
sanctions. If the Russians and Chinese weren't so self-interested,
that wouldn't be a problem, but in the real world, we have to live
with their refusal to take strong action.

>A revolution shouldn't be necessary to shift the balance, just a new
>consensus among the elite. See forex the selection of Gorbachev after
>military expenditures threatened to bankrupt the Soviet economy or the
>alliance of convenience between Mao's China and the US.
>-----------------------------------------
>Note that Gorbechev had to deal with a US that was a threat, not a US trying 
>to be harmless, unintimidating and accomodating.

We have been anything but harmless, unintimidating, and accommodating
to Iran. We've been fighting a nasty cold war with them for many
years.

>Gorbechev's glasnost was an attrempt to evolve in order to keep the 
>communists in power.  It percipitated a collpase of the Soviet government 
>instead.
>
>Treating iran as a threat may produce the same solution, but as you note 
>yourself, it wasn't negotiations that brought down the Iron curtain, it was 
>US military spending, at the time hotly opposed by US liberals of the day. 
>Those liberals still in public life now oppose a US posture that might tip 
>Iran the same direction.

That is not even faintly true. It was an American liberal, Harry
Truman, who drew the line against Soviet expansion. It was an American
liberal, Lyndon Johnson, who mistakenly got us into Vietnam. And it
has been American liberals like John Kerry who have called for
increased support for the Army.

You confuse liberal reluctance to spend excessive money on useless
weapons programs with a lack of support for useful ones.

>>> Like we denied them to North Korea? We can't deny them the weapons,
>>> because we aren't willing to take the steps that would be necessary to
>>> do that -- stop the world from buying their oil or invade.
>>
>>Point of order: the US does NOT buy Iranian oil.  Not a drop.  Europe does,
>>as does india and china.
>
>Hence "stop the world from buying their oil" rather than "stop buying
>their oil."
>--------------------------------
>1) Won't happen.  The cheating we see across the planet on the Kyoto accords 
>should tell you that nobody is going to torpedo their economy just because 
>the US or a piece of paper wants them to.

There is no need for /any/ country to torpedo their economy. The
cheating occurs only because the Bush Administration refused to cut
our greenhouse emissions, leaving companies in countries that do cut
theirs at a competitive disadvantage. Just another example of the
myopia of this Administration.

>2) better, more elegant solutions are available.
>
>
>>We can bomb their (european-made) centrefuges.  That's all we need do to
>>keep them from getting a nuke.
>
>Unfortunately, they'd just rebuild the centrifuges underground. The
>one estimate I've seen said that an attack would delay their
>activities by only a few years. And in doing so, we'd pretty much end
>to any diplomatic possibilities, as well as ending the popular support
>that may one day lead to regime change or liberalization.
>-------------------------------------------
>It depends.  The centrefuges are precision equipment.  I'm told fingerprints 
>on the wrong part can cause a centrefuge to tear itself apart.  A good 
>carpet-bombing might be quite effective.  Unless europe simply sells them 
>more centrefuges or more spare parts.  The again a warhead full of copy 
>machine toner might be as well.

We can't touch them with conventional weapons if they're buried
deeply.

>It would make much more sense I think to destroy their oil
>infrastructure or interdict shipments, but we've managed to close off
>that possibility by failing to reduce consumption and develop
>alternatives.
>---------------------------------------
>If you want to get violent, merely destroy their refineries and interdict 
>inbound gasoline.

But, again, we can't do that, because our myopic,
oil-company-dominated policies have left us open to the economic
consequences of the loss of Iranian oil.

>>But you're right.  the Left in the US and the world has done its level best
>>to erode any will to take that kind of action.
>
>The left has little if anything to do with that. The military options
>just aren't very good.
>---------------------------------------
>The left has had a central role to play, by undermining the US in iraq, by 
>taking Iranian propaganda at face value and pushing for useless 
>negotiations, the Left has had a huge impact, and quite a negative one too.

Sorry, but we lost in Iraq, and that had nothing whatsoever to do with
the left, which wasn't in charge of the war, and everything to do with
the right and the Bush Administration. Nor can advocacy of
negotiations with Iran possibly be said to have affected anything. And
note that even the /Baker/ commission has called for negotiations with
Iran. They're smart enough to realize -- that we can't solve
everything on our own and that the real world is more complicated than
a cowboy show.

>>> We do have
>>> a chance to persuade them that they don't need those weapons, that the
>>> threat of limited military action and the limited sanctions we can
>>> manage outweigh any advantages the weapons would provide. All we have
>>> to do is make them feel secure. And that's what this proposal allows
>>> us to do. It gives us most of what we want -- hell, it's a wet dream
>>> of a proposal -- and that would allow us to let them off the hook.
>>
>>You are completely misundertanding Iran.  They think we don't have the guts
>>to do what it takes to stop them.  That certainly was what Al-Queda took
>>away from "Black Hawk Down".
>
>>You are making the classic Neville Chamberlain mistake of looking for what
>>will "satisfy" an enemy.  They'd take all the bennies we offer and wait a
>>few years and start developing nukes again.  NK just got through doing
>>exactly this to us.
>
>North Korea did what it did because of the Bush Administration's
>backpedaling.
>-----------------------------
>They did it because they wanted more money.

>That's the thing with many powerful men, especially dictators and autocrats. 
>You give them what they want now and their appetite merely gets bigger. 
>Chamberlain made that mistake with Hitler, just as Amassador Fox made that 
>mistake with the Centauri.

It's not that simple, not by a long shot. For one thing, Iran isn't
North Korea: it isn't trying to extort money, which it has in plenty,
thanks to the Bush Administration's energy policies. For another, both
are trying to defend themselves from regime change. They know -- would
be foolish not to -- that the best guarantee they can buy has
plutonium in it.

>Pay Iran not to make nukes and they will cheat, move the goalposts or both. 
>And all the time continue to fund and encourage terroism.

You have no evidence of that.

>Thanks to right-wing saber-rattling, it took us years and a President
>with a history of red baiting to recognize that Communism was no
>longer a monolith and that we could play Russia off against China. The
>Axis of Evil is even more nonsensical than Global Communism.
>----------------------------------------
>We can play Iran and the sunni Arab nations against each other too.
>
>But that does not change iran's status one bit.
>
>Nor does playing china and the soviets against each other change the status 
>of the Soviet Union.  The USSR  was the US' prime enemy during the Cold War, 
>just as Iran is its prime enemy now.

Iran is hardly our prime enemy: Al Qaeda is that. Iran is an irritant.

>The Communists had, at least, been allies in the days of Stalin. But
>neither history nor philosophy nor on-the-ground reality suggest that
>Iran, Iraq, and North Korea were ever an axis of anything, evil or
>otherwise. The North Koreans aren't Muslims. The Iranians and Iraqis
>were dominated by Shites and Sunnis respectively and had fought a
>bloody war for God's sake. And none of them were allies of Al Qaeda.
>-------------------------------------------
>The soviets, as I recall, supported Mao's revolution so there is definite 
>history there.

Yes, in the days of Stalin. But the Russians and Chinese broke ranks
in the Kruschev years. A few years later, Brezhnev tied to get our
approval to nuke them.

>Bush identified the three worst rogue nations on the planet.  They were the 
>three nations to be the most wary of and that posed the greatest threat.  I 
>can't think of anybody that took Bush to indicate that they *were* allied so 
>it means nothing to nitpick the phase he used.

An axis /is/ an alliance. Furthermore, Bush's words were clearly
intended to evoke the Axis of World War II.

>The fact they they were not in a formal alliance doesn't mean they were 
>logically separate either.  Weren't Iraq's missiles under saddam based on NK 
>designs?  Doesn't Iran buy missiles and the like from NK as well?

They buy lots of things from other countries as well.

>This particular bit of jingoistic nonsense led to one senseless,
>unnecessary, and strategically disastrous invasion. It led to a
>country that was gradually opening to the West and had back-burnered
>its nuclear program resuming it and testing a bomb, then agreeing to
>the same terms it had already reached with Clinton. It led to a
>country that had, after years of unfailing enmity, sent a very clear
>signal by cooperating with us to drop everything and hasten to join
>North Korea in the nuclear invulnerability club. In short, it's been a
>disaster.
>-------------------------------------------
>If that were the actual case, I might agree.
>
>NK resumed their nuclear program to try to finesse more money from the US. 
>Pre-2003 Bush Admin policies did not have a great impact on that decision 
>save to open a convienent moment for attempting the finesse.  The results 
>are at best a mixed success, despite your alarmist rhetoric.  You assume far 
>more capability for the NKs than reason would support.  They are not 
>invulnerable by any means.

I'm not aware of any evidence to back up your claim that they did what
they did to get more money. And I'm aware of a fair amount of evidence
that they did what they did because of the Axis of Evil speech and
other actions taken by the Administration.

I've never suggested that they're invulnerable. However, we would have
to sacrifice at a minimum Seoul to take them down.

>Saddam's Iraq is gone and we are that much to the good and no great harm 
>done to the iranian people's desire to be free of their mullahs.  Indeed, by 
>putting pressure on the clerics by invading iran, we might be hastening 
>Iran's demise than putting it off, the same way that Reagan's 
>Leftist-reviled military buildup pushed the Soviets over the precipice.  We 
>see iraninas turning toward iraq's Al-Sistani and away from the 
>iranianclerics, something not possible wihtout an iraqi invasion.

The Iranians had turned away from the clerics long before Bush even
took office.

>I also heard a NPR radio report of organizations in iraq making common cause 
>with the americans locally and trying to take it nation-wide.
>
>You want to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory?  Side with the liberals 
>in congress and pull US troops out.

Er, pardon me for asking, but where's the victory? Things just get
worse and worse -- more bombings, more deaths. The surge has been a
flop, as everyone but Bush and a few on the far right knew it would
be. There is no sign whatsoever that leaving the troops in Iraq will
do anything except further erode the Army and attract more recruits to
Al Qaeda.

>>>>But -- and this is where I think the Adminstration let us down:
>>>>
>>>>'Instead, Bush administration hard-liners aborted the process. Another
>>>>round of talks had been scheduled for Geneva, and Ambassador Zarif
>>>>showed up - but not the U.S. side. That undermined Iranian moderates.
>>>>
>>>>My jaw fairly dropped when I read that.
>>
>>The US has been letting the Europeans take the lead in dealing with Iran.
>>For all the good it has done.
>
>Right, it's a failed policy. Bush used the same failed policy in North
>Korea. In both cases, he refused to talk one-on-one. Didn't work.
>Nothing he ever does works. It's astounding.
>---------------------------------------
>Say it enough times, it may actually come true.

Name one thing Bush has done that he hasn't screwed up. One. It's
amazing.

>Unilateral talks with the NKs impinge on too many other nations. 
>Non-starter.  Everybody's voice needs to be heard.

Nonsense. We held unilateral (bilateral, actually) talks with the
North Koreans under Clinton.

>The US has nothing to say to this Iranian government .  Entering into 
>diplomacy would put all other options on hold so as to "not jeapodize the 
>talks".  Again, a bad, bad idea.

Again, nonsense. We just talked to them, and we didn't put other
options on hold to do so.

>It costs nothing to talk: the worst that can possibly happen is that
>the Iranians say no, and we're back where we were.
>-------------------------------------
>The cost is any other course of action or the posibility of other action. 
>See above.  It's stasis.  Iran has nothing to lose, which is why they can 
>say so many of the things you want to hear and intend none of them.  It's a 
>way of buying time for their nuclear program to complete, buying time to get 
>a grip on Lebanon, drive the US out of Iraq and make better inroads among 
>palestinian terroists

Iran has everything to lose. They do not want to suffer serious
sanctions or be cut off from the world. They do not want to suffer a
military attack.

>>> That's one of the reasons this administration makes me cringe. They're
>Except that Roosevelt and Churchill knew damn well that one fought the
>most important enemy and sought help where you could get it. Roosevelt
>decided to concentrate initially on Germany rather than the
>less-threatening Japan. Both he and Churchilll made alliances with
>Stalin; as Churchill put it, "If Hitler invaded Hell, I would at least
>make a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons."
>------------------------------------
>We sought help.  Our genuine allies answered.  The US put together a 
>52-country coalition, IIRC.

Dude, we couldn't even get Canada aboard.

Bush's laughable Coalition of the Willing is precisely the sort of
unrealistic nonsense that has gotten us into the mess we're in. It's
completely divorced from the truth.

>Bush selected the proper country at the proper time for the proper action.

I can't believe you said that. I simply can't believe you said that.
Saddam had no WMD's. Saddam was an enemy of Al Qaeda. How can you
possibly have said that?

>Bush, by way of contrast, decided to make war on everyone we didn't
>happen to like with little regard for priorities and capabilities. It
>was a shameful mistake that created far more headaches than it solved
>and detracted from our ability to address the real threat, Al Qaeda
>and its allies.
>---------------------------------------
>That is leftist propaganda.

No, it's fact.

Which brings us back to the coalition of the willing: the right has
gotten so caught up in its own spin that it's lost all sense of
reality.

-- 
Josh

"See spot run. Run, spot, run." - William S. Gray
--- SBBSecho 2.12-Win32
 * Origin: Time Warp of the Future BBS - Home of League 10 (1:14/400)