Washington: Iran has frozen nuclear development

But what about the yellow cake?

 

My guess is Dim Son will look for something else to blow up before he leaves office.

Iran? Ooops, doesn't have nukes and never did, apparently.

Venezuela? Ooops, turns out it really IS a democracy.

Madagascar must be getting nervous.

 

It's tasty when topped with chocolate icing.

 

That was the Iraq fakery.

Entirely different deal.

 

Thank goodness for buffer states, eh?

Really though, is there any finding this panel could have had where you guys would have said "Ah, score one for Bush."

No. If they find they did have weapons programs, then Bush fucked up and didn't pull the right strings to get rid of them or stop them. If they didn't have the programs, Bush is an ass for saying they might have them all along.

You all seem so sure, so I honestly am asking: how do we know Bush's years of tough talk and saber rattling haven't helped deter Iran? Other than the fact that we don't like Bush, of course.

 

You're drawing conclusions before you get the answers, Pilot.

But since you asked ...

If you want to make the case Bush's aggressiveness was a deterrent, fine, but I don't buy it. If anything, I think it's been an accelerant as far as the renewed animosity between Iran and the U.S.

It's so easy to forget that before the U.S. went into Supress The Muslims mode, we had cooperation or at least ambivalence from many of these countries, including Iran when it had its moderate government. Our dick-swinging, brutish foreign policy probably contributed to Iran's Rafsanjani-led moderate government being voted out in '05.

And yes, I said voted out, it's also easy to forget that Iran isn't a dictatorship, though it does have oligarchic aspects, no matter how visible Ahmadinejad is. He's essentially the Asian Hugo Chavez. He does not have final say over foreign policy either.

Personally, I feel no more worried about Iran having nukes than Pakistan or even India. As mentioned, even if they had a nuke program, they were a decade away from having any kind of delivery system, even a short-range one.

North Korea's nuke program is of much more concern than any one country, but they sit next to China and within Russia's sphere of influence, so Bush doesn't do his saber-rattling bullshit with them, other than to include them in that idiotic axis of evil.

 

Cleveland State's shaking in its boots.

 

What I don't understand about this story is if the Bush Administration knew it was bs, and I imagine other countries knew it was bs, why play up the threat to the American people? I don't know if it was used to coerce interested parties to the Mid-East peace talks last week or what, but we look stupid. No better than Chavez talking about sulphur on the dais of the UN.

 

Luckily, they're bringing in an expert with long experience in the field.
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/03/wolfowitz-may-return-as-arms-control-advisor/?hp

 

Sure, there's plenty we can do. The senior leadership has handcuffed the Army to the point that we're not much more than a police force -- something we're not trained to do. If Washington would take off the gloves, I'd bet a paycheck or two we could please you.