Washington: Iran has frozen nuclear development

So, it's safe to say that Norman Podhoretz's profile in Rudy's foreign policy team be reduced a bit?

 

The AEI always has a backup plan:

1. Iran is an imminent threat because it's building weapons of mass destruction
2. The people of Iraq Iran need to be liberated from that ruthless madman Saddam Hussein Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

 

What will Cheney's itchy trigger finger do now?

 

Tsk, tsk, SJ. Let's not let an intelligence report get in the way of a good war.

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jQswdLdshcyo7Qtv_Nb8RiWFxu8A

You know ... the madman strategy doesn't really work when it's in the hands of a madman.

 

Please define "taking the gloves off" in such a way that guarantees that we will not have a couple of billion people pissed off at us in perpetuity, thereby making us less safe.

 

Unbelievable.

 

Too late.

Which is worse - that for our trillion dollars in intelligence expenditures, we still don't know which is end is up, and have been operating on bad information for the last half decade? Or that now, in possession of some sort of update, the White House chooses to ignore it? Or that the update is also likely unreliable, given the agencies that gathered and assessed it? Or that as a nation - the richest and most powerful in the history of humanity - we move through the world in a state of such perfect ignorance?

 

I trust el-Baradei more than I trust the devious bastards in our own government, and he agrees with the NIE.

 

I'll grant that the new information is likely the more correct. We then return to position one - how can our intelligence have been so bad for so long? How is it possible to pour untold trillions of dollars into the defense and intelligence budgets for the last 60 years and not know this stuff?

 

Google, for example, the term "cordon and knock."

Better yet, hit this link, download the manual and read the second page: www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-24fd.pdf

We're neither built, nor trained for this type of mission. For decades we've been trained to fight on a linear battlefield. This one is obviously not. I hate to say it, but the Army is pretty much a total war organization, and not one for fighting a counterinsurgency.

The Army's mission is "to fight and win our Nation’s wars by providing prompt, sustained land dominance across the full range of military operations and spectrum of conflict in support of combatant commanders," not police rival religious factions.

We're writing NEW counterinsurgency manuals as we speak. Let me repeat that. AS WE SPEAK. Obviously, learning as you go isn't very efficient. We have braniacs at Ft. Leavenworth (tacticians) trying to keep up with it all, but sometimes (I don't know if this is one of those times, or not, but it seems like it), it's better to land a haymaker and clean house.

 

Damn Three Bags. Better get to work then and stop dicking around on SJ.