"there's nothing the Iranians could do that would result in a positive outcome. American diplomacy does not allow for it. Even if they announce a stoppage of enrichment, nobody will believe them. It's a dead end."

....."The Iranian economy is in bad shape, and Ahmadinejad is in bad shape politically," the European intelligence official told me. "He will benefit politically from American bombing......

....ElBaradei's overriding concern is that the Iranian leaders "want confrontation, just like the neocons on the other side"--in Washington.....

...."The most worrisome thing is that this guy has a messianic vision."

....They're apocalyptic Shiites. If you're sitting in Tel Aviv and you believe they've got nukes and missiles--you've got to take them out. These guys are nuts, and there's no reason to back off....."

Hope it works.

Hope it works.

"a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government."

Yeah, right.

Iran has prepared a high-level delegation to hold wide-ranging talks with the US, but the Bush administration is resisting the agenda suggested by Tehran despite pressure from European allies to engage the Islamic republic, Iranian politicians have told the Financial Times. A senior Iranian official, Mohammad Nahavandian, has flown to Washington to "lobby" over the issue, aaccording to a top Iranian adviser outside the US. However, the Iranian mission to the United Nations insisted he was in Washington on private business. Iran's willingness to engage the US on Iraq, regional security and the nuclear issue, is believed to have the approval of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. It represents the most serious attempt by the Islamic republic to reach out to the US since the 1979 Islamic revolution. But the White House insisted on Thursday that its own offer of talks with Iran, extended several months ago by Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador to Baghdad, was limited to the subject of Iraq. "There are none and none are scheduled," Stephen Hadley, national security adviser, was quoted by a spokesman as saying about the prospect of talks with the Iranian delegation in Baghdad next week.

you will just condemn preemptive action against a rogue state that denies the existence of Israel and threatening the world.

This is what our children have to look forward to, unending war. After the oil runs out in the ME its off to Venezula and then where ever.

Thanks for the easy to understand translation from the echo chamber.

"We have our sensors in place in the U.S., Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, and most Arab countries. We know ahead of the time when they are coming, and since Mr. Bush has given American democracy along with the preemptive strike as the right of everybody in the world, we are going to use it and use it effectively.

We are present in most of the military briefings of the U.S. in Afghanistan and Iraq. As soon as we see that it is imminent we hit them and hit them hard... Whether the U.S. or Israel attacks us, we will consider it as Israeli attack since we know how much power they have over the U.S. political and decision-making system."

If the attack happens, that will trigger the nuclear efforts of Iran. We will definitely go underground and speed up nuclear weapon production, since there will be no choice except to have them and have them soon. Right now we do not need nuclear weapons which are a liability rather than an asset, because we do not have hostile enemy which we cannot smash when we want to.

The country has been able to stand on its feet for the last 2,500 years and will do so in the future. Look at the last war we had with Iraq, which by the way, was shortest war we had during the last 200 years."

the invasion and occupation of Iraq was and remains a success in Bush's view. Halliburton and oil company profits are up. Bush was re-elected. His endless war has made all of this possible. The only fly in the ointment is the war's domestic unpopularity. ... there is a huge difference between Iran and Iraq from a military standpoint. ... Iran has Russian anti-ship missiles that are to the Exocet (the weapon that nearly defeated the British in the Falklands) what an F-22 is to a WWII-era Spitfire, and that there are no effective countermeasures. Our Fifth Fleet, which patrols the Persian Gulf, is completely vulnerable. ... the powers that be must know far better than I do that an attack on Iran would result in devastating losses to the Fifth Fleet. ... What would happen if, for whatever reason, Iran sank a couple of American warships? ... The cowed millions would demand action, and action they would get. Bush would round up his nuclear posse and unleash an unprecedented retaliation. Iran would glow for millennia with the radiation of a thousand nuclear warheads in the first all-out nuclear strike in history. Millions of Iranians, or perhaps tens of millions, would die. And Red State America would cheer. Bush's poll numbers would regain their former heights, and talk of censure and Valerie Plame and Katrina would dissolve into the radioactive haze that would blanket the planet.

and that there are no effective countermeasures. Our Fifth Fleet, which patrols the Persian Gulf, is completely vulnerable.

Two themes emerge from a review of statements by top regime leaders over the past ten years of the threats facing the Islamic Republic: they fear, or claim they fear, an attack by the United States, or an attack by Israel; or some conspiratorial combination of the two. I believe their actions show that they have actively rebuilt their defense forces over the past ten years to counter these two threats, while almost totally neglecting the potential threat of a resurgent Iraq. For instance, Iran has devoted almost no resource to rebuilding its decimated armored divisions, which would face Iraq, whereas it has spent tremendous amounts of money and energy building up naval forces, missile units, and amphibious attack forces based at the entry to the Persian Gulf. ... Iran began development [and has successfully test-fired] of the Shahab-3, a 1500 kilometer-range missile capable carrying a 1-ton nuclear warhead against Israel. They received extensive technical assistance from North Korea, China, and increasingly from Russia, which became Iran's main technology partner. ... the commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, Maj. Gen. Mohsen Rezai, warned the United States not to make any aggressive moves toward Iran. "The world's energy is in the Persian Gulf," he told Basijis gathered for war games in August 1996. "If the Americans commit the slightest mistake there, Basij forces will set this region on fire and this will result in America's certain death."

Read all the articles by Gordon Prather who has the technical knowledge to understand the agreements.

Flynt L. Leverett, who served in senior posts at the National Security Agency, the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency, says that the United States has gotten itself into a diplomatic dilemma with Iran "because we essentially don't have a strategy" for dealing with the Iranian nuclear issue. Asserting that the Bush administration rejected an invitation made by Iran in 2003 to open a strategic dialogue, Leverett says that Bush "is, on this issue, very, very resistant to the idea of doing a deal, even a deal that would solve the nuclear problem." Leverett, a senior fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, at the Brookings Institution, says President Bush considers the Iranian regime "fundamentally illegitimate." As a result, he says, the administration is stuck with two choices -- dealing within the UN Security Council, where Russia and China are effectively blocking serious punitive measures, and unilateral military action, which Washington is not in a position to undertake. The international outcry would, I think, be enormous. We would literally have no one on our side at this point supporting that kind of action.

We need to be prepared for the very worst eventuality.

You can't negotiate with these people, you can't try to talk sense to these people. The only way to deal with them is to find them and bring them to justice --George W. Bush

Pushing a stream of twenty year olds between yourself and the line-of-fire dosnt count

You can't talk sense with baby killers either.

Bush is Messianic

Bush is not merely a sincere man of faith but God's essential and irreplaceable warrior on Earth. The stations of his cross are burnished into cinematic fable: the misspent youth, the hard drinking (a thirst that came from "a throat full of Texas dust"), the fateful 40th-birthday hangover in Colorado Springs, the walk on the beach with Billy Graham. A towheaded child actor bathed in the golden light of an off-camera halo re-enacts the young George comforting his mom after the death of his sister; it's a parable anticipating the future president's miraculous ability to comfort us all after 9/11. An older Bush impersonator is seen rebuffing a sexual come-on from a fellow Bush-Quayle campaign worker hovering by a Xerox machine in 1988; it's an effort to imbue our born-again savior with retroactive chastity. As for the actual president, he is shown with a flag for a backdrop in a split-screen tableau with Jesus. The message isn't subtle: they were separated at birth. A Newsweek poll shows that 17 percent of Americans expect the world to end in their lifetime. To Karl Rove and company, that 17 percent is otherwise known as "the base."

And you have never supported the troops. Never.

"Son, we'd like to keep you around this season but we're going to try and win a pennant."

Tolstoy had nothin on Jim.

Retired General Anthony Zinni, the former head of US Central Command, told US television he had no detailed knowledge of the alleged military plans, but he suggested a pre-emptive strike against Iran's nuclear program would be extremely risky. "Any military plan involving Iran is going to be very difficult. We should not fool ourselves to think it will just be a strike and then it will be over," said Zinni. "The Iranians will retaliate, and they have many possibilities in an area where there are many vulnerabilities, from our troop positions to the oil and gas in the region that can be interrupted, to attacks on Israel, to the conduct of terrorism," he said.

Stand out of range and use your offensive air power to destroy the delivery systems before you come in.

First you must have the political will to use all of the weapons at your disposal. We did not do that in Vietnam.

As for the cost of war in Iraq, no one ever said it would be zero in terms of soldiers. But it has been very close to that.

charlie - The one true fact is that you, Jondee or Dark Avenger have no experience in the military, so you must always depend on someone else.