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| Barky Doesn't Want A War, He's A Family Man! |
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| Idiot Republicans Absolve Themselves Of Any Responsibility For The Shabby Shape Of The Economy After 8 Years Under Emperor Bush |
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| These Repubtards In Congress Have Done Nothing To Move This Country Forward! These Traitors To America! |
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| These Pricks Think Tax Cuts Are A God Given Right! They Claim To Want The Strongest Military In The World But Refuse To Financially Sacrifice! Hell, These Bastards Don't Even Want To Pay For The Military We Have Now! Young Americans Sacrifice Everyday So These Bastards Can Lounge Around The Pool, Drink $200 Bottles Of Wine, And Eat Filet?! WTF AND THEY REFUSE TO PAY FOR THE MIGHTIEST MILITARY ON EARTH?! THESE TRAITORS TO AMERICA! THESE TRAITORS TO OUR MILITARY! THESE TRAITORS TO THE AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE - THESE TRAITORS TO OUR COUNTRY! THE BASTARDS! |
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| It's All About Oil And Opium And Who Can Make The Most Coin! You Pay, They Get Rich! |
SO THE OLYMPICS HAVE OFFICIALLY ENDED, NOW AMERICA GEARS UP FOR THE WAR GAMES FEATURING, ISRAEL, IRAN; SYRIA, TURKEY; RUSSIA, CHINA, AND OF COURSE THE U.S.A.
I CAN'T BELIEVE HOW STUPID ISRAELI LEADERS ARE, THINKING OF TAKING ON A NATION OF 78 MILLION PEOPLE ONLY BECAUSE THEY THEMSELVES POSSESS NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND HAS THEIR FRIEND UNCLE SAUL, EH, UNCLE SAM TO BACK 'EM UP! IF ISRAELI LEADERS ARE THAT STUPID TO START A WAR BASED ON SEXED UP INTELLIGENCE, I MEAN, PROPAGANDA THEN ISRAEL DESERVES TO BE DESTROYED. THEY ARE THE NUCLEAR TERRORISTS AND THEY MUST BE DISARMED! IF ISRAEL ATTACKS IRAN, I'M ROOTING FOR IRAN! THE STUPIDITY OF IT ALL IS SO MIND BOGGLING..., SO MUCH FOR THE OLYMPIC IDEALS. WHAT A JOKE!
see these stories for confirmation on the upcoming nuclear war.
from reuters:
Israel media talk of imminent Iran war push
By Dan WilliamsJERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel's prime minister and defence minister would like to attack Iran's nuclear sites before the U.S. election in November but lack crucial support within their cabinet and military, an Israeli newspaper said on Friday.
The front-page report in the biggest-selling daily Yedioth Ahronoth came amid mounting speculation - fuelled by media leaks from both the government and its detractors at home and abroad - that war with Iran could be imminent even though it might rupture the bedrock ties between Israel and the United States.
"Were it up to Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, an Israeli military strike on the nuclear facilities in Iran would take place in the coming autumn months, before the November election in the United States," Yedioth said in the article by its two senior commentators, which appeared to draw on discussions with the defence minister but included no direct quotes.
Spokesmen for Prime Minister Netanyahu and Barak declined to comment.
Yedioth said the top Israeli leaders had failed to win over other security cabinet ministers for a strike on Iran now, against a backdrop of objections by the armed forces given the big tactical and strategic hurdles such an operation would face.
"The respect which in the past formed a halo around prime ministers and defence ministers and helped them muster a majority for military decisions, is gone, no more," Yedioth said. "Either the people are different, or the reality is different."
Israel has long threatened to attack its arch-foe, seeing a mortal menace in Iranian nuclear advances and dwindling opportunities to deal them a blow with its limited military clout. Washington has urged Israel to give diplomacy more time.
The war talk is meant, in part, to stiffen sanctions on Tehran - which denies seeking the bomb and says its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes - by conflict-wary world powers. Israel and the United States have publicly sought to play down their differences, the latter saying military force would be a last-ditch option against Iran.
A Reuters survey in March found that most Americans would support such action, by their government or Israel's, should there be evidence Iran was building nuclear weapons - even if the result was a rise in gas prices.
BOMB, BALLOT
But U.S. President Barack Obama, seeking re-election in November, has counselled against what he would deem premature Israeli unilateralism. He recently sent top officials to try to close ranks with the conservative Netanyahu.
Obama's Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, an old friend of Netanyahu who casts himself as a more reliable bulwark for Israeli security, also visited Jerusalem last month.
The Yedioth article said, without citing sources, that some government advisers in Israel and the United States believed a pre-November strike might "embarrass Obama and contribute to Romney's chances of being elected."
Yedioth said the aim of an initial Israeli attack on Iran could be to trigger an escalation that would draw in superior U.S. forces - but described Barak as dismissive of this theory.
"He believes that America will not go to war, but will do everything in its power to stop it. It will give Israel the keys to its emergency (munitions) stores, which were set up in Israel in the past. Israel needs no more than this," Yedioth said.
Netanyahu, apparently trying to avoid being seen as meddling in U.S. politics, has voiced gratitude for cross-partisan support of Israel in Washington, while insisting his country remains responsible for its own security.
Haaretz, an influential liberal Israeli newspaper, quoted an unnamed senior official in the Netanyahu government as saying the Jewish state - widely assumed to have the region's only atomic arsenal - potentially faced a greater danger from Iran than on the eve of its 1967 war with several Arab neighbours.
That thinking seems to be gaining ground domestically.
A poll published on Friday by the mass-circulation Maariv daily found that 41 percent of Israelis saw no chance of non-military pressure on Iran succeeding, versus 22 percent who thought diplomacy could work.
While 39 percent of Maariv's respondents said dealing with Iran should be left to the United States and other world powers, 35 percent said they would support Israel going it alone as a last resort - up from previous polls that found around 20 percent support for the unilateral option.
(Writing by Dan Williams; Editing by Douglas Hamilton and Tim Pearce)
Thomson
Reuters journalists are subject to an Editorial Handbook which requires
fair presentation and disclosure of relevant interests.
 Return to the Article |
August 12, 2012
Apocalypse Soon
By Richard A. Baehr
For
about a decade, it seems, pretty much every analyst of Iran's nuclear
program has offered up an attempt at reassurance, concluding that Iran
was two to four years away from completing its program. Of course, the
continued use of this range was an absurdity as the years progressed,
unless Iran had stopped the program in its tracks, which was the
nonsense communicated in a 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, alleging
that Iran had abandoned a plan to weaponize its program in 2003, while
production of enriched uranium continued, supposedly for other purposes.
Today, no one makes a credible argument that a nuclear bomb is not Iran's goal, so the key question remains: how soon will they have one, and can and will they be stopped by Israel on its own, or Israel and the United States, before that happens? Iran continues to deny that it has a nuclear weapons program, while it continues to threaten to destroy the Jewish state in virtually every pronouncement from the leadership of the country. Of course, given the lack of Western intelligence sources within the Islamic Republic, a strike could come too late. Considering the Obama administration's seeming disinterest in even threatening the use of military action to stop the Iranian program, and its pressure on Israel not to act "prematurely" (meaning at a time that could complicate the president's re-election effort), what we are left with is the knowledge that every day that passes brings the date of a nuclear Iran closer.
We also know that the use of sanctions to bring the regime to its knees, and force it to give up its nuclear program, has failed. The waivers the Obama administration have knocked the heart out of the tougher sanctions regimes that Congress has passed. Diplomacy with the mullahs has been a joke, first as subcontracted to the Europeans during the Bush years, since they are supposedly better at this than the Americans. Once Obama was elected, there seemed to be an expectation, at least in the mind of Obama, that Iran would come to its senses and negotiate away its program, because the Iranians were dealing with Obama, whose greatness would be enough to win the day.
With new reports suggesting that an Israeli strike could come in the next few months, a new book by Noah Beck presents a different scenario for Iran to go nuclear from the one that has concerned the West -- namely, Iran developing a bomb on its own. In Beck's book, The Last Israelis, the Iranians have purchased a nuclear weapon or weapons from Pakistan as insurance against any interruption to their own program.
The book begins with the Israelis obtaining this information and realizing that they have at most a week to prevent the program from becoming fully operational. The story revolves around the 35 members of an Israeli nuclear submarine, who may need to take part in operations against Iran, or serve as a second strike deterrent after an Israeli strike at the Iranian facilities.
Since the nuclear era began with Hiroshima, the conventional wisdom has been that nations which possess nuclear weapons are rational, since they understand the consequences of a first strike against another nuclear-armed nation. This is the doctrine of mutual assured destruction (MAD). The U.S., Britain, and France were Western powers with nuclear weapons; the Soviet Union and China were Communist regimes that had them. There were many skirmishes and even wars fought between the two sides and their proxies during the Cold War, but nuclear weapons never became more than the stuff of tacit threats. When Russia began arming Cuba with missiles during the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962, the U.S. challenged the Soviets to step down and withdraw them, and the Soviets complied in exchange for the U.S. removing some older weapons from Turkey. The danger of nuclear weapons proliferation was regarded as a serious problem by the United States, and its Western allies.
It has been assumed that Israel has been a nuclear power for over four decades, but there is no historical evidence that these weapons ever became part of the calculations in Israel's wars. On the other hand, Israel has in the past struck against nuclear programs in two other countries -- Iraq and Syria.
In The Last Israelis, the presumption that Iran accepts the doctrine of mutually assured destruction is called into question. Another question is what the submariners should do if Israel has been attacked and the submarines are out of communication range to receive instructions on how to respond. In typical Israeli fashion, 35 submariners, with almost that many opinions on how to respond, argue over the ethics of striking at Iran, with less than full knowledge of what has occurred in their home country, and later, after they learn some of the details. The book provides a picture of Israelis at work in one of the most claustrophobic and intense environments in the world -- weeks at a time in a submerged submarine in hostile waters. The Israelis on board are a diverse collection of religious Jews and atheists, Druze and Christians, Ethiopians, Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews. How each man got to be a member of the submarine force is part of the story, and crew's diversity serves as an explanation for the views held in the debates onboard on the proper Israeli strategy.
An interview with the author, conducted by Adam Taxin, provides a little more of the background of the novel without giving away the plotline. The book is an argument, I think, for ensuring that Iran does not become a nuclear power. After that point is reached, one can only hope for Iranian rationality, since the MAD doctrine may not apply. If we take the Iranians at their word, rationality cannot be assumed. Would Iran be willing to suffer millions of casualties in order to destroy Israel, thereby becoming an heroic and even a martyr nation to many Muslims, elevating the Shia side in the thousand-plus-year battle with Sunnis for pre-eminence in the Muslim world? What could be expected from Iran if it did not immediately attack Israel, but instead used its nuclear capability to more aggressively threaten its enemies in the region? Why risk either of these scenarios? The Last Israelis is a good read on a subject as current as the headlines, and the book poses a situation where none of the choices are good or easy.
The leaders in the West have so far chosen to punt rather than deal with Iran, precisely because the choices are difficult and success of specific approaches is not guaranteed. But what lies behind the curtain is almost certainly worse.
Today, no one makes a credible argument that a nuclear bomb is not Iran's goal, so the key question remains: how soon will they have one, and can and will they be stopped by Israel on its own, or Israel and the United States, before that happens? Iran continues to deny that it has a nuclear weapons program, while it continues to threaten to destroy the Jewish state in virtually every pronouncement from the leadership of the country. Of course, given the lack of Western intelligence sources within the Islamic Republic, a strike could come too late. Considering the Obama administration's seeming disinterest in even threatening the use of military action to stop the Iranian program, and its pressure on Israel not to act "prematurely" (meaning at a time that could complicate the president's re-election effort), what we are left with is the knowledge that every day that passes brings the date of a nuclear Iran closer.
We also know that the use of sanctions to bring the regime to its knees, and force it to give up its nuclear program, has failed. The waivers the Obama administration have knocked the heart out of the tougher sanctions regimes that Congress has passed. Diplomacy with the mullahs has been a joke, first as subcontracted to the Europeans during the Bush years, since they are supposedly better at this than the Americans. Once Obama was elected, there seemed to be an expectation, at least in the mind of Obama, that Iran would come to its senses and negotiate away its program, because the Iranians were dealing with Obama, whose greatness would be enough to win the day.
With new reports suggesting that an Israeli strike could come in the next few months, a new book by Noah Beck presents a different scenario for Iran to go nuclear from the one that has concerned the West -- namely, Iran developing a bomb on its own. In Beck's book, The Last Israelis, the Iranians have purchased a nuclear weapon or weapons from Pakistan as insurance against any interruption to their own program.
The book begins with the Israelis obtaining this information and realizing that they have at most a week to prevent the program from becoming fully operational. The story revolves around the 35 members of an Israeli nuclear submarine, who may need to take part in operations against Iran, or serve as a second strike deterrent after an Israeli strike at the Iranian facilities.
Since the nuclear era began with Hiroshima, the conventional wisdom has been that nations which possess nuclear weapons are rational, since they understand the consequences of a first strike against another nuclear-armed nation. This is the doctrine of mutual assured destruction (MAD). The U.S., Britain, and France were Western powers with nuclear weapons; the Soviet Union and China were Communist regimes that had them. There were many skirmishes and even wars fought between the two sides and their proxies during the Cold War, but nuclear weapons never became more than the stuff of tacit threats. When Russia began arming Cuba with missiles during the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962, the U.S. challenged the Soviets to step down and withdraw them, and the Soviets complied in exchange for the U.S. removing some older weapons from Turkey. The danger of nuclear weapons proliferation was regarded as a serious problem by the United States, and its Western allies.
It has been assumed that Israel has been a nuclear power for over four decades, but there is no historical evidence that these weapons ever became part of the calculations in Israel's wars. On the other hand, Israel has in the past struck against nuclear programs in two other countries -- Iraq and Syria.
In The Last Israelis, the presumption that Iran accepts the doctrine of mutually assured destruction is called into question. Another question is what the submariners should do if Israel has been attacked and the submarines are out of communication range to receive instructions on how to respond. In typical Israeli fashion, 35 submariners, with almost that many opinions on how to respond, argue over the ethics of striking at Iran, with less than full knowledge of what has occurred in their home country, and later, after they learn some of the details. The book provides a picture of Israelis at work in one of the most claustrophobic and intense environments in the world -- weeks at a time in a submerged submarine in hostile waters. The Israelis on board are a diverse collection of religious Jews and atheists, Druze and Christians, Ethiopians, Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews. How each man got to be a member of the submarine force is part of the story, and crew's diversity serves as an explanation for the views held in the debates onboard on the proper Israeli strategy.
An interview with the author, conducted by Adam Taxin, provides a little more of the background of the novel without giving away the plotline. The book is an argument, I think, for ensuring that Iran does not become a nuclear power. After that point is reached, one can only hope for Iranian rationality, since the MAD doctrine may not apply. If we take the Iranians at their word, rationality cannot be assumed. Would Iran be willing to suffer millions of casualties in order to destroy Israel, thereby becoming an heroic and even a martyr nation to many Muslims, elevating the Shia side in the thousand-plus-year battle with Sunnis for pre-eminence in the Muslim world? What could be expected from Iran if it did not immediately attack Israel, but instead used its nuclear capability to more aggressively threaten its enemies in the region? Why risk either of these scenarios? The Last Israelis is a good read on a subject as current as the headlines, and the book poses a situation where none of the choices are good or easy.
The leaders in the West have so far chosen to punt rather than deal with Iran, precisely because the choices are difficult and success of specific approaches is not guaranteed. But what lies behind the curtain is almost certainly worse.
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2012/08/apocalypse_soon.html at August 12, 2012 - 11:12:21 PM CDT
Hey you forgot about India and the Pakistani's, they want in on the action to!
ReplyDelete