I just want to sing the opening to Bu$hleauger after reading this lies lies lies lies. If it's a last option then why not allow U.N. Weapons Inspectors to finish searching Iraq for the WMD's that didn't end up existing? It's funny how he still trumpets the invading Iraq has made this country secure. When all evidence even from his own CIA says otherwise.

With the mountain of lies that have come out of this guys mouth and his cronies it's amazing anyone still remotely listens to what they say. How many times does someone have to lie before he is completely ignored when saying anything? Because this Administration has taken the taco for most lies in a four year span.

looking for Weapons of Mass Destruction , again?

you should keep up on the news



i dont think its a matter of looking, but more, when will they produce em

correct, but calm down

we dont need another war, let the UN take it, dont bomb it, dont kill innocent people again, just relax

We can't fight and win another war. Oh wait, we're not winning the one we're fighting right now....

Talk like that will only encourage Iran to get more nervous and come under more pressure to stand their ground.

It;s like any dispute - threats just polarise positons and encourage conflict. It is nowhere near the stage where military intervention should even be considered. This will only make it harder to solve this problem.

Just increases the chance of Iran doing something stupid.

Fucking idiot.

I agree. The UN has proven successful in almost all conflicts it has interviened in. It stop Bosnia after only 100,000 deaths. Oh wait no it didn't. Bad example. It stop the genocides in Rwanda and Sudan before they got out of hand. Sh*t. Another bad example. It's made amazing progress towards north korea and burma and... someone. Anyway, Bu$H SUCKS. He is teh stoopid n00b.

Or.. (and I present this as the first wack theory to pop into my brain) maybe he's really smart, and knows just how to provoke Iran enough to justify a war. I'm not sure what the benefits of that would be, though.

I generally find McCain to be so reasonable on most issues too. Even if he's right, I don't see how we can possibly wage and hope to win another war right now with the mess that's going on in Iraq. We'd definitely need a lot more help than the "coalition of the willing" we've had on this one.

clearly McCain was misquoted here. What he actually said was this:

"For us to say that the Iranians can do whatever they want to do and we won't under any circumstances exercise a military option would be for them to have a license to do whatever they want to do, when in fact only one country has that complete and unilateral power, the U.S of A!!! Let's nuke Iran."

ahem

With all due respect, I think there's a big difference between corruption in a resource distribution program, and the ability of an agency to detect and seize a particular contraband. Corruption in distribution programs happens at every level in every organization on earth. The Army Quartermaster Corps is notorous for such things. But we still trust the Army to do a lot of other important jobs.

As for the topic of Iranian nukes, everyone seems to be radicalizing this situation when moderation is the key to success. Of course you can't just allow Iran to build nukes unfettered and say, "oh well, I guess they have nukes now." But at the same time, you can't threaten, or God forbid actually carry out, a military strike against them.

The United States, NATO, and the UN must all have plans to use force against Iran if it becomes clear that they are in fact building nuclear weapons. It would be stupid to not be prepared for such an eventuality. However, Iran's position thusfar has been that they are not building weapons, they are simply not going to give up their right to process the materials in a way that might later allow them to build weapons. At this point, I see no reason to not take them at their word. You have to understand, these processes take a long time, and they are still a couple of steps away from weapons even after this new process is completed.

If your country were under constant threat by a nuclear power, as Iran is, and you had the capability to build nuclear weapons, even if several years down the road from now, would you stop the processes necessary to complete a weapon when you are a few months from completion, or when you are a few years from completion? Basically, the west has not conceded enough for Iran to consider it worth it to stop the process when they are a few years from completion, so they're going to keep moving forward.

I don't know, it all seems very simple and logical to me, not the ravings of insane leaders of a crazy country. Calculated risk, certainly. But not madness. I for one am much more afraid of what unprovoked move the Bush administration might make next, that I am of Iran's next unprovoked move.

Do you really think the UN's resistance to any show of force by the US is completely unrelated to what eventually came out regarding the oil for food program? All those votes from member nations were unrelated to Saddam's connections with UN representatives?

Regardless, the oil for food scandal wiped away any semblance of legitimacy the UN had regarding its members' intentions with Iraq.

If that one scandal has wiped away any semblance of legitimacy I would only hope that the same would apply to the United States and it's constant double standards and hippocrissy that has taken place regarding terrorism and WMD's in Iraq.

Since none were found even when they said they knew exactly where they were. That is a blatant lie. Since the war was not carried out under any of the pretext's that it was originally sold to the American public. I would say that if one scandal like the oil for food wipes legitimacy away then the Iraq War would make this Administration look like the biggest bunch of lying crooked warmongers on the planet.

I don't see how you can hold the U.N. to such high standards and let the U.S. get away with all this rampant corruption.

I don't hold the UN to such high standards -- which is my point. Notice I said "semblance" of legitimacy -- which means the UN wasn't necessarily scoring off the charts in terms of credibility to begin with. You can't expect the UN to fix everything and make everything right by ignoring the problem exists when, in the interim, it was just as culpable as critics of the US make the US out to be.

That's the point, Chris. We're not talking about the oil for food scandal. We're talking about the search for WMD's. The only nexus is Iraq and the UN. The Army quartermaster is corrupt, does that mean that the JAG corp is as well? Of course not. You act like the UN is dirty top to bottom.

Fuck those penny stealing UNICEF bitches.

Well, it is the point. IEB's post was about relying on the same world body to supposedly "search for weapons" that kept voting against enforcing its own resolutions. Are we really supposed to be naive enough to blindly follow along each time the UN voted against the enforcement when, at the same time, the longer the sanctions were in place (i.e., the longer we went without war) the more opportunities Saddam's henchmen in the UN had to benefit financially?

We're talking about credibility. When you read of all the contracts among Iraq, Russia and France that existed throughout the time the war started, it's hard to believe they voted against the use of force strictly for purposes of diplomacy and "because the inspections were working" (particularly where countries like Russia are now selling nuclear technology to Iran).

People are so quick to indict the US when the very avenue everyone wanted the US to go through in terms of dealing with Iraq (and now Iran) was, in and of itself, tainted with the oil for food scandal fallout. The connections with such high up key UN players makes it hard not to be a little skeptical.

We're getting a bit off topic now, but I will be the first to agree with you about France and Russia and their motivations in the run up to the war in Iraq. They definitely stood to lose financially, as did Saddam and all of his other friends. I disagree that it necessarily indicts the UN weapons inspectors, who from all acounts that I've ever read, were completely on the up and up. In fact, they had not found any weapons, not because they were being bought off by corrupt UN or Iraqi officials, but because there were no WMD's or WMD programs in existence in Iraq for years.

So no, France and Russia didn't vote against war simply for reasons of diplomacy, but they were right about a couple of things. Iraq had NO WMD's, and going to war in Iraq was a huge fucking mistake. Which is worse? That France wanted to prevent a war in Iraq because their corruption in the oil for food program would be exposed, or that Bush wanted to start a war in Iraq so for his own messianic aggrandizement and enrichment of his friends in the business world? Let's see, corrupt business practices WITH a war and thousands of dead innocents, or corrupt business practices WITHOUT war and thousands of dead innocents? Hmmm.

The race to the "moral lowground" is not particularly compelling, nor is it an honor to win OR to come in second.