Lunacy

The actual truth is Iran is on a path to running out of oil. The demand for energy is skyrocketing in Iran. Energy is subsidized for the domestic market. That is leaving less oil to export for full market value.

Iran is interested in nuclear power (for the most part) so they can sell more oil overseas.

You're surprised the NY Times would publish something like that on their op-ed page, Joe? For real? They publish Bill Kristol, don't they?

Exceptional post, clearly laying out the reality about Iran's situation and astutely touching on most every point.

I would only add that, on top of the sticks you mention to delay an Israeli strike, Israel should also not be able to use Iraqi air space in transit for the assault.

Actually, there's one other practical limitation that should be included in this discussion, and that is that in light of the Israeli bombing of Iraq's Osirick nuclear facility, Iran has dispersed and hardened their nuclear sites. Furthermore, in light of the Iraq WMD fiasco, it is hard to take seriously the idea that we know the location of all or even most of these facilities.

And wouldn't it be impossibly ironic if the assault involved nuclear bunker buster bombs to penetrate the hardened Iranian nuclear sites?

Israel, along with Syria and the Palestinians, just joined Sarkozy's Union for the Mediterranean, pledging with the rest to "pursue a mutually and effectively verifiable Middle East Zone free of weapons of mass destruction".

So with regards to Iran, 1) the situation already puts them on the defensive against seeking nukes even in their own backyard, and 2) Why would Israel destroy their moral superiority and further increase negative perceptions worldwide for what would be no doubt another provocative and failed air strike (especially if the US declines to provide them military aid)?

It's frightening how badly these guys want (another!) war.

I am really terrified that Bush, McCain et al will put US interests aside in order to create an October surprise I'm order to sway the election. It is scary to have so little trust in your own government.

Oh don't despair, President Obama, the Great Messiah, will lay hands on his Koran, I mean Bible, and pray to Allah.

In his undying faith, the God of all Muslims will prevail and smot Israel down as his friend Ahkmenejad has asked.

Hey what are friends for, right!

You know who else wants this war Joe? Your colleagues. Or they might as well want it as long as they don't describe the likely ramifications of an attack on Iran to the 'regular folks' out there, otherwise they might be uninformed enough to sign on. Maybe it's time to explain the retaliatory capabilities of Iran, and how Russia might react to an Israeli/US strike on Iran, but it looks like the slow sell is on. Remember how you and your colleagues detailed all the downsides of invading Iraq? Yeah, me neither. Otherwise good post, but really, birds gotta fly, fish gotta swim and zionist neocons gotta advocate for war beneficial to Israel. What else are they gonna do?

"Did you hear the one about the woman who is attacked on the street by a gorilla, beaten senseless, raped repeatedly and left to die? When she finally regains consciousness and tries to speak, her doctor leans over to hear her sigh contently and to feebly ask, ‘Where is that marvelous ape?'"
-John McCain
Confirmed as true by the McCain campaign 7/17/08
http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/tucsongorilla.pdf

Speaking of bad op-ed columns, I wrote a response to one from David Brooks here.

What is so special about this particular bit of lunacy? It seems about par for the course on the lunacy meter, for the past 7 years. Bush has set a great example for the world, don't talk to people, bomb them and kill them, even if you have no proof for why you are doing it.

Welcome back to the real world Joe.

This is an excellent, beutiful, and concise peice of reasoning!

My hat is off to you.

As a point in kind, didn't just five years ago, India and Pakistan faced of in a nuclear confontation, next door to each other, nose to nose, testing within weeks of one another.

And now we see that Ahmadinejad has even been muzzled by the Ayatolla. Ahmadinejad would NEVER have backtracked on his own unless he was told to - or ELSE!

And I'm firmly convinced the 'or ELSE' clause is real, because what the Ayatollah says, goes.

Some of us may hate 'em, or support terrorism, or whatever, but one thing they are NOT is stupid. If the US and USSR and India and Pakistan can come to this conclusion, so will Israel and Iran.

They are NOT lemmings, you know...

Morris can't be taken seriously, as there is a clear conflict of interest here. Israel WANTS this war. Israel could care less if it leads to worldwide economic disruption and gas prices that would make even the most devout Free Marketeer turn in his Hummer!

I think Joe is finding out what I've contended for years:

Neoconservatives don't know the what, where, when or why to fight wars. They can't see beyond the end of their noses politics wise.

I've always said that the Neoconservative movement was born in Montana, out behind some racists' shack in the mountains...

"Neoconservatives don't know the what, where, when or why to fight wars."

But they know the whom...not them.

I still contend that the Neoconservative movement, as far as the rank and file as represented by RustyPoodle, was given birth in upper class backyards by children who've just seen a Schwartzenegger movie and are waiting for mommy to make lemonade.

"I am really terrified that Bush, McCain et al will put US interests aside in order to create an October surprise I'm order to sway the election. It is scary to have so little trust in your own government."

I feel the same way.

I'm even more afraid that given our outspoken stance on 'protecting our freinds', the Israelis may just do it and leave us to have to pick up the peices, namely having to commit troops the ground in order to wrest control of Hormuz back from the Iranians.

I can see it now. If they break Natanz and the other two major sites, the toll will make the Chernobyl disaster pale in comparison. One of 'em is smack in the middle of a city of more than 1,000,000 people.

Q: Guess how long it will take for this to spin out of control?

A: Slightly quicker than McCain, in a paroxysm of war-enforced unity, gets reelected to manage a region-wide war that will take from 3 to 5 million troops on the ground to sort out.

Which, of course, will mean a draft, on top of all else...

Well, Cincy, you've seen Rusty's bizarre reasoning behind the recovery of money from the good citizens of Iraq, and it's typical of them.

They think "war" is the title of some Nintendo game where the good guy always wins, without a smudge on the cape, and the enemy is vanquished by the push of a button!

NEVER a thought about what the consequences of that damned reality brings. NEVER.

I wonder just what was in that lemonade...

Ahmadinejad, as I've written here before, is a special favorite of Jewish neoconservatives

True-- just ask Jeffrey Goldberg's brain.

Morris writes of a "fundamentalist, self-sacrificial mindset" among Iranian leaders. Y'know, they've been running that country for three decades now. When did they show that they really secretly wanted to all become martyrs?

It's a catastrophic approach to foreign policy to pick one leader and demonize him. We did that with Saddam, at the expense of rational analysis of costs and benefits. Are we really going to do it again? Adolph Hitler is the constantly invoked patron saint of far-right foreign policy-- Reagan is Chamberlain to Gorbachev's Hitler, Clinton was Chamberlain to Saddam's Hitler, etc.

Thanks for staying on this issue, Joe.

Oh "Cincy", one of your perverted buddies has come to your rescue. Do you feel special now?

53_3 and no sense, loves to come to the side of the underdog, the down-trodden, those QUACKS in our country that make him look so good.

53_3 and no sense, how's the playground lately? Pickup any good lines from the 5 year olds?

"We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and the oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender."
-Winston Churchill

"What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight - it's the size of the fight in the dog."
-Dwight Eisenhower

"Mom, can I have smores? Arf, arf!"
-RustyPoodle

Great post Joe! The Iranians are doing nothing more than is perfectly reasonable for them to be doing given their current circumstances. Moreover, it is fast becoming imperative for the entire world to find oil-alternatives for energy supply and it just so happens that nuclear power is probably the best large scale alternative available at the moment. I tend to agree with those who have said that the western world is making a big stink about this because they expressly wish to impoverish Iran (and other third world countries) to maintain hegemony. This is economic aggression of the greatest magnitude and yet neo-cons suddenly turn themselves into the victims when Iranians act justifiably irate.

"53_3 and no sense, loves to come to the side of the underdog, the down-trodden, those QUACKS in our country that make him look so good."

Well now, I see as a physician, we are FULL of content, ain't we?

I mean, talk about the pot calling the kettle black...

quack, quack...

BTW, on the child molester issue, I'm not an admirer of David Koresh...

When you wake up, or get a bit older, or find a brain or whatever it is that ails you, come back when you can bring content to the table...

Hey Joe, it's been a while. Glad to see your post on this and wrote something up about it myself: http://districtdialoguetoo.blogspot.com/2008/07/why-oh-why-did-new-york-times-publish.html

It's a sad attempt by the NYT to prove to Fox News and theblike that they aren't part of the "liberal" media. This junk is something to be found on Daniel Pipes, not the most influential newspaper in the country.

http://www.political-buzz.com/

I haven't been tracking my Israeli sources closely for the past six months because of the U.S. presidential campaign, but if there's even a slight chance that Benny Morris is right and Israel is poised to attack Iran, the U.S. needs to make a few things clear, privately, to the Israeli government immediately: If you do this, you'll get no military support from us. Indeed, we'll cut off every penny of military aid you receive from us. And we will condemn your actions.

Seriously? Why do you think a US government would do that? Do you think a McCain government would? Has someone been hanging out with Timothy Leary?

I can only speculate that the NYT are looking for a op-ed version of the most recent New Yorker cover. Newspapers are having a tough time of it right now, much of it their own making.

The press in particular has gone AWOL in providing any kind of critical insight into the McCain campaign. This is partly to do with the chummy nature of the relationship with Team McCain (donuts, BBQs and 'keep up the fight') and partly to do with the fact that McCain is terminally dull. He simply doesn't sell newspapers.

But this in turn has engendered another problem. Liberals, tired of 'their' newspapers simply trotting out the latest McCain spin on every story are deserting to the internet.

Enter Morris's loony op-ed piece. Any respectable editor would have spiked it when he or she saw the bloodshot whites of its eyes. But the newspapers need some incendiary copy to turn things around and this is it.

The great shame is what they need to be doing is not sensationalize, but analyze. Drivel like the Morris rant will not bring back their missing readers. Singular insight and informed articles might.

Joe, this was an outstanding post. This very nearly redeems you from your "neither the time nor the legal background" debacle. Remember that?
More of this, please and thank you.

I'm interested in the timing. There's some clear rumblings of sanity taking place within the Bush administration. Is the OpEd an attempt to head off any impovement in relations or is was it already a work in progress?

And now that I've read the editorial I'll note that this:

Shoddiest of all is the assumption that if Iran acquired a nuclear weapon, it would use it--immediately-- against Israel is based on the scenario the OpEd describes which is that Iran has already been attacked repeatedly by Israel.

I'll also note that this is the oldest trick in the book:

Given the fundamentalist, self-sacrificial mindset of the mullahs who run Iran, Israel knows that deterrence may not work as well as it did with the comparatively rational men who ran the Kremlin and White House during the cold war.

See everyone knows that our enemies are insane! Otherwise they wouldn't be enemies, right?

Projection much?

"Projection much?"

Universal Transverse Mercator, Zone 55N, WGS84, units meters.

Makes about as much sense as Morris....

Morris: "...it is unlikely that the Israeli conventional forces, even if allowed the use of Jordanian and Iraqi airspace (and perhaps, pending American approval, even Iraqi air strips) can destroy or perhaps significantly delay the Iranian nuclear project."

Now there's a clever idea. I'm sure Israeli military aircraft using Iraqi air strips to bomb Iran will play really well with the Shia majority and government in Iraq....

Unfortunately Joe, this is the real LUNACY. A completely ineffectual Democrat controlled Congress who are hell-bent on destroying our economy.
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN1733004620080717

What are Reid and Pelosi thinking? Why will the reporters here at Time and other news organizations not reporting on these baffoons?

Is this the real terrorist threat to our country? Are we going to elect their "leader" to the highest office in the land so that he can finish the job of complete destruction of America?

It will take a very strong President and Administration to twart these nutcases in Congress, and manage the other touchy foreign policies erupting in the middle east on a daily basis. THIS IS NOT Barak HUSSEIN Obama. A typical democrat, he will sell us all down the river as fast as his little Chicago South Side thugs would their momma.

Obama has proven beyond a shawdow of a doubt he has no experience, no credibility and absolutely no character to be elected to be President of the United States of America.

Hopefully the American people will see that a Democrat controlled Congress and White House would be the most insane situation at this time ever in history.

Klien you are a complete idiot. The more I read of your garbage the more I know that you are the most un-informed town crier Time has on its staff.

Note the words: "Acquire the capacity to produce nuclear weapons in one to four years." Clever rhetoric. So far as we know, both the UN inspectors and the US intelligence community believe that Iran does not have a nuclear bomb program at the present time. It is enriching uranium, which is a serious problem.

Hell yes it is a serious problem! And, I suppose you also think putting in another Jimmy Carter, now known as Barak HUSSEIN Obama is the answer? Do you really think that negotiations with the Iranians, the Mullahs and the complete crackpot Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are going to listen to reason?

The only reasoning that the Iranians understand is "We will destroy your weapons of mass destruction if you continue to proceed in that direction".

I frankly do not care if the Iranians need to burn dried donkey crap to keep warm. Giving them nuclear options is total LUNACY on any level.

Morris is completely correct on this and you have your head in the sand. Wake up before it is too late.

Well Rustydog, I'd rather have my head in the sand than up my butt, which is where yours seems to have been for the past few years. People like you see monsters everywhere you look, and always have the same solution, kill them, destroy them, at the very least give them an ultimatum and then destoy them. I'd like to paraphrase Dr. Phil and ask, how's that working for you? If war is the answer to all of our problems then the world should not have any problems, considering how many wars we have waged. Military force should always be a last resort.
As to Joe Klein's assessment of the situation, it makes a lot more sense than the hype we get from people like Morris and you. Every time a nation has become a nuclear power they seem to come to the realization that these weapons are not usable unless you are willing to commit national suicide. The use of nuclear weapons against Israel would contaminate large areas of Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and possibly many other nations depending on which way the wind is blowing. This would have the effect of turning all of Iran's neighbors into enemies. Like Klein, I also do not believe that the mullahs are suicidal and I've known for years that Ahmadinejad has no power in Iran, why don't you?

Garbage published on the New York Times op-ed page, what else is new?

Well Rustydog, I'd rather have my head in the sand than up my butt, which is where yours seems to have been for the past few years.
Posted by DCPhoenix | July 19, 2008 7:31 AM

Yup Mr Smartypants. And giving the Iranians control of the nuke, while I do have my head up my ass I suppose I can kiss it goodbye faster when they do unleash their missals at us.

I think Rustydog eloquently makes the point that today's conservatives are latent racists whose main rhetorical weapons are name calling and spreading demonstrably untrue statements. In that sense, Rustydog's comments here are probably distasteful to the average undecided that visits Swampland (if there is such a thing) and helpful to the Obama cause.

When McCain says that Republicans aren't spreading falsehoods about Obama, or aren't hatemongering, it's Rustydog that proves him wrong. Way to make your candidate a liar, Rusty!

And he CLAIMS he's a physician - with a business!

Somehow, his agonizing, tortuous path from ranting to cogency to anger to whining makes me wonder:

How could a REAL physician behave like this?

53,
Dr. Josef Mengele was a physician, too.

I forgot. He's just as looney too. Just went off the deep end over on the Maliki thread...

Maybe he has a mail order degree

Thanks for the sanity, Joe. We appreciate it.

Joe Klein - You wrote: "Has the New York Times ever published a more over-the-top, irresponsible op ed column than this one? "

Seriously? They allow Bill Kristol to soil their pages. They allow David Brooks to do nothing but insult Democrats and liberals and then call him cute. There is no surprise that they are printing radical Isreali conservative idiots because those are the same kinds of Americans that they choose to publish.

You wrote: "But, as I said, I can't imagine this deranged scenario being anything close to true."

Do not be dim. You are suffering from a failure of imagination. It is common knowledge that the Cheney faction if pushing for overt military action in Iran. You, yourself, have advocated covert military action in the past. The Bush administration has brought us to the knife's edge on this one and despite their new found faith in diplomacy, I have no faith in their competency.

And, to Rustydog: I have said this to you before but you fail to learn anything. Allah is God. The same God that you pray to. The same God that Jews pray to. They are all the same - the God of Abraham. He is called Allah, Yahweh, Jehovah, Elohim and many other names. Furthermore, muslims believe in Jesus Christ and hold him in reverence as one of the leading prophets of ancient times. You ignorance of these matters is stunning.

You continue to deny that Obama is Christian. You continue to peddle lies about his faith in God. Stop being such a hateful demagogue about other peoples' religion. You only expose your own failures as a Christian and, frankly, you are giving Christians a bad name. And you continue to give conservatives a bad name because you are unable to maintain a discussion above the level of lies and name-calling. You make it easy for us to characterize conservatives as deranged simpletons afflicted with some form of liberal-hating Tourettes syndrome. Since you are only helping the liberal movement I ought to be thanking you.

But as it is, I would much rather that you shut the f^ck up.

Yes, Joe, Morris is wildly irresponsible. One assumes that Michael Ledeen and Danielle Pletka are now caught in the paroxysms of multiple, extended orgasms. The very foundations of AEI must be cracking under so much joy.

Thanks for exposing his piece as the pornography that it is.

Your penultimate paragraph hit the nail on the head. However, you presuppose that our leadership could speak to the Israelis from a position of rationality. With the current administration, I would not bet too heavily on it.

I would agree to the point that Iran wont use, infact no asian country would unless some lunatic takes over, am from india, and so i understand this game better may be. Iran would also do what Pakistan did,it will flip flop, officially tell the world we dont need a bomb, we stand for peace, and get a bomb in discreet. They dont care about sanctions, every day they are minting money by making the world hostage to this situation. The simple point is weather they use or not, it is in no one interest that Iran gets nukes, so that should be stopped. i dont say an all out war, but some surgical strike, atleast to push Iran back by a few years shoudl work.

"The simple point is weather they use or not, it is in no one interest that Iran gets nukes, so that should be stopped. i dont say an all out war, but some surgical strike, atleast to push Iran back by a few years shoudl work."

Lots of problems:
1. You must target enriched uranium sites

This alone guarentees a disaster. One such plant is located right in the middle of city with a population greater than 1,000,000 people. Chernobyl x 1000, anyone?

2. You must know where the targets are

We can see the lettering on a pack of cigarettes from space, but that's not enough to be able to tell what we are seeing on the ground. Is that door the door to a bomb shelter, and underground munitions plant, a maintanance door, or the door to a root cellar?

3. Too much real estate

Iran covers an area larger than Alaska, with mountains, valleys, marshes, rivers, forests, and other topological and geological features.

4. Not enough intelligence on the ground.

We don't have many real intelligence assets on the ground there. Not having ties with them and trade has reduced severly the number of conduits through which operatives could be channeled.

5. We can't stop a retaliation

All of the reasons listed above contribute to the fact we don't know where everything is, AND, this country is much bigger and much more populous than Iraq. Even we don't have the military might to contain and control Iran's reaction. The first Iraq war took 530,000 troops. We would need a equal size minimum just to occupy and hold Hormuz open, and even that won't be a guarentee they couldn't shoot missiles over our lines and destroy tankers in the gulf.

To really stuff any reaction, it will take a year or more of massive military preparation, and 3 to 5 million troops to sort out and KEEP sorted out all the problems that will arise.

AND, we don't got that!

Rusty Nail:

Obama? Messiah?

Afraid not. The messiah is Charles Krauthammer. And, if he's not up to it, Fred Hiatt.

I agree with 1,2 and 3. They are valid points.
4.Not enough intelligence on the ground.
We don't have many real intelligence assets on the ground there. Not having ties with them and trade has reduced severly the number of conduits through which operatives could be channeled.

This might be true of America, but what about Israel,Pakistan and India, these countries should have better intelligence. Pakistan coz well, everything Iran has belongs to Pak originally isnt it they installed the whole stuff so they should know what and where? USA can buy or bully Pak :)
Isnt Israeli intelligence better than CIA's?
India wont help publicly, afterall it has 2nd largest muslim population. But even India doesnt want a 3rd nuclear neighbour, no other country is in a worser situation sorrounded all round by nuke state, isnt it?

Actually you have all valid points :) I was just a touch anxious to knock it off, I really hope some kind of diplomatic effort bears fruit....frankly not too optimistic on it.

The biggest problem with this whole situation is that elements of the American and Iranian leadership insist upon assuming they MUST be enemies and dealing with each other appropriately. This is highly schizophrenic if you think about it calmly--it's like witnessing a neighbour who holds religious/cultural views you don't much care for purchasing fertilizer and concluding he's probably making a bomb to blow up your house but even if he's not the only reasonable thing to do is kill him and his entire family asap just to be on safe side.

When are average people going to wake up and realise that viewing the Iranians (and vice-versa Americans) as enemies is an irrational CHOICE they are making for no real reason? And that unscrupulous members of the leadership and media are enabling this choice through their own self interest, to the detriment of the general population?

"Actually you have all valid points :) I was just a touch anxious to knock it off, I really hope some kind of diplomatic effort bears fruit....frankly not too optimistic on it."

Thanks for thinking about this!

Far too many don't, turn around, and start shaking their machetes at the unseen enemey in the distance. This is a LARGE country with considerable resources we are talking about, not some already-crushed pushover that Iraq was in 2003.

I think too many people fall into the trap of thinking the sabre-rattling is really more than that.

Of course, earlier this year, did no one notice that North Korea again threatened South Korea with a "sea of fire"?

Talk is talk. THIS is insanity!