Everything is a distraction from Iran. Everything. But I remember when Bush and Cheney were in charge and they looked at Iran and realized that their own military would revolt if ordered to attack it. So, Craphammer needs to shut his pie hole. He can be as dismissive of Obama’s non-proliferation efforts as he likes, but there is no acceptable military solution to Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Experts agree that such an attack would do no more than delay their nuclear program and have completely unpredictable and dangerous consequences. Moreover, our best intelligence is not even sure that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapon. The following is from the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate:
• Our assessment that Iran halted the program in 2003 primarily in response to
international pressure indicates Tehran’s decisions are guided by a cost-benefit
approach rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political, economic, and
military costs. This, in turn, suggests that some combination of threats of intensified
international scrutiny and pressures, along with opportunities for Iran to achieve its
security, prestige, and goals for regional influence in other ways, might—if perceived
by Iran’s leaders as credible—prompt Tehran to extend the current halt to its nuclear
weapons program. It is difficult to specify what such a combination might be.• We assess with moderate confidence that convincing the Iranian leadership to forgo
the eventual development of nuclear weapons will be difficult given the linkage many
within the leadership probably see between nuclear weapons development and Iran’s
key national security and foreign policy objectives, and given Iran’s considerable
effort from at least the late 1980s to 2003 to develop such weapons. In our judgment,
only an Iranian political decision to abandon a nuclear weapons objective would
plausibly keep Iran from eventually producing nuclear weapons—and such a decision
is inherently reversible.
Since 2007 there have been signs that Iran is still pursuing nuclear weapons, but nothing that could be called conclusive. Is anyone else sick of this constant whining that nothing is being done to (bomb) Iran?
I’d be inclined to instead call McCain’s bluffing bafoonery and have someone ask him straight faced how he would go about pulling his trigger…
“Is anyone else sick of this constant whining that nothing is being done to (bomb) Iran?”
Nope, I love the sound of drum beats in the morning!
can’t get enough craphammer, eh?
More like the rumble of shit pumps chugging…
It is all about Israel and propaganda and so is Craphammer, and it goes back a long way.
The BBC and Israeli Propaganda
shergald / Daily Kos
Nov 11, 2006
The BBC and Israeli Propaganda is the subtitle of an article, Israel’s Plan for a Military Strike on Iran, by JONATHAN COOK, a British journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. It was published in CounterPunch on October 12, 2006.
The last few days have seen quite a number of diaries posted on the topic of Israel’s expected attack of Iran in order to stop its nuclear program, so far announced by the Iranians to be for peaceful purposes. Not widely publicized in the US, the Israeli government commissioned Israel’s leading film maker, Noam Shalev, to execute a documentary about the Iranian threat, whose content lends further weight to the likelihood of an Israeli attack.
Although Cook enumerates various slighted points not covered in the film, 1) that such an attack would be a gross violation of international law, 2) that Israel’s own nuclear arsenal is unmonitored by the IAEA, 3) that Israel is perceived as a threat by its neighbors and may be fuelling a Middle East arms race, 4) that the consequences of an Israeli strike would cause instability and violence across the Middle East, including in Iraq, where British and American troops are stationed as an occupying force, or 5) that it is certain to provoke a steep rise in global jihad against the West, it is the words of various Israeli officials and politicians, who appear in the film, that loom ominous.
LINK for the rest if interested here: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/11/11/270251/-The-BBC-and-Israeli-Propaganda
Cook’s article is here: http://www.jkcook.net/...
“Craphammer”…that’s hysterical (I also like “the mustache of understanding” to describe another one of your favorite pundits)! I do use your “Giulani should wipe his ball sweat off of 9/11 after he’s through humping it” snark all the time — is that copyright infringement?
Did I say that? I must have been in an ornery mood.
LOL. That’s why you couldn’t take Robert Gibbs’s job. You’d scandalize the WH Press Corps.
I sort of paraphrased your sentiment contained in this commemoration of sorts, but yeah (always a classic)…
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2009/9/11/113645/648
I’m certainly sick of it. In fact I’d go so far as to say the jingoism and casual militarism of this country are the greatest threats to the globe today.
And I wish I could say that Obama is part of the solution, but he is part of the problem. He has played the role authored for him by Dennis Ross to a Tee; pretend to play diplomacy only to have an excuse for sanctions/war later. Yes, Dennis Ross actually wrote that.
But you make a valid point without following through. The *ONLY* reason the US has not (yet) attacked Iran is because they fear Iran might be able to hit back. The moment they think they can get away with it, they’ll do it. Obama will play along and his base will make excuses for him.
So to paraphrase Michael Ledeen, or whatever neocon nut said it, “When it comes to Iran getting nukes, all I can say is, Faster please.”
To me it appears the influence of the neo-cons on this issue has blessedly decreased. So the whining hardly bothers me now, whereas I used to freak out about it. I thought there was at least a 60% chance the bush admin would bomb the persians.
I just don’t sense any interest in the Obama administration in bombing Iran, and it doesn’t make any sense. Only a dedicated ideologue could buy into bombing Iran, particularly after the disaster of Iraq (which did blind-side the arrogance of the neo-cons). And not even Bush, apparently, was dumb enough to bomb them.
Anyway the pay-off for Obama’s policy will take a lot of time, probably several years at least. It’s really too early to conclude how it will unfold.
Like Libya, Iran had been ‘shocked and awed’ by the Iraqi invasion, and in the aftermath they offered the US everything (and more) than they now require. The neocons turned it down in their arrogance because Real Men Go To Tehran and Iranian oil beckoned.
The nuclear issue was never an issue until things started going wrong for the neocon project in Iraq and a casus belli was needed against Iran, at which point is was trumped up.
But I reckon that the world changed in the first half of 2007 when China flexed its economic muscles and made clear to the US that energy security is (as it has been for the US for 100 years) a ‘red-line’ issue, and therefore that bombing Iran is definitively off-limits. I see that point as the ‘Suez Moment’ for the US when the economic plug was pulled on miltary adventurism by its main creditor, as the US did for the Brits in 1956.
From the Chinese veto onwards it’s been posturing. Standing up to the Great Satan plays well for Ahmadinejad at home, while for Israel it’s a great distraction from the realities they continue to create on the ground, and which are their number one priority.
Sanctions are a complete waste of time, and indeed counter-productive.
It was a source of great amusement to the elite I met in Tehran in October 2008 (including the heads of three state corporations; the OPEC rep; the head of the Majlis Energy Commission; top oil ministry people and even clerics) that the financial sanctions protected them from the global meltdown then going on.
Sanctions on IT and communications are IMHO totally dumb, and the US should be flooding Iran with free bandwidth and all the comms gear and IT kit they can sell: there’s nothing more subversive than connectivity.
As for energy sanctions, that is exactly what the leadership want, because they can increase fuel rationing and hike prices – which drastically cuts subsidies and reduces the horrendous pollution caused by gaosline at 10 cents/litre – while blaming it all on the Great Satan.
Moreover, sanctions will make fortunes for the IRGC, ex-Savak guys and Bonyads who made a hostile takeover of Iran last June, removing the last vestiges of theocracy that remained, and replacing it with an oligarchy. The reason they acted precipitately then was the imminence of the wave of privatisations now going on of Iran’s energy and other wealth.
The parallels between Iran now, and the Klepto era in Russia is quite close, complete with ‘siloviki’. There’s nothing remotely theological or ideological about Iran now. It’s simply business.
In my view the West should give up dumb sanctions and go for smart engagement with the new owners.
Well that one high-profile defector really wants us to bomb Iran. Of course, he might have an agenda and well, I’ve had enough of Curveballs for the time being.
There has never been anything that conclusively says Iran has EVER pursued nuclear weapons, the implication in the 2007 intelligence estimate notwithstanding.
Iran and the nukes.
If I had a cold blooded and merciless regime over thrown by a worse regime that has Imperial pretensions, next door to me. I would be building nukes too.
I’m surprised that they haven’t popped one off already.
i reckon it’s all about Hormuz.
whichever president caused a blockage of the straight by Iran would create the rapture-bloodbath only the far right xtian militarists would love, and the shock to the US economy would be so swift and cruel even gwb, the destroyer-in-chief couldn’t go there.
so Iran holds that ace, and can posture all it wants.
like Chris said, it’s not ideological any more, and I doubt there are many crazies in Iran who would want the OK corral right on their doorstep.
they are understandably tired of Israel’s superiority complex, so are reaching for some kind of MAD parity, and gleefully showing up the UN for the whitefella stooge it is.
sooner or later Israel is going to have to confront the reality of life without uncle sam’s checks, Iran is hastening that day, because of the greed of the oil lobby these last decades.
they have created the dependency, the americans have sleepwalked into this mess, and now it’s come to this.
neo-cons are thankfully quieter, the last thing this needs is more bolton bullshit pouring gas on the flames.
we should be teaching them solar, so their oil can be fairly sold on the world market, they can stop polluting their own country so much, and move on from their adolescent braggadocio, and west-bashing.
they are an amazing society, trying to make them pariahs through sanctions is terminally stupid and makes us look mean and bullying, besides feeding right into their paranoia, throwing their fruitcake mullahs red meat.
befriend them round and back of their dear <strike>leader</strike> wanker-in-chief, they deserve better than phony color revolutions or CIA undermining.
sometimes i think ‘i’m a dinnerjacket’ is a mossad stooge, he’s so over the top. every time he opens his yap, the arms industry salivates…