Free Republic

You're welcome. This national polling about the congressional elecion has bothered me for a couple of weeks and it's time to straighten this out so that Republicans are not deceived by meaningless polls.

"Ohmeed Aziz Popal --- blue eyed Swede."

Must have been one of those wild-eyed Amish bombers, or maybe a crazed Irishmen after a shot of Bushmills and a beer chaser......... /sarc off

What's happening in PA these days, BTS? What do you think the Stillers will do this year? Is a repeat going to happen?

It's not good for any additional nations to obtain nuclear weapons. There are already too many nuclear weapons and too much weapons-grade fissile material in the world. The best situation would be if only the true democracies in the world had nuclear weapons, because democracies have the best nuclear security and the greatest restraint about the use of nuclear weapons. But as a practical matter, Russia, China, and Pakistan already have nuclear weapons and once a nation obtains them it is almost impossible to take them away without a nuclear war. So the nuclear threat from those countries already exists and we can't eliminate that threat, but the existence of this theat doesn't justify extending that threat to more countries.

Iran would be a particularly dangerous country if it obtains nuclear weapons because many people in Iran have a strong belief in martyrdom and top Iranian leaders have made some statements in support of the idea of national martyrdom. So deterrence through mutually assured destruction will not necessarily work with Iran, and there lies the greatest danger with Iran.

If Iran is allowed to build those first few nuclear weapons, then the cost of stopping them from building a large nuclear arsenal increases exponentially. If they get those first few nukes, then it would take a nuclear war to stop them from building a huge nuclear arsenal that directly threatens the survival of the US and Europe. It's difficult to imagine Western leaders making a decision to have a nuclear war with Iran, so if Iran gains any nuclear weapons then they will immediately be a future theat to the survival of the United States. This is why Bush, Cheney, Blair, Merkel, other Western leaders, and Israel will not allow Iran to build nuclear weapons under any circumstances.

This may raise the question about why Pakistan was able to build nukes. I believe the answer for why this happened is that the US has much more influence in Pakistan than in Iran and the US and Pakistan are watching their nuclear weapons like hawks to make sure they don't fall into the wrong hands. The Pakistani military and the Pentagon probably also have an emergency plan to deal with a fundamentalist revolution in Pakistan and prevent revolutionaries from seizing the nuclear weapons. There's no way for us to provide nuclear security and do the same thing in Iran, because thanks to peanut-head we have little influence inside Iran at this time. So if Iran builds a few nukes, then they would become a huge threat to continue building a large nuclear arsenal and ship-launched cruise missiles that could deliver those nuclear weapons to American cities in a devastating nuclear first strike.

In conclusion, Iranian nuclear weapons aren't going to happen while Bush is President and I don't think he will hand this situation off unresolved to the next President. So get ready, the next 18 months are likely to be very eventful in Iran.

I also think the timing of this inspection and shutdown is supicious, because it's about three months before the congressional election in November. Construction projects in Alaska usually have to be completed by the end of September before the snow begins to fall in October. So obviously the best time to inspect an oil pipeline would be in the middle of Spring, so that any needed repairs could start in May and take advantage of the relatively warm weather and long days in the Alaskan summer. I can't imagine why BP would have waited until mid-Summer to inspect those pipelines. People at BP are too smart and too knowledgable to make that mistake, in my view.

BP executives definitely have some exlaining to do about the timing of these inspections and the resulting shutdown of half of Prudhoe Bay production. This could have been an attempt to make the Bush Administration look bad and keep gasoline prices up higher than usual in October, thereby helping the DemocRATs in the congressional election.

Geez, what is the UN doing putting in a peacekeeping force that doesn't even have enough muscle to force Hezbollah away from their positions? The UN put these peacekeepers right in the middle of this battle and turned them into human shields for Hezbollah. It's time to pull all these UN troops out of Lebanon before more of them get killed.

It seems like the US needs to push Lebanon to move the civilians out of the border area. We can push this as a humanitarian move, but this will also help Israel defeat Hezbollah and begin the long process of ending support for Hezbollah within the Lebanese government. Physical seperation of the Lebanese civilians from Hezbollah will promote the concept of political seperation of Lebanon from Hezbollah too. Ultimately of course, it is essential for a regime change to occur in Iran so that Iran is no longer trying to dominate Lebanon and the Middle East through terrorist groups like Hezbollah.

This latest offer does look like a smart strategic move. But if Iran accepts this offer we will be giving them the ability to produce Plutonium in the future and we had better have a viable long-term contingency plan to deal with the situation if they kick out the IAEA and foreign technicians and then attempt to reprocess the plutonium into weapons-grade plutonium. We need a infallible contingency plan to stop them from producing weapons-grade plutonium if that situation occurs. I would assume the Pentagon has a plan to deal with that situation.

So, those who willfully and deliberately and repeatedly break our laws should be given "respect?"

Well, tens of millions of Americans deliberately, repeatedly, and flagrantly violate speed limit laws on our highways every day (resulting in hundreds of needless accidental deaths every month) and cheat on their income taxes every year. So do you want to prosecute all of those willful lawbreakers too, or only illegal immigrants?

But it ain't over yet. We're only in the 3rd inning of this Iranian crisis. Our closer hasn't even warmed up yet.

Or maybe they're negotiating for a better package of economic incentives, and meanwhile they're running an extortion racket to keep oil prices high.

Calm down man, you're misreading this situation. Iran is still at least a couple of years away from building a bomb. We're working towards a diplomatic solution where Russia does all the uranium enrichment for Iran and controls all nuclear fuel in Iran. If this agreement is reached, then Russia just has to move all the spent nuclear fuel out of Iran so there's never enough plutonium in Iran to make a bomb. Nobody outside of Iran wants Iran to have nuclear weapons This is Iran against the world, and I'm betting on the world winning this fight. We have all kinds of ways of stopping Iran if necessary with different kinds of military strikes and the use of classified weapons systems.

Well, market forces will ensure that crude oil price reductions are passed on to consumers. Regulators, such as the FTC, use antitrust laws to make sure companies do not interfere with free market forces by restricting supplies of products.

If we got rid of all onerous government regulations and tariffs, then oil production would increase, refining capacity would increase, and gasoline prices would be lower than they are today with all the onerous government regulations and tariffs. Federal and state regulators make sure that crude oil cost savings are passed on to consumers. There's no way for refiners to pocket all the extra profit. It doesn't happen immediately, but pump prices fall when crude oil prices fall.

Probably a mistaken clock setting on one of FR's web servers or something like that. Very cool trick there...gives you a futuristic image.

I almost forgot to say....welcome to FR.

Are you in Europe? How did you get tomorrow's date as your sign-up date?

One of the reasons oil companies shut down some refineries is because oil supplies were depleted in inland areas and there was no longer enough oil to supply land-locked refineries in inland areas. You'll notice that most of our refineries are now on the three coasts or near the Houston ship channel, so the refineries can receive shipments of imported oil. Shell Oil just shut down a refinery in Bakersfield, CA last year because they no longer have enough San Joaquin Valley oil to run the refinery at a profit. Shell tried to sell the refinery, but last I heard nobody wanted to buy it because it loses money. The oil industry is constantly changing. It's not like semiconductors where they have abundant raw materials and they can build their factories anywhere and keep them running forever.

"They cannot be driven because the oil and gas industry does not exist in a free market mode."

The oil & gas industry is primarily driven by the free market forces of supply and demand. Governmnent taxation, regulation, tariffs, and limits on exploration interfere with free market forces in some ways and impede free market forces. But it's basically a world-wide free market system, with one big exception: OPEC is a foreign cartel that restricts output to maintain higher prices. Right now OPEC has very little excess capacity so the cartel is not having any significant effect on prices, but they did cause higher prices 3-5 years ago.

How did you manage to get a sign-up date that is tomorrow's date: 4/27/06? Are you trapped in a time warp in the Romulon galaxy?

I kept trying to tell Travis McGee that Iran couldn't possibly disrupt shipping traffic in the strait for more than 30 days (at most). Maybe now he'll believe me, but somehow I doubt it.