[Doofer]

Pretty bleak assessment but probable accurate.

[TheLion]

Should we go after them, it should be with such overwhelming force, that they have nothing left to close the straits with.

[308MBR]

I'm quite afraid, yet sure it will take a mushroom cloud over DC for that to happen. I just hope it's not a Federal Holiday when it happens.

I know that's bad, but it will be the only hope for us to actually do it. This country had the will to do what was needed for all of 30 minutes after 9-11. Then, advisors from Foggy Bottom helped the President get up and talk about how islam is a Religion of Peace.

[Brad from Tennessee]

The U.S. should be waging the same type of asymmetric warfare on Iran that Iran has waged against the U.S. and the West for the last 25 years. The U.S. should exploit some or all of Iran's dissident groups by providing whatever resources they require to fight the Mullahs. This may not solve the nuclear issue but it could bring the Iranian religious dictatorship to its knees and take some pressure off Iraq and Israel.

[zipper]

If I know President Bush's character, he won't leave office without arriving at a solution-- diplomatic or otherwise, and I'm leaning toward a military solution. The U.N. is much too weak and fractionalized to deal a decisive blow to the Iranians.

[river rat]

You guys thinking these scenarios are bleak --- should consider how bleak doing nothing would be.

To date -- the U.S. has "fought" this war with handcuffs and a tight leash being held by the same assholes in Washington that lost the war in Vietnam......POLITICIANS and LAWYERS.

In a sane world ---- the American warrior should stay home until two conditions are met:
1. The enemy and his supporters are identified.
2. Congressional authorization to destroy by any means necessary, a sufficient number of both to secure unconditional surrender or extinction of the enemy. Whichever comes first..

This bullshit we're calling "war" now -- is a criminal deception that plays directly into our enemy's strength.

Fight like WWII, end like WWII.
Fight like Vietnam, end like Vietnam...

Semper Fi

[1COUNTER-MORTER-68]

To take out Iran ?? ,,Bomb Their Desalination and
Water Filtration Plants FIRST .

[1COUNTER-MORTER-68]

They Non Gratum Anus Rodentum ,,,FO'SHO.

[nathanbedford]

Kudos to Krauthammer for once again coming to grips with the essential question of our age: how to stop Iran getting the bomb.

This is a question the left will not face but it will stick in our faces as long as we remain in power. The left will shout for a solution and then act to stop every step calculated to bring one about.

Kudos again to Krauthammer for having starkly stated the existential threat posed by a nuclearized Iran:

The mullahs are infinitely more likely to use these weapons than anyone in the history of the nuclear age. Every city in the civilized world will live under the specter of instant annihilation delivered either by missile or by terrorist. This from a country that has an official Death to America Day and has declared since Ayatollah Khomeini’s ascension that Israel must be wiped off the map.

A nuclear Iran means an entire change in the balance of power around the world. It means the loss of American influence everywhere particularly in the Persian Gulf. It means China and Russia perhaps in league with Iran, Venezuela, and God knows who else, will be emboldened to act against American interests. Terrorism will be very difficult to stop and the whole of the Middle East will be cast into the maelstrom. Europe will act precisely as it did in the 1930s.

That's the easy part. Consider how long our republic can last as a democracy after the first terrorist nuclear bomb goes off in Pittsburgh followed by demands to accede to sharia law. Sons of liberty, we will surely resist after the destruction of one city but then Oakland will be turned into glass, followed by another demand anonymously delivered over the Internet. We know not where to retaliate. The left in America forces us to capitulate and we are now essentially a fascist Muslim state.

It must be the live or die policy aim of the United States to prevent Iran getting the bomb.

No parallel in history is perfect, but one cannot forget the parallels with the course of history in Europe in the 1930s. Krauthammer, although an admirable man in so many respects is not Churchill, but his message must not go unheeded as Churchill's did.

Zipper has posted an important insight: George Bush will not leave office without having dealt with this problem.

I have often railed against George Bush on domestic matters and I have posted what follows concerning who he is:

"The problem with George Bush is that he is not primarily a conservative, he is primarily a Christian, and he does not have a calculus that is congruent with yours or mine, even though both of us might be Christians.

George Bush sees partisan politics as petty and ultimately meaningless. We see partisanship as the indispensable stuff of freedom. At election time the Bushes will hold their nose and dip into partisanship. But it is not in their essential nature to wage war for tactical political advantage.

George Bush wants what Bill Clinton wanted: To fashion a legacy. He does not want to be remembered as the man who cut a few percentage points from an appropriation bill but as the man who reshaped Social Security. I've come to the conclusion that the Bushes see politics as squirmy, fetid. It must be indulged in if one is to practice statesmanship but it is statesmanship alone that that is worthy as a calling.

They are honest, they are loyal, they are patrician. There would've been admired and respected if had lived among the founding fathers. But it is Laura Bush and Momma Bush who really and truly speak for the family and who tell us what they are thinking and who they are. There's not a Bush woman who does not believe in abortion. They believe in family, they live in loyalty, they believe in the tribe, but they do not believe in partisan politics.

I believe it is time for us to decide no longer to be used by the Bush family as useful idiots and instead to begin to use the Bushes as our useful idiots . I say this with the utmost admiration and respect for everything the Bushes stand for. Who would not be proud beyond description to have a father or an uncle who was among the first and youngest of naval aviators to fight in the Pacific and to be twice shot down. Not a stain or blemish of corruption or personal peccadillo has touched the family(except for the brother whom I believe was cleared of bank charges). They are the living embodiment of all that is good and noble in the American tradition.

But they are not conservative."

We must see this coming conflict and Bush's view of it with the understanding that he essentially is a Christian. All of the factors which work against Bush on an everyday level work in favor of Bush on this transcendental question. He will rise to this occasion because he is above politics. This is the very nestle for his greatness and I believe with Zipper that he will rise up from it and stand alone against his own Congress and the rest of the world to do the right thing as he sees it in his Christian soul.

If he does not, we had better look to saving our asses individually.

[Rumple4]

a year and half away, this same guy is on tv moaning about the quagmire Iran has become.

[STD]

We've been given our marching orders from Israel

[AngelesCrestHighway]

RAZE 'em...RAZE 'em good...

[Quix]

Then there is the larger danger of permitting nuclear weapons to be acquired by religious fanatics seized with an eschatological belief in the imminent apocalypse and in their own divine duty to hasten the End of Days.

The mullahs are infinitely more likely to use these weapons than anyone in the history of the nuclear age. Every city in the civilized world will live under the specter of instant annihilation delivered either by missile or by terrorist. This from a country that has an official Death to America Day and has declared since Ayatollah Khomeini’s ascension that Israel must be wiped off the map.

Against millenarian fanaticism glorying in a cult of death, deterrence is a mere wish. Is the West prepared to wager its cities with their millions of inhabitants on that feeble gamble?

These are the questions. These are the calculations. The decision is no more than a year away.
= = = =

Am glad someone is speaking the truth . . . even the truth that the puppet masters have set-up and plagued the world with.

Sobering times. May all the righteous be prayerful 24/7

Thanks.

[snowsislander]

With the crisis advancing and the moment of truth approaching, it is important to begin looking now with unflinching honesty at the military option.

It has been long past the time to look at military options with Iran.

Allowing the appeasement-minded Europeans to dawdle over "negotiations" with the madmen running Iran has been a dangerous strategy in my opinion. The only point of those "negotiations" from the Iranian side has been to buy time for them to advance their nuclear program.

[ASOC]

Interesting set of postings, much good comment.

Wild card = Pakis. We attack Iran and this provokes the Mullahs to take over Pakistan - then who has a bunch of Nweapons?

BTW, I used the work attack rather than strike. To me the work "strike" invokes the use of Nweapons. Not always a good first choice, given that Iran is still pretty close to Russia.

[diamond6]

Does Bush need permission from Congress to "push the button"?

[cookcounty]

Excellent analysis. Sadly, I think he's right.

[cookcounty]

Excellent analysis. Sadly, I think he's right.

[Jim Noble]

War with Iran is war to the death. A warplan which does not have sufficient resources for the conquest, occupation, and de-Islamification of Persia is a warplan that should stay on the shelf.

Bombing never, ever is sufficient to accomplish a strategic purpose.

And for those who want to bring up Hiroshima, don't.

Hiroshima was the culminating blow of four years of grinding, intense warfare which left millions of Nips dead, their industrial capacity destroyed, their fleet sunk, their armies shredded, their people starving - and still, they almost fought on.

If we had nuked Hiroshima on December 8, 1941, the war would still have had to be fought.

[Jackie222]

Interesting thread. In fact, down right unnerving!!