The world's greatest intelligence service, the Mosad, has put their best men to the task of making an accurate assessmment of Iran's nuclear weapon program. They have consistently told us that Iran is 6 months away from a having a bomb.

They tell us that in 2007.
They told us that in 2006.
They told us that in 2005.
...
...
...
They told us that in 1990.
They told us that in 1989.

As of 2007, the geniuses in Iran have produced about 2 grams of 3% enriched uranium, enough to heat up a cup of coffee at McDonald's without getting sued for burning anyone's crotch.

To get some perspective, I suggest that Mr David Abrington of Virginia buy a cup of coffee at McDonald's, let it sit for an hour, then pour it on his crotch to get a feel for how dangerous Iran's nuclear science project is today.

Some people watch too much television and/ or typical Hollywood movie drivel. There is no doomsday coming. The end of the world is not at hand. And the only people that thinks that this war has anything to do with religion are the Extremist Fundamentalist Muslims, the people who would blow themselves to kill some of their "enemy", with no regard to anyone else that may be killed in the attack. And, unfortunately I need to remind some people that before the U.S. went into Iraq, EVERYONE thought Saddam had WMDs. EVERYONE. So, that is definitely one thing that people need to stop pointing their finger at Bush for. The world is without a doubt a better place without Hitler Jr., aka Saddam running Iraq anymore. He slaughtered about 200,000 Kurds! For the SAME reasons that Hitler was murdering countless Jews! Saddam Had men women & children imprisoned, tortured AND killed, regardless of AGE! Over the SMALLEST things, even if it was only that someone hurt his EGO! And, since many people don't seem to remember, the UN gave Saddam an ultimatum, Saddam "thumbed his nose" at the UN, & then the UN did not follow through. The only reason that several European countries, France & Germany included, did not want the U.S. to take out Saddam, was because THEY were doing BUSINESS with him. The world does not need people like Saddam ruling ANYTHING, much less a country & military, & the world has no place for sinister sadistic sickos who think that it's OK to kill people because of their disjointed view of their religion. Rewards in the afterlife for murder? There is something very, very wrong with those people. They have their religion completely wrong. Saddam's family had ties to Nazi Germany. Do some research. And as far as all these "unbiased news sources" go, the majority of them are just the ravings of delusional conspiracy theorists. And as far as the Iraqi- Turkish border goes, I see no reason why it can't be made just as secure as the border between Kurdish Iraq & the rest of Iraq. That would go a very long way toward fixing that situation.

Great input, thanks. We all have a serious problem in this world. All of us, everyone, everywhere. Now is the time for a new front. Americans must once again put their lives on the line. I wish I could go, to defend a new found democracy, barely hanging in by the skin of it's chin. Turkey is our ALLIE, FRIEND, what the heck is the problem. We do not need a mass move by Turkey. Send the marines, enough, to stop the outgoing shots. We are there, the USA, NATO(a little), this is a must job for the boys. Get em out of Bagdad, turn it over to the Army and Iraqies hehe, and bring peace to the region by once again standing in the line of fire. General Petraus should see this. Pray for peace with Turkey, the world needs them to be at peace.

what were the bushies thinking when they allowed "kurdistan" to be established in northern iraq in the first place? the same thing the current bunch was thinking when they decided to get rid of saddam. which is to say, they weren't thinking at all. they left the problems they created to be solved (hopefully) by someone else another day. and when they decide to rip iran a new one? it's the same ol' same ol'. too bad the american public in general is too uninformed to know what any of this stuff means.

"""I still do not understand why you insist on calling PKK rebels. ... Posted by: Ayse Gunaldi"""

The reason is completely straight forward and simple. If the group of armed militia that attacks innocent civilians, plants bombs in major cities and tourist destinations consists of people who say that they are "our guys" then they are "rebels" and/or "freedom fighters".

However if the group of armed militia that attacks innocent civilians, plants bombs in major cities and tourist destinations consists of people who say that they are "their guys" then they are "terrorists" and/or "unlawful combatants".

For real uncensored reality, please check out the TOTAL WORLDWIDE COLLAPSE OF MARXISM and the subsequent COMPLETE VICTORY OF DEMOCRACY AND CAPITALISM.

I should really get my own goddamn blog to spew my obsolete Communist tripe.

Adding to all of the angles comes the Caspian Conference agreement not allowing an attack on one member from bases located on the soil of another. Are we setting ourselves up for a repeat of the beginning of WWI?

sometimes in middle eastern and central asian politics it's hard to say who stands with who. the kurdish question has long been ignored politically by the turks in terms of fair representation within the turkish parliament. much like the israeli's refusal to deal with the reality of the palestinian question. turkey should establish firm controls upon it's border with iraq and at the same time offer a political compromise to it's own kurdish population. a buy-off would be far more constructive that military action which has failed time and time again in the past. but then who really knows what the true position of the turkish-american alliance may reveal? moreover, where does the european union really stand in all of this? the need to slake one's thirst with oil supplied by the caspian sea oilfields can be overpowering. is the kurdish question really one of cheney's handywork? is this his last desperate act of piracy? stay tuned!

I can't believe I'm reading the washington post, a supposedly credible newspaper, and a writer on the military doesn't realize the threat a nuclear Iran poses to western civilization. not just to the west, but to American soldiers in Iraq. Iran will likely go nuclear in the next 6 months. If we don't stop them, they will be able to blackmail us. they will be able to destroy Israel and force women in our country to wear burkas and demand that either we start reading the koran or they will detonate their nukes in our cities. they will also demand they we renounce Christianity. we can't give in to the islamo-nazi fascists. they must be stopped.

For uncensored news please bookmark:

www.wsws.org
www.takingaimradio.com
www.onlinejournal.com
otherside123.blogspot.com
www.globalresearch.ca

The New World Order, Forged in the Gulf
Iran and America's Imperial Playground

by Andrew G. Marshall

Global Research, October 13, 2007

This article is Part 2 of the author's essay: Imperial Playground: The Story of Iran in Recent History

Imperial Playground in The Post Cold War Era

After Iran-Contra, and the Iran-Iraq War, which lasted until 1988, new developments began to occur in the region of and around Iran, which have a great deal to do with the current situation we are facing today. In 1989, George H.W. Bush became President, and, after pardoning all the former Contra criminals who kept his part in the Affair secret, had his eyes set on the Middle East as well. This was also an extremely pivotal point in history, as in 1989 the Berlin Wall fell, which was the great symbol of the division between the West and the Soviet Union. Before the world, the Soviet Union began to collapse, just as Brzezinski had hoped, as the war between the Soviet Union and Afghanistan ended in 1989, with the Soviets defeated.

The Soviet Union began to dismantle, freeing countries from its grip, such as East Germany and the other Eastern European Soviet satellite countries. But this presented a new conflict for the Anglo-Americans, as the concept of a new, unified Germany, and expanded Europe, threatened Anglo-American hegemony. Of course, as always, the Anglo-American alliance would not sit still as their complete hegemony over the world was at risk. So, again, they turn to their secret weapon, connivance and manipulation of events at the world's main source of oil, the Middle East, through their favourite tool of 'Petrodollar Warfare'; "Senior circles in the Thatcher and Bush governments had determined to create a manufactured pretext which would allow the United States and Britain to establish a direct military presence at the choke point of the world's, and especially Continental Europe's, petroleum supplies."1 William Engdahl pointed out that Iraq "had just emerged from eight years of a fruitless war against Iran, which had accomplished little other than to provide Western arms manufacturers with a vast market for arms sales to the Middle East," as well as the fact that "By 1989, the economy of Iraq was in shambles and investment in industry and agriculture had been largely halted during the war, which had cost an estimated total of one million or more lives." Engdahl further pointed out that, "Iraq, unlike Khomeni's Iran, emerged from the costly war with an enormous foreign debt burden," which was owed to Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the Soviet Union, and eastern European countries "which had expected to be repaid in Iraqi oil. The remainder was owed largely to French, British and American banks."2 As Greg Palast, a BBC journalist said, in his book, Armed Madhouse, there was an "Iraqi debt totaling $120 billion to $150 billion, depending on who's counting. And who's counting is very important. Some of the so-called 'debt' owed to Saudi Arabia was given to Saddam to fight a proxy war for the Saudis against their hated foe, the Shia of Iran."3

It is important to note that behind petrodollar strategy (oil politics), is the fact that it is never about getting the oil out of the ground, but rather that it is about getting control over the oil, and, in the Middle East, where any events have significant repercussions across the world, economically, politically and socially, the concept is to stop, or slow the flow of oil, because that way, the price goes up. The more oil on the market (the more being pumped), the cheaper it will be. So, the less oil being pumped, the higher the price of oil goes, and thusly, the more profits made by oil companies, especially when it comes to the extremely oil-rich nations of the Middle East. As Engdahl pointed out, "The Anglo-American game plan was to lure Saddam Hussein into a trap he could not resist, in order to provide a pretext for military intervention from the United States and Britain." So, a high-powered delegation of large banking and oil multinationals from the US went to Baghdad to meet with Saddam to discuss "an Iraqi postwar plan to develop his country's agricultural and industrial potential."4 As Palast points out, "The Iranian bombing of the Basra fields [in Iraq] (1980-88) put a new kink in Iraq's oil production," and Palast explains that Iraq's oil flow has had a consistent and long-lasting limit to their production, which was imposed on it by OPEC, which is predominantly controlled by the American puppet-regime in Saudi Arabia. As Palast notes, "It was during the Arab oil embargo [in 1973] that Senator Edmund Muskie revealed a secret intelligence report of 'fantastic' reserves of oil in Iraq undeveloped because US oil companies refused to add pipeline capacity."5

With the visiting high-level American oil delegation to Iraq in 1989, Saddam unveiled a 5 year-plan "to complete the large Badush Dam irrigation project, which would have enabled [Iraq] to become self-sufficient in food production," as opposed to relying on US imports of grain worth over a billion dollars at that time, not to mention that the plan also entailed "building up its petrochemicals industry, agriculture fertilizer plants, an iron and steel plant, and an auto assembly plant, as part of an effort to develop the country."6 The recommendations from the Big Oil delegation was that Saddam first had to take care of his debts, and to do this, they suggested that he privatize his oil so that foreign corporations could buy it all up. However, Saddam refused, and so the Anglo-American strategy continued to its next phase. The Anglo-Americans used their ally, the Emir [King] of Kuwait, "to flood OPEC markets with [Kuwait's] oil, in violation of OPEC production ceilings which had been agreed in order to stabilize world oil prices," and "Kuwait had succeeded in drawing oil prices from their precarious level of some $19 per barrel down to little more than $13 per barrel," which resulted in the fact that "Iraq was not even able to service its old debt or finance much-needed food imports."7

On top of this, "The Kuwaitis had been sucking up that which wasn't theirs in the shared oil field on the Kuwait-Iraq border."8 As Palast further explains, "On July 25, 1990, Saddam asked US Ambassador April Glaspie if the US would object to an attack on Kuwait over the small emirate's theft of Iraqi oil," to which the Ambassador responded, saying, "We have no opinion on . . . your border disagreement with Kuwait . . . The issue is not associated with America. [Secretary of State] James Baker has directed our official spokesman to emphasize this instruction." Further, as Palast stated, "Glaspie, in Congressional testimony in 1991, did not deny the authenticity of the recording of her meeting with Saddam - which world diplomats took for what it was: Jim Baker's green light for Iraq to attack Kuwait."9 So then, "In August 1990, Kuwait's craven siphoning of border-land oil fields jointly owned with Iraq gave Saddam the excuse to take Kuwait's share. Here was Saddam's opportunity to increase Iraq's OPEC quota by taking Kuwait's."10

Days after the US Ambassador to Iraq delivered the message from the State Department that the US would take no position on the Iraqi conflict with Kuwait, Saddam invaded. Before the invasion took place, the Emir of Kuwait had fled the country, as "the CIA informed the royal family in good time to get out, but the Al-Sabahs [Kuwaiti royals] 'conveniently' forgot to inform the country's military of their information that Kuwait was about to be invaded."11 As a result of Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, the United States declared war on Iraq, in an attempt to "defend" the small country of Kuwait from an "unprovoked" invasion. The US military began bombing Baghdad and the rest of Iraq, destroying its infrastructure. The Middle East envoy of the Soviet Union, Yevgeni Primakov, discussed his visit to the British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, in an article in Time Magazine, "The Prime Minister received us at her country residence, Chequers. She listened attentively to the information I presented her, without interrupting. But then, for a good hour, she allowed no one to interrupt her monologue, in which she outlined in a most condensed way a position that was gaining greater momentum: not to limit things to a withdrawal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait but to inflict a devastating blow at Iraq, 'to break the back' of Saddam and destroy the entire military, and perhaps industrial, potential of that country."12

For the rest please go to:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7048

But Iran is still some ways away from nuclear capabili..

The best thing that can happen is for the United States to make peace with Iran, and to give them a few nukes of our own - don't be surprised if it doesn't happen.

Did you forget about the United States and the late Shah. Strange bedfellows?

For #43 and Condi to tell another nation to use restraint is laughable on its face - they certainly didn't listen to the rest of the world when they made their forray into Iraq!

If Mr Arkin somehow fears that a Turkish incursion into northern Iraq is going to spur on Syria and Iran he's a little late in the day. Iran has already shelled Kurdish villages in Iraq. Syria may have, it's just that it hasn't been reproached for it as yet. It is also difficult to see exactly why Israel should awaken and NATO bestir itself. What are they going to do anyway? As for Dubya, perhaps he'd better do some reading to know why the two world wars became world wars.

I still do not understand why you insist on calling PKK rebels. If a group of armed militia attacks innocent civilians, plants bombs in major cities and trourist destinations, isn't that group called a terorist? What does it take for you to call such a group terorist, that they attack within the US?
Yes, a cross border incursion will not be helpful; it may end up destabilizing the region depending on how far the turkish army will move nor will it help in terms of rooting out PKK (as they tried this countless times before). This resolution is meant to put more pressure on americans and iraqis to put pressure on PKK not to attack turkey and its civilians. Turkey is slowly moving to give its kurdish citizens more rights. Kurdish language was not even recognized as a language by the state, now they can open schools that teach the language, their representatives make it to the parliament. It may still be far from ideal but it is much improved compared to 10 years ago. In daily life unless you make a point of being kurdish, noone really cares about your ethic background. After all, there are over 20 ethnic minorities within Turkey.

Turkey has us over a barrel.I grew up living next store to a wonderful Armenian family.They remembered very clearly what happened to members of thier family. In fact I also remember a quote from WWII-Hilter said knowbody remembered the Armenians and know will remember the Jews.
The sad fact is that perhaps nobody within the ruling circles of Turkey wants to examine and acknowledge what happened nearly 90 years ago.One way that a nation grows in to an honest democracy is to acknowledge the atrocities of the past and honor those victims by building a more just society today.Unfortunately this will probably never take place because it is held in the grip of the struggle betwwen the Muslim and Christian religions.
it is unfortunate that the Democratic party has chosen to bring up a resolution at a time when the current administration foregin policy has screwed up everything.Those idiots once again have tripped over their own two feet.It is important that what happened to the Armenian community be recognized but alas this was not the time to do it.I heard that a form of this resolution has exsisted for 30 years so why bring it up now?
We have a president who invoked WWIII which is if you grew up during the Cold War was the moniker that represented the final battle betwwen the USA & the USSR- "The Dawn OF A Thousand Suns"- White Light & Black Rain. I am fairly certain that somebody in Iran knows that if they nuke Isreal Iran is toast.So why does Bush persist in this messanic vision of his? I realize that Iran having the bomb is a big trouble in River City but to evoke images of the ultimate worst case situation is reckless.The Russians may see these words as the US challenging Russia and the Islamic fundamentalists may use this as propoganda for their rhetoric that spills forth that the West is waging war against Muslims.
A few months ago Time had an article about President Kennedy who today would be classified as a Scoop Jackson Democrat. The article pointed out that Kennedy would have been engaging in slient diplomacy-quietly and w/o fanfare talking with world leaders to difuse the situation without having to go to the last card in the deck.
Today we have the Democrats who are either afraid of thier own shadow or just having a whole bunch of stupid days and a president who lacks both maturity, common sense & critical thinking skills.As for Turkey it is a sad state of affairs when a foreign government can hold the US Congress by its balls.Then gain what other choice do we have-open up another 'front' and end having more of our military killed? Besides that we would also loose the support of the Kurds. There are not that many groups or nations that still respect the US.Then again maybe we should turn Blackwater loose.I am begining to think that was part of Mad Dog Rummys master plan
In the end the Armenians who were killed raped and slaughtered -thier story will not be told.Once again a chance to bring abour a reconcilliation between the religious communities is lost.It will be painful but for the relgious communities to live in peace with each other the past has to be acknowledged. Once again the US is crippled by incapable people who can't get their heads out of their respective backsides.We are lead by a president whos bases his foreign policy on the Book of Revelations.Has anyone booked thier reservations at the Greenbriar Inn in West Vigina?

what are the odds of this situation escalting? and the odds of iranian involvment? and if it does happens, what is the most likely outcome, or actions of the United States and forces in Iraq?

Which scenario was this in "War Games"? The computer had a ton of them which all ended in mutually assured destruction. Has the human race passed the point of no return in the Age of Quarrel, or can we come to our senses in time?