uh boy.

A one time roomate/college buddy of mine, Danny Postel, just came out with his book "Reading 'Legitimation Crisis' in Iran." As the pseudo intellectual title suggests, it's about the inter-re-action of western ideas in Iran.

Believe it or not Iranian intellectuals are talking about Marcuse, not the Koran. Then their reward for embracing (at least partially) Western ideas is that the West bombs them.

I hope and pray someone bombs Podhoretz. I also hope and pray Iran gets the bomb, since we don't start our pre-apocalyptic resource wars with nuclear states. Even Pakistan - the Taliban's big brother and mentor - becomes our 'ally' after 9-11.

I mean, when someone like the Pod-man gets all wrapped up in hysteria like this, how can we accuse Muslims of being "deluded" when they accuse the US and Israel of plotting against the muslim world? He's like the Al Sadr of the US - he's a poster boy for US (cough Israeli cough) paranoia.

Considering Iran is literally surrounded by nuclear powers (Pakistan, India, Israel) they have pretty legitimate concerns about being intimidated and bullied.

Good News: Probably won't happen. Didn't we just talk to Iran for the first time in 30 years? How is Iraq 'stabilization' going to go with Iran in a shambles? Think they're going to engage in security cooperation for Iraq after being bombed?

MJ,

You're too full of hope! In 20 months the Pod and his brethren will still matter because the media will still treat them like wise old men of Washington.

They'll matter less but so long as they're given constant access despite their lackluster track records, they will be able to force even an Democratic administration to do things they wouldn't normally do.

We're still going to have to keep an eye on these guys, sadly.

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

Poddy tells us why! Final paragraphs.

"I have no doubt that this ominous prospect figures prominently in the president's calculations. But it seems evident to me that the survival of Israel, a country to which George W. Bush has been friendlier than any president before him, is also of major concern to him--a concern fully coincident with his worries over a Middle Eastern arms race.

"Much of the world has greeted Ahmadinejad's promise to wipe Israel off the map with something close to insouciance. In fact, it could almost be said of the Europeans that they have been more upset by Ahmadinejad's denial that a Holocaust took place 60 years ago than by his determination to set off one of his own as soon as he acquires the means to do so. In some of European countries, Holocaust denial is a crime, and the European Union only recently endorsed that position. Yet for all their retrospective remorse over the wholesale slaughter of Jews back then, the Europeans seem no readier to lift a finger to prevent a second Holocaust than they were the first time around.

"Not so George W. Bush, a man who knows evil when he sees it and who has demonstrated an unfailingly courageous willingness to endure vilification and contumely in setting his face against it. It now remains to be seen whether this president, battered more mercilessly and with less justification than any other in living memory, and weakened politically by the enemies of his policy in the Middle East in general and Iraq in particular, will find it possible to take the only action that can stop Iran from following through on its evil intentions both toward us and toward Israel. As an American and as a Jew, I pray with all my heart that he will."

I see war from the eyes of one who experienced war, and because of that I despise those who are quick to send others
to war in foreign lands for unjustified reasons. The neo con war mongers like Podhoretz, Kristol, Krauthammer etc. are a threat to our security, more of a threat than Saddam ever was. They have their war in Iraq now and its not only cost us lives, body parts and national treasure, its made us less safe in the world and alienated the rest of the planet. The crowning glory of their desire for a "robust foreign policy" (Bill Kristol) has relegated us to becoming a Rogue Nation, the thing Bush tells us we must fear.

Cowards, war mongers, profiteers, and pathological liars all, a pox on them. They should be put in a leper colony for the rest of their miserable lives.

I disagree that after "El Presidente" leaves office, the assorted neoCONS will be out in the cold, for good.

Nope, like any parasite, they will find another host to latch onto and commence to suck the life out of that person.

Plus, they have been replicating and have more than enough offspring to seed the next president and his/her staff with a whole body of new faces that are still taking orders from their spawners.

We have lost control of our government.

MJ:

Shouldn't someone fact-check this supposed "UK Report" that is the putative source of the original information? Right now all we have is Podhoretz riffing off of some unidentified "British reports" of the original.

Other than the Simon Weisenthal Center, I can only find mention of this Report -and no link at all to the original- among right-wing opinion-spouters.

Sounds a little fishy if you ask me.

-Dave Adams-

Sick puppies those old, angry, neocon white guys.

"why don't we send him, his wife, his children and grandchildren first"

Give his pathetic and worthless son John, and his son-in-law Eliot Abrams, a cowboy hat. They can do a Slim Pickens.

They're intentionally instigating upheavels in US-Iran relations too.

Take the recent spate of arrests of Iranian-Americans in Iran:

The NeoCons in the Bush administration pushed through a $75 million budget to 'promote democracy' in Iran by funding Iranian dissidents & opponents. R Nicholas Burns stated blatantly that the purpose of the funding is to overthrow the government of Iran, along the lines of the "Orange Revolution" in the Ukraine and the "Cedar Revolution" in Lebanon (both of which have since fizzled out & become counter-productive.)

But the Iranian dissidents and opponents warned pretty explicitly and repeatedly that the secret $75 mil funding would only hurt them, by tainting them as "agents" of a foreign government and giving ammo to the Iranian hardliners to accuse them of being traitors.(see Money can't buy us democracy or Omid Memarian's article) The Clinton Administration specifically avoided this sort of thing, calling foreign funding for Iranian dissidents "the Kiss of Death"

But despite that, the NeoCons insisted on pushing this funding through, out of their sheer ignorance and arrogance, or because they wanted to intentionally instigate a reaction against the Iranian dissidents that the NeoCons could then exploit. Instead of listening to the Iranian dissidents themselves, folks like Michael Rubin of the neocon AEI insist on ignoring the consequences of their own Kiss of Death which they have now delivered to Iranian dissidents.

Well, guess what? The Iranian intellectuals & dissidents are now paying the price as the Iranian government has indeed clamped down on them & accused them of getting foreign funding to overthrow the government, just as everyone predicted, and so we have all this news coverage about how Evil Iran is imprisoning 3 Iranian-American scholars and journalists

(incidentally, what would the US do if Iran was secretly funding people to overthrow the US government? We'd be throwing people into prison just as Iran is doing.)

Another victory for the NeoCons...another defeat for freedom.

I, as a "right-wing, Orthodox religious pro-Judea/Samaria settler Zionist" do not view the "Neo-Cons" or President Bush to particularly be "friends of Israel" or working to Israel's benefit. Most people in Israel, before the US invasion of Iraq had very mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, there was a real worry about the supposed WMD's that Saddam had, but on the other hand, we were very concerned that it would be perceived, incorrectly, that the US was sending troops to fight in Israel's interest and in addition, there was general skepticism here in Israel about the plan to turn Iraq into a democracy, which was simply foolhardy.
Peres and Rabin's whole Oslo scheme was based on the very opposite...if you want an Arab to do your bidding, find a mass-murdering terrorist like Arafat, give him territory, money and weapons, and then, hopefully, he will do you want. That, like Bush's Iraq scheme, also turned into a fiasco which both Israel and the Palestinians are paying for every day.
Neo-cons like Charlie Krauthammer ended up chucking out their "principled war on terror" when Sharon and Bush bamboozled them into supporting the so-called "Disengagement" disaster which led to Israel's destruction of its flourishing Gush Katif settlement region (which also provided work to many Palestinians), leading to the endless rocket fire on Sederot plus the Gaza Civil War.

Actually, the Neo-Cons and MJ's "progressive" friends on the other, are two sides of the same coin. Both are Jews that have strong sentiments towards Israel, but they are torn by complexes about loyalty to others at the same time. Instead of appreciating America's freedoms to allow one to be Jew in America and at the same time support the Jewish state, just like Irish Americans support Ireland, Greek Americans support Greece and Cyprus, Mexican Americans support Mexico, without any complexes, both MJ's crowdn AND the Neo-Cons feel they have to prove super-loyalty to other forces and feel the need to mobilize power to push their agendas. Look for instance at MJ's Israel Policy Forum. They are always calling on people to pressure Congress and pressure the President to, in turn, pressure Israel to do what they want. MJ's crowd feels a need to pressure Israel to go along with their "progressive, socialist, anti-Colonialist" agenda, meaning capitulation to Arab terrorist regimes. On the other hand, the Neo-Cons wave the American flag and insist that what they consider to be "American values" like "free markets" and the such be forced upon other peoples who neither want it nor could appreciate it even if they got it. Israel's true interests are subordinated to this. Also, it is important to note that the Arab peoples suffer from it too. See, for example, how MJ supports Pelosi's kow-towing to the repression of the Syrian assassin regime. Also how they want Israel to capitulate to that regime. All this does is weaken the true reformist elements there and increase the repression, there and in Lebanon.
Both the Neo-Cons and MJ's crowd have gigantic plans to remake the world which are really nonsensicle. Instead of trying to let people on their own reach some sort of modus vivendi and using US influence to gradually improve things and bring peace, eventually, in a step-by-step manner, and confronting the true terrorist sponsors, the Saudis, they both want to use a sledgehammer to force the world to conform to their unrealistic ideologies.

Which of them has ever been in harms way?

In fact how many dyed in the wool neocons have ever risked their lives for their country?

Ron Byers

Podhoretz demonstrates the lack of wisdom of allowing dual citizenship.  He should be deported to Israel and not allowed back into this country.

Obviously, Podhoretz is one of those Zionist neocons who is trying to get the U.S. to fight Israel's battles for them. After all, it is Israel who is really the one's who will suffer when Iran finally gets enough plutonium to complete their nuclear weapons projects.

Sure everybody sees Military Parades in Tehran with the huge missles draped with the giant banners displayed on Al Jazeera English on cable television that say, "We Will Destroy Great Britian, France, America, etc." But should this rhetoric be taken seriously? NATO and the U.S. have massive armies compared to Iraq's 12 million man force, and how many nuclear weapons can they build in the next couple of years? Perhaps a dozen? But when Iraqi president Ahmadinejad repeatedly states that Iran will soon, "Wipe Isreal off the Map!" an Army of 12 million and a dozen nukes would easily do the job against a tiny nation the size of Israel.

I think it's high time the United States and the rest of the West stop giving Israel a blank check and let them take care of themselves. They have the military capability right now to defend themselves and stop Iran from building a genocidal nuclear arsenal, why should they ask the U.S. to do the dirty work for them and cause the Islamic world to be even more hateful toward us than they already are? I have written my Congressional Reps. and Senators and urged them to leave Iran alone. I just hope the lame duck Bush and his neocon warlords don't decide they have nothing to lose and start another war with a fanatical religion nation with which it's people will never surrender, never. Ever.

Don't assume that the Democrats are going to win the next Presidential election. Both McCain and Guilani are leading Hillary in the polls right now. Hilary just has too many negatives and may well lose the election to the Republican candidate. And she is still the most likely nominee. Everybody who wants to make sure that there is a Democratic victory needs to make sure that she does not get the nomination.

Thank you. Let me expand a bit on what I wrote here. It was stated in another thread that the "Neo-cons" came out of the Left. I read an article by Irving Kristol who stated he had been a Trotsykite in college. The view of the Left is that "Utopia (or what Jews call "messianism") can be reached if only we can get everyone to think like me, since I know what is best for mankind". In Europe, the Social Democrats and in the US, the liberal Democrats say this can be done by "persuasion" or "political correctness". In the USSR, China, Cuba, where Marxism-Leninism came to rule the roost, they believed that outright force would do the job. Neo-cons brought this Utopianism to the "Right". Thus, they feel that "free markets" and individualism, values that Americans cherish, can be exported to the rest of the world.
If I may quote the Bible, the story of the Tower of Babel shows the folly of this. There was a unitarian, totalitarian state that harnessed everyone to a gargantuan project, building the Tower. The Sages stated that if a man fell off the tower while under construction, and was killed, nobody cared, whereas if a brick fell and was broken, everyone cried. Just like Stalin's USSR. In the end, this totalitarian state had to be broken up and mankind divided into various national units, with different languages. IT IS NOT GOOD IF EVERYONE IS THE SAME. DIfferent people have different natures and different values. Individualism and "free markets" may be good for some societies, but not for others, that have a more "collectivist" mentality and a greater concern for sharing the wealth and eliminating extremes of wealth and poverty. Some societies want sexual freedom, others find this abhorrent.
The values of one society can not be imposed on another. Even American-style democracy is not necessarily transplantable at present. What is more important is "rule-of-law" and equal justice under the law. This can exist even if there is a corrupt political system and fixed elections...e.g. in Britain before the Great Reform of 1832 when they had a very restricted suffrage and rotten boroughs. Eventually, truly free elections resulted. Bush tried to impose "free elections" on Iraq and the Palestinians, without the necessary existing base of a civil society with the ingredients I mentioned above. What did he get? Terror and chaos. The Neo-cons, with their social engineering brought about the horrors the Communists brought on the USSR, China, Cuba, etc.
If I may now quote the Talmud, it states "just as people have different faces, they also have different viewpoints".
Just as it doesn't bother us if people look different, then it shouldn't bother us if people have different ideas. The idea of politics is NOT to bring Utopia as the Left and Neo-Cons thought, but to make life for everyone a little better, a step at time (I heard that this idea comes from Reinhold Niebuhr-can anyone give me a source?).
MJ, Richard Silverstein and others are constantly demanding that the US President and Congress FORCE the Arabs and Israel to make peace. I, and others, have repeatedly pointed out that this is simply not possible. The job of the US is to try to make things a "little better", end the violence, improve the standard of living of the Palestinians, one step at a time. MJ's way only makes things worse, as has been repeatedly proven.

As we should know by now, there are a great many factual errors in wingnut writing. In this case, the claim that Iran is the center of Islamofascism is preposterous. Iran has been a quiet ally in our fight against Al Qaeda and Iranians have a very low opinion Osama bin Laden. Podhoretz embraces Mark Steyn's fantasy of "Eurabia" and the false notion that schools in Britain have stopped teaching about the Holocaust and the Crusades.

I am not sure what your point was about the LEHI. The British didn't put them in power. Your comment was irrelevant to what I was trying to say about Arafat. The Oslo Agreements were not a "peace agreement". They were a cynical attempt to buy off certain terrorists and use them for cynical purposes. Arafat was a disaster not just for Israel BUT ALSO FOR THE PALESTINIANS. He and his FATAH terror gangs destroyed Palestinian society by imposing a reign of terror, acting like organized crime, ripping off the population by monopolizing business and selling overpriced, inferior quality goods. Certain Israelis, connected with the Rabin/Peres clique profited handsomely. That is why Peres and Rabin always claimed that it was "not possible to stop terrorism". They wanted Israelis to get used to the continually deteriorating security situation, while their friends were doing business with the corrupt Palestinian leaders at the same time.
EVERYBODY lost as a result of Oslo, and the biggest losers were the Palestinians.

Exact? Randomly searching through the Project Gutenberg online version of Mein Kampf, I don't find any use of the word "suck", the phrase "control of government", and several other words and phrases in the preceding quote.

"Parasite", indeed, was one of Hitler's favorite terms. In the post you question, there are things, such as references to a President in the context of American usage, rather than the German usage at the time the book was written, that seem unlikely to be from it.

Hitler certainly didn't refer to "neocons" or "El Presidente." Just what language do you find was lifted exactly? Did you mean the style of the post, perhaps, reminded you of some propagandistic writings?
--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

There is a significant difference between claiming the same language was used, even saying it was "exactly" Hitler's usage, or, more accurately, that some of the terminology resembles that used in propaganda of various countries.
--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

American freedoms also include the ability to self-identify as a Jew, but not support the Government of Israel, or even accept its definition as "the Jewish state". It is accurate and non-derogatory to speak of Israel as a country that implements the philosophy and ideology of Zionism, but, since not all Jews accept Zionism, it is more accurate, and in no way derogatory, to speak of it as a Zionist state.

Many Americans recognize and appreciate aspects of their ancestors' heritage, but they also recognized that their ancestors emigrated to the United States for a reason, which just might be that they did not especially identify with the state of their heritage.

I'm not Irish, but I love Irish music and history and legends, and I'd like to visit. I'm not Japanese, but I wish I had spent more time there and continue to study it. I'm not Sudanese and don't approve of certain practices of the Government of Sudan, but disapproval doesn't mean ignoring.
--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

What about "Freedom of Speech"? You call yourself "Madison 1776". Wasn't 1776 all about "freedom of speech?" Wasn't James Madison a champion of "freedom of speech"?

Freedom of speech applies to government censorship not this case.

It is not a First Amendment issue. Several TPM posters Davai, Bar Kochba, and Emet18 distort the board here by pulling every discussion on to the only issue about which they care: Israel. This is not an Israeli board. MJ writes about the Middle East but from an American pov. His concern is US policy and how it affects American interests (and, to a lesser degree, our friends).
But the three posters (all with Hebrew names) only care about Israel and its interests. They post here only to argue with TPMers who do not put any foreign country's interests first.
They create a diversion. And they add nothing to the debate. Either ban them or individual TPM folks should stop arguing with them. Don't engage with site pests.

You do hit the nail on the head.  Who are the warmongers in this situation?

Bar Kochba writes: "My name appears at the top of each posting, so you neither have to read what I write, nor do you have to post a reply. Or is it that you are afraid that OTHER people will read what I write and become convinced of my position?"

It is the latter. I am afraid others will be convinced. Like the other day I was going home when this barefoot old lady whose head was covered in tin foil and topped by an old tv antenna yelled, "It's ending. Christ is coming back tomorrow."

And the guy next to me said, "Amen, sister."

You are as persuasive as that old lady so I have to worry.

Just in case you're curious who is pushing to involve the US in a new war in the Mideast:

[T]he scary memos from the Israel Project’s copywriting crew breathlessly depict the various threats represented by a “nuclear Iran,” patiently explaining why that radioactive outcome is “dangerous for everyone.”

These regular mailings from the Israel Project to “opinion agents” such as yours truly are, in effect, a public relations campaign for war. The monthly missives I receive from this one pro-Israel lobby are a small part of a broader effort to “secure the information stream” and prep Americans for the next exotic stop in the war on terror: sunny Iran. Now to the average shmoe, even contemplating another war while the overtaxed U.S. military machine seems bogged down in Iraq and losing ground in Afghanistan might seem laughably disconnected from reality.

But see, average schmoe, you lack the long-term vision and patience of the folks at the Israel Project and their fellow travelers at, say, the New American Century Project or the vice president’s office. This proposed Iranian bloodletting was penciled in years ago by the war-mongering proponents of the Pax Americana. Now it’s time to hard-schedule the main event.

PASS IT ON!

So it was the neo-Cons who made the Iranians arrest people?

Aren't you making the point that there is something very wrong with the regime in Tehran? The neo-Cons may have a peculiar view of what ulitmately works in the world but they do not make people arrest people, they do not make Muslims slaughter each other.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

I think you are wrong in this case, Howard.  Following your argument, everyone is obliged to be a medical student.  Plenty of people say that the scatological conditions of medical practice are not for them.  

The neocons are not responsible for arrests in Iran. They are responsible for the Iraq war and, if they succeed, for a war with Iran.
Yet none of them serve. None of their children serve. For them American kids are cannon fodder to be used to advance their global goals.
Whoops. I was just corrected by a colleague. One neocon has a son in Iraq. Eliot Cohen of Hopkins. My apologies. Yes, of all the neocons, one has a kid in the army.

Since Israel is acting as a dependency or a defacto 51st state, shouldn't we be expecting not only the newCon(artists) to send their children to be killed in Iraq, but also for many many Israelis to volunteer as well?

They're responsible for pushing policies that everyone knew would make life harder on Iranian dissidents (the dissidents said so themselves.) And even if all their kids served, that still doesn't mean that the NeoCons are above criticism.

I can see that. After all, our policymakers are the same people who believe that Reagan won the Cold War, when in fact as we all know it was Elvis and the Beatles.

Reagan didn't win the Cold War. The USSR lost it.

Hector

Well, I fear that the situation is either not as grim as, or grimmer than, MJ suggests.

He writes that 20 months from now the neo-cons "will be out in the cold, for good. With the Iraq war as their lasting legacy, they will not be coming back." From that factual predicate, he concludes that "the next 20 months are so dangerous" precisely because the neo-cons "know that this is the last chance they have to take out Iran."

On the "grimmer than", there are the statements of Clinton and Obama (and Edwards? I don't recall) regarding Iran (and Iraq, for that matter). I'd not bet that foreign policy under either of those Democrats would be much saner than under Bush. On the other hand, on the "not as grim as" side, there are the statements of Clinton and Obama -- see above -- so perhaps the neo-cons won't feel any desperate need to bomb Iran in the next 20 months, having faith that whatever Democrat is elected will do the job for them.

It's quite questionable if any nation, including the US, has a capability to do it without significant development. There may be some 9 megaton W53 warheads left in the US "hedge" part of the nuclear stockpile, but no Titan II missiles to which they were matched. 9 MT is on the small side for a significant EMP effect.

The next question is what would lift a large warhead to several hundred kilometers. I'd guess some variant of the Delta IV could do it, but there could well be aerodynamic challenges of getting it into the right place and height.

This is rocket science.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

Up, dating myself (like a good narcissist)

Still only four responses over at the WSJ.  Guess the guys who read it are too busy watching the ticker (do they still have tickers?)

aMike

Yes, and Franklin also thought the national bird should be a Turkey. Plus, there was nothing anti-semitic in pointing out that your name happens to be Hebrew, which seems related to the fact that you don't comment about anything other than the U.S.'s policy toward Israel.

Iran has been a quiet ally in our fight against Al Qaeda and Iranians have a very low opinion Osama bin Laden.

While I do agree minimally that Iran did seem to be warming up to the U.S. after the death of the Ayatollah Khomeini, there is no doubt now that Iran is a major source of Islamic terrorism worldwide if not THE largest. Period. To deny this is just total ignorance of Middle-Eastern and world affairs. And to say that, "Iranians have a very low opinion of Osama bin Laden." Well that is like saying Mao Zedong who was responsible for the death of 40 million people had a low opinion of Joseph Stalin who only slaughtered a mere 20 million people!

Iran and Al Qaeda may not be working together (or maybe they are, that has never been actually verified or not), but the obvious truth is that ALL fundamentalist Islamic groups and nations are united in a single goal as stated by dozens of Muslim leaders worldwide daily on Al-Jezeera English television. I assume you have this on your cable t.v. package as I do and watch it daily as I do? Of course, if you do, just TIVO Al-Jezeera and quote down some of the things I do often and see that THESE QUOTES are the essence of the goals of modern Islam today as reported by the largest all Muslim telivision network on earth today:

“Democracy is among the menaces we inherited from an alien government. It is part of the system we are fighting against… It is not possible to work within a democracy and establish an Islamic system… If Allah gives us a chance, we will try to bring in the pure concept of an Islamic Caliphate.'' "The notion of the sovereignty of the people is anti-Islamic. Only Allah is sovereign.''

Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, the leader of the Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorist organization.

“Keep on fighting for the application of Islamic law. If our people want to become great, safe, and at peace then we have to return Islam one hundred percent to our land and to the whole earth without bargaining. If not, then all shall be destroyed.”

Abu Bakar Bashir, Spiritual leader of the Mujahideen

“Terrorism is a badge of honour on our chests until Judgement Day. In the name of Allah, we’re pursuing the path of jihad until we uproot you, exterminate your state until the rule of the king vanishes. We follow the steps of the Prophet (Muhammad)... Allah is our Lord; you have none."

Hassan al-Smeik, leader of the cell that plotted a chemical weapons attack intended to kill 80,000 Jordanians

“Those who know nothing of Islam pretend that Islam counsels against war. Those who say this are witless. Islam says: 'Kill all the unbelievers just as they would kill you all! Kill them, put them to the sword and scatter their armies.'”

The Ayatollah Khomeini

If this does not convince you that Iran is involved as deeply as all Islamic nations are, then just ask yourself, "Why did Iran build and does it run the Hezbullah terrorist army of more than 200,000 men? Why would a peace loving nation create and support the largest terrorist army in the world? Think about it?

"After January 2009, it won't matter what Podhoretz, Perle, Adelman, Kristol, Cheney, Feith, Bolton, Krauthammer, Libby, Wolfowitz, Wurmser, Pletka and assorted other warriors say on any foreign policy issue.
They will be out in the cold, for good. With the Iraq war as their lasting legacy, they will not be coming back."

That assumes that the Democrats will win the next Presidential election. That is not a sure thing. The polls show that both Giulani and McCain are leading Hillary and Hillary is person most likely to be the Democratic candidate. If Giulani or McCain win, the Neoconservatives will still be in.

I, as an Israeli, agree with you 100%
All Israelis agree with this sentiment.

The ignorance is only yours. The #1 exporter of Islamic terrorism, in a league of its own, is Pakistan.

Take a look at the British tube bombers and plotters. All indoctrinated in good ol' ally in War on Terror, Pakistan. Who's supporting the Taleban in Afghanistan? You got it, Pakistan. Who's been selling nuclear secrets? Yup, Pakistan again.

Compared to Pakistan, Iran is a model world citizen.

"If you think the Democratic Congress can prevent it, think again."

Apparently this is being prevented by the Uniformed Generals (as opposed to the civilians) in the Pentagon who are strongly opposed to an attack on Iran because they understand the disaster that would follow, and at least some of them would resign, rather than carry out such an attack.

You are an ignoramus as well as a Jew-hater, madison 1776 ("three posters (all with Hebrew names")). Just because I post in order to prevent distortions about Israel from being accepted as the Truth around here does not in any way mean that I don't care about any other issues. As a American I support Israel just as much for reasons of U.S. geo-strategic interests as for religious and familial ones, and your hateful assertions of my lack of patriotism just show your disgusting bigotry ever more clearly.

Actually PNAC's association with the pro-Israeli lobby and the authors of the "Clean Break" document speaks for itself.

Which brings up several questions
1- Is any criticism of Israel necessarily an anit-semetic distortio?
2- Are US and Israeli interests necessarily one and the same?
3- Should your religious and familial loyalties to another county dictate US foreign policy?

I'm not sure about the Hebrew name thing - sceen names are made up anyway, and plain names like david is a "hebrew" name too. In fact, considering that Hebrew and Arabic are related, so are a number of Muslim names.

If you propose it is all right for countries such as the US and/or Israel to militarily aquire oil, can the same be said for food? I assume you would have no ethical concerns if some starving people in Gaza invaded Israel to get some food?

This isn't intended to be a smart ass remark. What rights does the commodity holding nation have? If it is an oil producing nation can they hold their oil off the market in hopes of getting a higher price later? Or don't they have that basic capitalistic right? If a stronger nation wants that oil is it moral for them to go in and take it? Is resistance to that taking moral?

Two of the most important commodities in the world are land and water. Is it okay for another nation to take land in order to gain water resources, like the Golan Heights and the West Bank aquifers? Is resistance to that taking moral?

bar - where is the line between morality and immorality on the taking of commodities?

You ask hard questions. Saddam was taking the money that was supposed to go to the "oil for food" program and pocketing it. His people certainly weren't getting much benefit from it. If you look at the third world countries that have oil, much of the money received by those countries is ripped off by a tiny minority.
However, if you are the head of a country, and your oil supply is cut off arbitrarily, (i.e. not for a "good" reason, whatever that may be), and your country is facing economic collapse, starvation, civil disorder, what would you do?

The fact that the Iranians don't like bin Laden because of the Shi'ite-Sunni squabble, doesn't mean that they don't support Islamo-fascism in the world. It is true THE biggest purveyor of Islamo-fascism in the world happens to be America's "ally" and the Bush Family's close personal friends, the Saudis. Have you forgotten the two Iranian terrorist attacks in Argentina that killed hundreds of people, most of whom were not Jews, their favorite target, but Argentinian passers-by?

It is funny that the Islamics are always talking about western "imperialism", yet they are as big imperialists as anybody. Why is Iran pouring money into Sudan, Syria, Lebanon and Gaza? Why do they have troops in Lebanon? For that matter, what were the Ottoman Turks doing trying to conquer Vienna in the 17th century? What were the Muslims doing in France at the Battle of Tours in the IIRC 8th century?
The Arabs are always complaining about the Crusades, yet the Europeans justified the Crusades to themselves by pointing out that the "Holy Land" had been ruled by the Christians before it was conquered by Muslim "imperialism" in the 7th century.

A couple of years ago a couple of Christian missionaries were murdered in southern Lebanon. Local residents said "of course, they had to be murdered, they were missionaries!". As Tom Friedman of the New York Times commented at the time, Muslim missionaries are crawling over many countries including the US and they would take great offense if Christians killed them, using the same argument.
In Saudi Arabia it is forbidden for foreign workers to have Bibles or conduct Christian worship services. It is interesting how nobody complains about that, but Muslims are always screaming about freedom of religion whenever anyone has complaints about their preaching jihad in western countries.

Easy.

1- No, but neocon pro-Israeli interests are neocon pro-Israeli interests, and thus far outfits like AIPAC are pushing...Neocon proIsraeli interests.

2- Are they necessarily mutually exclusive? Yes, when AIPAC and PNAC control our government and our policies, then our policies exclude the interests of ourselves and certainly the Palestinians (note how we held Israel's jacket as they visciously attacked a neighbor - who was arguing for Lebanese interests? AIPAC?)

3- What "narrow self interests" determine US foreign policy should be up to the US to determine and not lobbyists and agents of a foreign power who are foisting their own agendas on us, as PNAC and AIPAC do.

Again, with the polls. Like most polls, this is meaningless. First of all, does Iran really have nuclear weapons? Secondly, and very important, does the US view Iran having the bomb as a threat to its own security Thirdly, would a US strike really knock out their nuclear capability? Fourth, what would the Iranian reaction be?
You have to lay out all the possibilities before getting an intelligent response. I stand by what I said, Israelis don't want the US to fight their wars for them. I would think that Israelis view an Iranian bomb as a threat to the whole Middle East..the other Arab countries certainly haven't hid their fear of it. Thus, if we assume that the US gov't and population would view an Iranian bomb as a threat to US and European interests, then Israelis would conclude that the US would have no choice but to use military force. Don't forget, a US attack on Iran would almost certainly bring an Iranian attack, either directly using missiles, or using proxies like HAMAS and HIZBULLAH on Israel or Jews around the world, just as Operation Desert Storm brought the Scud missile attacks on Israel. Israelis would understand this danger. Israel has never asked the US to send forces to the immediate neighborhood, i.e. Gaza or Judea/Samaria.

Before World War II, isolationists like Charles Lindbergh and others were claiming that "The Jews are pushing the US into an unnecessary war". Yes, Jews understood the danger of Nazi Germany before others did. The US did finally go to war with Germany, NOT TO FIGHT FOR THE JEWS, in fact Roosevelt was singularly uninterested in saving Jews from the Holocaust, BUT BECAUSE GERMANY WAS A THREAT TO THE UNITED STATES. Similarly, Israelis view an Iranian bomb as a threat to everyone, not just themselves.
The Iranian gov't says openly that they view their mission to export Islam to the whole world and they brandish their weapons in parades. As I said, their Arab neighbors certainly are worried about them, no less than Israel.

There is no point talking with you.  I restrict my conversation to people who at least pretend to be moral.

FACT CHECK:

According to globalsecurity.org Iran's army had 350,000 men in 2004. I think 12 million is a bit of an overestimate.

*This is not Howard. This is Lewis, stamping out the keyboard where the grapes of blog are stored. I am a kitten. And what do you plan to do about it*

Hmmm...I wonder what the hoomins mean when they say I have an appointment for the Big Snip...

AEI theologians agree with Khomeini.

They were quoting Gospel of Matthew with words "I am bringing you a sword" and proving that a "just war" can be a "Christian duty". One of them traveled to Vatican to convince the Pope.

Khomeini's quote is basically about a defensive war against the military, it talks about attacking and destroying "armies", and "just as they would destroy you".

A precise statement would be that Iran is 8 to 10 Friedmans away from making nuclear weapons. However, no international body approved Friedman as a unit for measuring predicted time (as oppose to seconds etc. used to measure time).

One Friedman is sometimes described as six months (most notably, by Tom Friedman) but repeated experiments showed a big difference. Some claim that the true meaning is "snowballs will appear in hell earlier than..."

It's not a straight-line radiation effect, but involves some interaction with the atmosphere. Electrons and gamma rays, both involved, behave differently. Here's a graph and some discussion.

If EMP were a straight-line effect, then how did the aircraft dropping bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or later atmospheric tests, survive?

AFAIK, the largest deployed US missile warhead is 475KT (W87 and W88), and 1.2MT for the B83 bomb. With greatly increased accuracy, you don't need as much yield for even hardened targets.

As far as attacking underground facilities, here's an MIT paper on potential Israeli attacks on Iran. The US has additional conventional bombs, which can only be carried by heavy bombers, with more capability than any non-nuclear Israeli weapon. I certainly don't recommend either country attacking Iran.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

And it has a large number of fanatics who are willing to become martyrs, as was shown in the war between Iran and Iraq.

Your Islamaphobia is showing again Cap. Why were the Iranian soldiers fanatics, which in your usage here implies much more than any soldiers willing to risk their lives for their country? Were all soldiers who fought in WWI's trenches fanatics also? Were the first to land at Omaha Beach fanatics? How about the first several waves of US Marines at Tarawa?

My understanding is that EMTinduces a current which is strong enough to damage some transistors and many, if not most, microchips and other solid state electronic devices. These devices use relatively tiny levels of current compared to WWII era vacuum tubes and so are damaged by much smaller overloads.

Would that both of you had taken a logic course..

What you mean is,

"Not all x are y, but some are." 

The location of the "not" matters.  What the two of you say each contains a contradiction.

Now, on substance, I wonder if the Jesus Camps train martyrs? 

Christmas in Tehran

There you go showing your tribalistic mindset about "The Muslims" again

FYI what goes on in Saudi Arabia (a US ally) is not representative of all Islam, just like the Israeli rabbi who urges mass murder doesn't represent all Jews or Judaism.

But I guess these are nuances that are lost on racist hatemongers.

Nope, some people in the group non-Muslims are fanatics, but not all of them are is fine. Makes perfect logical sense; See my logic teacher Father Knapp (now deceased) of the Augustinians. Either way I was using the same construct as Howard to make the substantial point that one can find Muslim fanatics and non-Muslim (Dick Cheney, e.g.) fanatics.

Tom

Tom,

You now cast the blame on Howard while making a further logical error, which you cannot blame on him.

Let's break it down.

The original form is

"All Muslims are not fanatics, but some are." and

"All non-Muslims are not fanatics, but some are."

In logic "all" is a very special word.  It is know as the universal quantifier.  "Some" is also special, it is known as the existential quantifier.  When you say "all x are not y, but some [x] are [y]," you have contradicted yourself.  If you know what a truth table is, try it out.  There will be no conditions under which it is true.

Now, move the not before the all and you have a comparison between two different existential quantifiers (not all = some, which is an existential quantifier).   That is where you make your second mistake.  You treat the sentence

"some people in the group non-Muslims are fanatics, but not all of them are is fine"

as the equivalent of 

"All non-Muslims are not fanatics, but some are."

No sentence with a universal quantifier can be the equivalent of one that has no universal quantifier.

I am sure Father Knapp kindly gave you that B so you could get into college. 

Actually, Knappy gave me an A:) Also, I'm casting no blame on Howard. I'm making the valid point that almost every group has its fanatic element.

Tom

Very very kind.

I'd have to go through some Medal of Honor citations, but, while certainly there were some that simply ignored death and were killed, there were some fast and lucky enough to survive.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]