The irony, MJ, is that you're only ever wrong when you're too charitable to these warmongers. They don't care about the safety of American Jews, Israeli Jews, American citizens or Israeli citizens and they definitely don't care about New York -- some of them probably think we deserve to get hit because we oppose all of their security and foreign policy ideas.

These people didn't regret 9/11. They saw it as an opportunity.

They have a vision of the world that involves attacking Iran on the road to American hegemony and they don't care how many of us they get killed in the process. And, of course, a retaliatory strike on New York is, I think less likely the the real, inevitable outcome of neocon adventurism -- expensive, bloody, economy killing quagmires.

If we had our $1 trillion from Iraq back we could have cleaned up our bank balance sheets far more easily.

Another attack by "enemies" of Israel on New York is of course high atop the fantasy wish-list of nihilistic West Bank settlers and their US neo-con mouthpieces. And, of course, some of their counterpart terrorists on the "enemy" side would be happy to oblige if the opportunity were to arise (e.g. due to some reckless idiocy committed by the new regime in Jerusalem).

Absent evidence to the contrary, however, we can assume that the NYPD is more or less doing its job to protect citizens of that city, and that Obama's team of experienced advisers will help keep him sufficiently informed for dealing effectively with the various leading creatures in the Mideast zoo, including the retrograde playboy PM of America's once-upon-quite-a-while-ago "ally" in the region.

What we cannot assume is that the US Congress won't throw monkey wrenches at Obama as a way to try to kiss up once again to the pro-settler propagandists that falsely and shamelessly claim, but still with far too much acquiescence in the mainstream US news media, to "represent" Jews in Israel and in America. Those propagandists, properly identified, are the ones Obama and all Americans of goodwill need to stop coddling and mis-characterizing. They are not "conservatives," they are not "realists", they are not hardliners in the sense of standing for anything consistent except their own pathologically mythologized tribalism, they are not "Israel-firsters"; they are demagogues, hypocrites, and amoral liars.

America's interests clearly lie in a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine as soon as feasible, for the removal of most Israel settlements in the Palestinian portion of that area as soon as possible, for better relations with a non-nuclear Iran, for helping Moslem countries develop credible alternatives to extremist Islam and runaway population growth, and for a more sane energy policy that at least begins to limit growing dependence on oil from that region. The question Americans need to ask themselves is: do neo-con talking heads, settler tools, and Israel-can-do-no-wrong-ever Congressional fools work for the good of our country or not? Those voices have been the ones America has in effect followed in its Mideast policy over the last 8+ years with disastrous results that should never be forgotten. Remember the children of Gaza, and remember to vote.

Thanks, MJ, for steadfastly informing us on this problem.

The article does not say New York is any kind of target. There have been no specific threats whatsoever.

There is no shortage of solid reasons against attacking Iran: it would be unjustified, illegal, counterproductive in terms of nuclear proliferation, toxic to international relations, and an incitement to extremism.
Why then, MJ, are you hanging your post on the thin reed of a routine police contingency plan in response to "no specific threat"?
This kind of flawed reasoning may have been good enough for AIPAC, but it's unhelpful here.

MJ, have you read Seymour Hersh's Syria Calling in the current New Yorker? It was a fascinating (to me) description of what has to happen for peace to happen in the ME. I'm putting my eggs in that basket, so to speak.

MJ implicitly accepts that Iranian weapons could become a threat. So, MJ, what if "whatever" doesn't work? And how in the world would you presume to know?

You apparently trust Obama, and you acknowledge that Obama can tell Netanyahu (apparently quite disrespectfully) what to do. So, if Israel moves against Iranian weapons facilities, it will be with Obama's approval.

Are any of you unaware of the extensive history of corrupt or fanatical leaders, especially in the Middle East, sacrificing their own people to prove a point. The entire Palestinian diaspora is a meta-example, but the use human shields is an explicitly admitted tactic of Iran's surrogates, to apparently great effect.

By the way, not defending one's self for fear that one's enemy might react badly is a great disgrace of Jewish history.

Obviously NY is a target if Israel is so arrogantly idiotic as to hit Iran. How could anyone doubt that cities around the world would be the target of massive and sustained retaliation if such a so-called 'pre-emptive' strike was initiated unilaterally by a government that cares not one jot for the safety of anyone outside its own borders.

I find it incredible that we have so far ignored the obvious - perhaps AIPAC has some secret electronic device that erases any mention in the media, or the House, of the inevitable loss of life and property in the US and elsewhere if Israel were allowed to attack Iran (with American supplied war-planes and bunker-busting bombs).

The solution, however, is simple: STOP ALL ARMS EXPORTS TO ISRAEL NOW! Otherwise we will be the absolute author of own own misfortune and the world risks another world war - but this time a nuclear one. (That's the one where gamma radiation irrevocably contaminates our living space and environment).

Has Iran made it into the Guinness Book of Records as the most frequently threatened country on the planet? When GBR get round to according Iran this richly deserved accolade, they should consider a couple of sub entries: One for the largest number of military attack plans kept up-to-date on a continuous basis bearing a target name, Iran.
And, one for the longest spell of peace under such conditions.

You're right. The plea should have read "STOP ALL MILITARY AND OTHER AID TO ISRAEL NOW" and if that doesn't work immediately, then "STOP ALL BILATERAL TRADE!"

Do not forget that Israel is totally dependent on just two primary markets for her citrus fruit, cut diamonds and computer software - they are the US and the EU.

The only products they sell outside these markets are cluster bombs and guns to any regime that pays for them. But Israel cannot exist on that nefarious trade alone.

In short, America needs to think hard and strong about where it is going with this stupid anachronistic strategy of putting us all in danger for .... for what exactly?

RE: "Are they ready to risk their families to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon?"

Excerpt from "BIBI’S FATHER’S ANSWER TO THE ‘ARAB PROBLEM’: HANG ‘EM IN THE TOWN SQUARE" by Richard Silverstein @ "Tikun Olam"

Ben Zion Netanyahu: “I don’t see any signs that the Arabs want peace… we will face fierce attacks from the Arabs, and we must react firmly…We just handed them a strong blow in Gaza, and they still bargain with us over one hostage… if we gave them a blow that would really hurt them, they would have given us Gilad Shalit back.”

“The Bible finds no worse image than this of the man from the desert. And why? Because he has no respect for any law. Because in the desert he can do as he pleases.
The tendency towards conflict is in the essence of the Arab. He is an enemy by essence. His personality won’t allow him any compromise or agreement. It doesn’t matter what kind of resistance he will meet, what price he will pay. His existence is one of perpetuate war.”

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2009/04/04/bibis-fathers-answer-to-the-arab-problem-hang-em-in-the-town-square/

9/11 was done by the Neocons as their hoped-for Reichstag Fire, and until a thorough reinvestigation is done by disinterested parties who can cut through the "secrets defense", I consider my point of view to be informed and correct. Maybe KSM and OBL had wished to do 9/11, but once we got wind of it we planned for it to succeed spectacularly (no chance for the 'terrorists' to screw up; WTC 1/2/7 were brought down by DEMOLITION and BOMBS WENT OFF in the PENTAGON many MINUTES before anything hit it; and what hit it was not a commercial airliner as claimed.)

I'm not going to argue this, because it's just as true (the few things I've said) as anything mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report, which was an exculpatory whitewash from here to the Moon. The powers that be will try to keep the citizens away from their own TRUE history just like they're keeping us from our own TRUE democracy.

As to Israel, if we wished to believe that OBL did 9/11, he said that one of two reasons for it was the United States's unflinching support for Israel; therefore according to the myth, 2,987 Americans died on 9/11 as payment for our support for Israel wishing to keep the spoils of the 1967 war, and I as an American Taxpayer wish to see not one more penny of aid given to Israel until it has complied with the sense of UN 242, which Israel AGREED to in 1970 only after the US struck any enforcement provisions from it. GET OFF THEIR LAND, QUIT COMMITTING CRIMES OF WAR AGAINST THEM, East Jerusalem is theirs to administer and ALL THE SETTLEMENTS MUST BE DISMANTLED. Just because you killed so many people that you can't haul all the bodies away easily, still that's incumbent upon you. Repeating and compounding a crime cannot make it less a crime. Either Israel does a deal with the current 22% of land left to the Palenstinians, or I for one would prefer to start over from the 1948 borders, or even with the UN decision to create the State. If they can't live in peace with their neighbors, maybe they don't deserve a state - either.

As to Iran, would someone find ANY PROOF that Iran does now have a nuclear weapons program; or that they EVER DID. A somewhat recent US NIE said that Iran had ceased pursuit of weapons in 2003, but I'd like to see any proof that they EVER tried to build nukes; in any case if they stopped in 2003, they stopped in 2003; they aren't still trying in 2009 and the NIE said so. So the press is STILL REPEATEDLY LYING TO THE PUBLIC, as is the OBAMA ADMINISTRATION, following the military-industrial-complex lead that we have to KEEP IRAN AN ENEMY. The Neocons cooked up this LIE and pushed it JUST LIKE THEY PUSHED THE LIES ABOUT IRAQ and for the same purpose. And now sadly we see that the President, who is NOT a neocon, is still playing the Neocon tune.

Have you quit beating your wife?
Have you quit trying to build nuclear weapons?

How about PROOF before PROPAGANDA - THIS TIME.

Making threats of force against Iran without reason is UNLAWFUL according to International Law. So either the Obama spokespeople have to PROVE THEIR CHARGES or we just have a variation on George W. Bush again, and any citizen should be proud to citizen's-arrest any official of the administration who has made threats against Iran on the record.

PROOF THIS TIME
OR ELSE!!

Scientists have recently discovered that hypocrisy about WMDs in the middle east is the leading cause of both blindness and aphasia in western politicians.

See the youTube report

M.J.

Enemies du jour are demonized by techniques which include outright falsehoods, exaggerations, and preposterous hypotheticals.

The latter, often entraps folks, such as HRC ("totally obliterate them") or yourself (neocons should think twice) to dignify the nonsense that underpins the hypothetical, and give it a life of its own.

Jews of Esfahan, Brooklyn or anywhere else will not be an Iranian target under any circumstances.

" Perhaps I have a bias toward facts over words, but I say the reality of Iranian civility toward Jews tells us more about Iran — its sophistication and culture — than all the inflammatory rhetoric.

That may be because I’m a Jew and have seldom been treated with such consistent warmth as in Iran. Or perhaps I was impressed that the fury over Gaza, trumpeted on posters and Iranian TV, never spilled over into insults or violence toward Jews. Or perhaps it’s because I’m convinced the “Mad Mullah” caricature of Iran and likening of any compromise with it to Munich 1938 — a position popular in some American Jewish circles — is misleading and dangerous."

(Roger Cohen)
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/23/opinion/23cohen.html?_r=1

"The Jewish community of Iran has been present in their society for nearly 3000 years. They object to the attitude by non Iranian western Jews that we want to save them, or educate them, or in any way interfere with their cultural and religious life. Before we make assumptions about what they need or who they are, it would be well to acknowledge that they are the oldest ongoing community of Jews in the world continuously associated with one place. They are not Jews of exile. They are deeply rooted in the land of Cyrus. They can visit the graves of Esther and Mordecai, Daniel and Habbakuk. They possess a Torah that is over 1200 years old. The Jews of Esfahan have their own language! The Jews of Iran are deeply proud of their own heritage, even though they, like other Iranians, may struggle with the limitations imposed by the Islamic Republic on freedom of expression."

( Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb)
http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2009/02/a-rabbis-reflection-on-iran.html

"We spent considerable time with the Jewish community - and among the many surprising impressions we received was their obvious sense of comfort and safety living as Jews under an Islamic regime.

American Jews are invariably astounded when I tell them that I myself wore a kippah publicly throughout Iran without a moment’s nervousness. (Once we were approached and asked by an Iranian man if we were Jewish - he turned out to be a Jew himself and he promptly invited us to his shul for Shabbat). I’m not being facetious when I say that in retrospect, I realize I actually felt safer as a Jew walking the streets Tehran than I often do in Israel."

(Rabbi Brant Rosen)
http://rabbibrant.com/2009/02/23/the-jews-of-iran-beyond-the-rhetoric/

I hate to say it, but I think many neocons (like Dick Cheney) would subconciously like a terror attack in the U.S. because it would confirm their wack-ass world view.

"This attack was a terrible shame, but at least now the U.S. understands that Israel's well-being and American well-being are one in the same."

Absolutely right - WMD deter peace! The modern state of Israel is a unfortunately a parody of Theodor Herzl's magnificent vision of a Jewish homeland, an agro-economy built upon communal endeavor and in co-operation with its neighbors.

Instead we have an occupying force under the command of corrupt politicians that slaughters its neighbours like chickens in a coop. Diverting essential water supplies and restricting a population of 1.5 million in a grotesque ghetto closed off from contact with the outside world, where God alone knows what atrocities have been and are falsely committed in the name of Judaism.

Zionism is a failed political movement that, like the KKK, will run its anachronistic course and then be gone. But not before hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent lives have been thrown away on the bogus premise that political Zionism has something to do with Judaism.