WN: USS Enterprise joins two other U.S. carrier groups in Persian Gulf

[JustinM]

The question is not what he believes, but rather what he is capable of doing.

Which takes me back to what I asked earlier -

What sources do you rely on to tell you he is years away from nuclear power?

U.S. Intelligence: Iran Years Away from Nuclear Bomb

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5341043 April 2006

Iran 'years from nuclear bomb'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4606356.stm

January 2006

For starters.

Got any current sources? Besides, both articles are speculative at best. No, hard evidence to support, or deny the possibility of a much sooner than anticipated development.

[forrestkc]

Got any current sources? Besides, both articles are speculative at best. No, hard evidence to support, or deny the possibility of a much sooner than anticipated development.

A nation like Iran can't just build one overnight. Even the most hyped estimates still put them at least 2 to 3 years from having one.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/01/31/...in2418329.shtml

[JustinM]

Got any current sources? Besides, both articles are speculative at best. No, hard evidence to support, or deny the possibility of a much sooner than anticipated development.

A nation like Iran can't just build one overnight. Even the most hyped estimates still put them at least 2 to 3 years from having one.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/01/31/...in2418329.shtml

2 to 3 years is not a lot of time, it took over 10 years of diplomacy, before we finally reached enough of a consensus to attack Iraq.

Who's to say that Iran doesn't have members of the EU and UN in their back pockets as well? If Saddam could bribe members of the UN to delay, stonewall, or veto actionable resolutions, I am pretty sure Iran could do the same.

[forrestkc]

2 to 3 years is not a lot of time, it took over 10 years of diplomacy, before we finally reached enough of a consensus to attack Iraq.

Who's to say that Iran doesn't have members of the EU and UN in their back pockets as well? If Saddam could bribe members of the UN to delay, stonewall, or veto actionable resolutions, I am pretty sure Iran could do the same.

Well, I would say that after this debacle in Iraq, the IAEA certainly has a good bit more credibility than we do right now. If we attack Iran, then their response would be to unleash its vast terrorist network onto U.S. and Israeli targets, and to significantly impact the world's oil supply. So the result would be more terrorism and 10 dollar a gallon gas at the pump. Hardly a good scenario as we would end up in a worldwide economic depression. There is a reason why every-time the pentagon has looked at hitting Iran in the past, they could not find a good scenario for doing it.

If we were not tied up in the middle of a civil war in Iraq right now, we might have the financial and military to have a card to play against Iran, but as it is, we don't and they know it.

[JustinM]

I think the underestimate just what we are prepared to do to prevent them from launching 1 nuclear warhead.

I don't think them blackmailing us with terrorism and oil shortages is an effective enough deterrent to stop us from stopping them.

Besides, once they get the nuclear capability, do you honestly think they are going to resign to a peaceful existence with the "satan's" of the world?

No, they are going to unleash terrorists across the world and interrupt oil supplies.

We waited 10 years before we put an end to Saddam's regime, if we had done it in the beginning, we wouldn't be facing the fiasco we now face, I guess we haven't learned from even the most recent history.

Iran will be no different, the only exception is it will have a nuclear arsenal and an army of phantoms on it's side.

I say, we go all in and if he's bluffing, well, we busted him and he's out of the game. It's better than letting him remain a threat and allowing his power and destructive capabilities to increase 10 fold.

[JustinM]

quote forrestkc: "Well, I would say that after this debacle in Iraq, the IAEA certainly has a good bit more credibility than we do right now."

It was the IAEA that we heavily relied on for our prewar assessments of Saddam Hussein's WMD capabilities. How can they be more credible than the US, since they were the ones that failed to begin with.

If Syria launches VX rocket attacks into Israel, where did they get the chemical capability from? Iraq being on their border is too much of a "coincidence" for us to overlook.

I haven't heard much regarding Syria's NBC programs (nuclear, biological, chemical)

[forrestkc]

quote forrestkc: "Well, I would say that after this debacle in Iraq, the IAEA certainly has a good bit more credibility than we do right now."

It was the IAEA that we heavily relied on for our prewar assessments of Saddam Hussein's WMD capabilities. How can they be more credible than the US, since they were the ones that failed to begin with.

If Syria launches VX rocket attacks into Israel, where did they get the chemical capability from? Iraq being on their border is too much of a "coincidence" for us to overlook.

I haven't heard much regarding Syria's NBC programs (nuclear, biological, chemical)

Syria has had a mature chemical weapons program since the 1970s and has large stockpiles of Sarin and VX agents. Truth be known, most nations have them.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/syria/cw.htm

The head of the IAEA stated that containment was working. ElBaradei had strongly questioned the U.S. rationale for the 2003 invasion of Iraq from the time of the 2002 Iraq disarmament crisis, when he, along with Hans Blix, led a team of UN weapons inspectors in Iraq, seeking evidence that Saddam Hussein had revived his efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction.

They were right, we were wrong.

[JustinM]

That's still disputed. There's no proof WMD's weren't in Iraq. But, plenty of proof they once were.

[forrestkc]

That's still disputed. There's no proof WMD's weren't in Iraq. But, plenty of proof they once were.

It is only being disputed on talk radio and on shows like Hannity and Colmes. This is the problem with one getting information on current events from talk radio, be it liberal or conservative. See I would be willing to bet that guys like Hannity trump out the fact that Syria has VX and Sarin WMD stockpiles, and then make the conclusion that its obviously from Iraq. However, they cleverly omit the fact that Syria has had a chemical weapons program since the 1970s. Otherwise, their goal is to mislead, not inform.

3 independent commissions and even President Bush himself has stated the we were wrong about Iraq.

[forrestkc]

Before we went into Iraq, evidence was shown that the Iraqi government was loading up wmds, and shipping them off to an undisclosed location. I watched as Colin Powell presented this evidence to the U.N. The reason WMDs are still being disputed is because there is no way to prove they were not hidden before we went in. Sadaam had plenty of advanced warning. The majority of Americans didn't watch the presentation of the evidence, and the politicians realize that most won't accept the truth, so they simply go along with the idea that WMDs did not really exist. It makes them appear more credible than holding to something they cannot prove.

If you want to hang your hat on those supposed chemical and biological weapons being in Syria, then go ahead and do so because its even worse than going to war in Iraq for nothing. The reason is that our stated reason for going into Iraq was to prevent Iraq from giving those supposed chemical and biological weapons to terrorist groups and or their state supporters. Therefore, if Iraq moved those weapons to Syria just prior to the war (as some on the right want to assert), then our going into Iraq resulted in the very thing that military action was supposed to prevent. Moreover, prior to the war, we had practically ever spy satellite at our disposal pointed at Iraq. If we are to believe that we have satellite surveillance of convoys of trucks entering suspected WMD weapons dumps and then leaving the country, then having just sat back and done nothing while that was happening before our very eyes is much worse than simply going to war with a nation that in the end did not pose a significant threat.