Iran Resumes Uranium Conversion Against UN Wishes

Nuclear energy is in every way less desirable than oil- or gas-fired power. A country that floats on oil needs it like it needs a black eye, especially one that is subject to violent earthquakes that may play merry Hell with the disposal of nuclear waste at any time and with no warning. I know this has been said before, but the only reason Iran wants this is to build nuclear weapons.

One more reason to get out of Iraq quickly, beginning on August 16, not necessarily announcing it, but doing it, so that no troops are left behind, and certainly no weaponry left behind in the hands of the Arabs, Sunni or Shi'a Arabs. The Kurds are another matter, for they deserve support, and after the constitutional brouhaha they will need it. One more reason, because sooner rather than later as much damage must be inflicted on Iran's science project -- no matter who is in charge in Iran (for as the Shah was followed by Khomeini's regime, and that regime may be followed by one akin to that of the Shah, the Khomeini-ites can always return as long as Islam remains, and Infidels from now on must work to deprive all Muslim or possible Muslim states from acquiring any major weaponry. That needs to be a common goal for all Infidels, everywhere -- whatever their other differences, which seem so small by comparison with the gap that will forever separate all Believers from all Infidels.

Iran cannot be attacked from Iraqi soil without the American soldiers (and civilians) there being sitting-ducks for Iranian retaliation. Iraq is already full of Iranian agents working to make the American effort as painful as possible, even though it is the Americans who are dealing with the Sunnis. Why not have the Americans take care of the Sunnis, even as Iranian covert weapons shipments can make the Americans suffer. The best of both worlds -- while the American forces seem incapable of understanding that it is they that should remove themselves, and let the Shi'a and the Sunni Arabs go at it, as they will, and in the ways that the Americans would never dream of doing. We need not take the casualties, need not take any casualties, nor spend a cent more, which will only be stolen as so much of the aid has been stolen by "contractors" and local government -- see all the reports just coming out on the situation in Basra, for example.

Get out of Iraq, and from a distance fight from afar -- telemachy -- in order to damage the Iranian menace. And do not wait for some "change of regime" in Iran. It doesn't matter; it is irrelevfant. Muslim Iran, even softly-softly Muslim Iran, still cannot be trusted ever with such weapons -- whatever Iranian dissidents, the kind that hate the Islamic Republic but do not yet have the courage or sense to jettison Islam, may insist.

Muslim Iran, even softly-softly Muslim Iran, still cannot be trusted ever with such weapons -- whatever Iranian dissidents, the kind that hate the Islamic Republic but do not yet have the courage or sense to jettison Islam, may insist.
So true, Hugh. We can not afford to wait for some future ephiphany, nuclear weapons in the hands of islam is the stuff of nightmares.

Epiphany↑

Hugh, the Defense Dept. announced quietly today that they would increase troop count for the two votes (const.,elections) coming up. Something like 138K today to around 150K, then back down to 138K in January. THEN they would try to get another 20 to 30K out in the spring maybe hitting 100K to 110K by mid 2006. Thought that would make your day. I hate it. There should be only one direction, and that is down.

Why are we obsessed with getting a stable democratic government in the Islamic swamp? Our foreign policy cannot change course no matter how foolish it is. Condi, you infuriate me. You still have nary a clue.

"Hugh, the Defense Dept. announced quietly today that they would increase troop count for the two votes (const.,elections) coming up. Something like 138K today to around 150K, then back down to 138K in January. THEN they would try to get another 20 to 30K out in the spring maybe hitting 100K to 110K by mid 2006. Thought that would make your day."
-- from a posting above

You are so right. The momentary cheer from news of the death of that awful journalist and awful man Peter Jennings, about whom the networks have been falling all over themselves hailing as a great man and a great journalist (if you want to know what Peter Jennings was like, go back, watch "The Apartment" and think of the character played by Fred MacMurray, in all of his callousness and cruelty)has been squashed by the news of this continued blindness about Iraq.

If indeed troop levels remain high, or are brought down by a ridiculous 30,000 next year, when all of them should be out, out, from that dam ned spot, Iraq, by the time of the December elections, or whatever they are, and instead here is the awful news.

They still intend to stay there, they still intend -- on Bush's Democracy-is-on-the-March theory (applause, please, from My Weekly Standards, most of National Review (not Pryce-Jones and not Derbyshire, but most), Charles Krauthammer, and tutti quanti, who think we are "winning" in Iraq, that "honey-pot" for Jihadists (fill in every cliche in support of the policy that you want, right here -- space provided free of charge) -- to squander American lives, squander American money (which the Iraqis will be happy to pocket -- there will be so much more for them to steal from the state treasury and from each other), further degrade American equipment, further damage the citizen-army and demoralize all the troops -- who cannot continue to be lied to, and who will not continue to parrot the party line, not if they are asked to return to Iraq. At a certain point, the nonsense is seen as nonsense -- the business of "all people love freedom" and "democracy" will -- here the line is full of static, and so we cannot quite make out the logic which ends in --"a model for the Muslim countries" and so the "moderates" will be able to "defeat" the handful, or tiny handful, or teeny-tiny handful of "extremists."

Was there ever such a case as this, where the most powerful country in the world, simply becuase its leaders could not, would not, dared not, learn a sufficient amount about what they had to learn, and could learn about -- to wit, the tenets and history of Islam, the permanence and centrality of hostility to Infidels and the necessity, the duty (always collective, and in some circumstances individual as well) of Jihad to enlarge dar al-Islam at the expense of dar al-harb, and the nature of Iraq itself, and the three ethnic or sectarian groups -- the Sunni Arabs, the Shi'a Arabs, and the Kurds -- who more than ever distrust and dislike each other, after all that has happened, and whom might, just might, be held together if the Americans wish to keep hundreds of thousands of troops fighting and dying there for the next twenty or thirty years, and spend another $300-500 billion, and tie the American army down so that it cannot conceivably prepare for other enemies looming, or starting to loom.

And what makes this so intolerable is, of course, that by getting out we are likely to achieve what cannot be achieved by remaining: those making policy are geniuses in reverse. Because they cannot bring themselves to admit they were wrong (why can't they? what's wrong with that? Few understood Islam in 2001, or 2003, and fewer still understood Iraq. It is not terrible to have followed a successful invasion with some naive moves, but the time for that to continue has long passed -- it is time to grow up, about Islam, about the world-wide manifestations of the same impulse of Jihad against Infidels, whether in Israel or Kashmir, in Madrid or London or Beslan or New York or Washington or Amsterdam or anywhere at all, and to decide that it is Islam itself that needs to be weakened, and constrained.

Iraq provides the perfect place, the perfect opportunity. It is not the opportunity of building "democracy." The Shia "support" democracy -- they voted in January just the way Sistani told them too, or Moqtada al-Sadr in some cases -- because they are 60% of the population. The Sunni Arabs did not vote, and are distinctly un-enthusiastic about "democracy," per contra, but only because they are 20% of the population rather than 60%, and so will suffer if this horrible one-man-one-vote nonsense starts to mean something.

There is a nuance to be noted here and there. For example, the Shi'a who follow Sistani are not as thuggish as those who follow Moqtada al-Sadr, a classic troglodyte. And the Ba'athist Sunnis regard Shi'a merely as "close to being Infidels" whereas the Zarqawi-supporting Sunnis regard Shi'a as not "close to being" but flat-out Infidels. This does not regard us, the real Infidels. We should derive profit and pleasure only from the spectacle of Shi'a and Sunnis at one another's throats, with help from Sunni and Sh'a forces outside coming in to help their respective sectarian interests.

Meanwhile, you don't have to be Barzani, or Peter Galbraith, to want the Kurds to be allowed to establish a state of their own -- you need only be a cold-eyed strategist, wishing to do whatever you can do to cause intra-Muslim strife, and there are no better ways than to cause a questioning of the Arab supremacist ideology within Islam by non-Arab Muslims (Kurds, Berbers, and others) and by ceasing to prevent warfare between Sunni and Shi'a. Any policy that does not wish to exploit these divisions within Islam to the fullest simply makes no sense -- makes the opposite of sense.

There is no end to this.

Iran wants the bomb. Iran needs the bomb, The Mullahs must have the bomb. the Ayatollahs couldn't do without it!

Fasten your seat-belts, boys and girls, for this is the new 'back to the future' scenario.

While the US-administration remains clueless, the 'democrats' undermine the government and CAIR, the UN, Amnesia- Intentional, (and the ACLU & many more) all get their way and undermine, sabotage every effort to come to terms with the Islamic menace.

We need a Churchill now, we need real leadership instead of diddlers.

What does it take to turn it around? Or are we lost, or is our civilization doomed?

The US Vacating Iraq would lead to a pile of skulls that would make Pol Pot look like a saint. Anyone remotely associated with the coalition would die within days and the bloodbath would last untill a muslim theocracy was installed. That would be worse that defeat, percieved or otherwise. Also, with the troops in Iraq, Maybe we can make a move on Iran before it's too late (if it isn't already).
kevin

Iran has declared that it will resume nuclear conversion at Esfahan within one or two days. Europe has requested an emergency meeting of the IAEA to pressure Iran not to resume nuclear fuel cycle work. Israel is pressuring Ukraine to demand from Iran the 12 nuclear-capable X-55 cruise missiles that were smuggled there four years ago.

All of this is happening as the talks with North Korea are drawing to a crucial, and so far unpredictable, end.

So is World War III imminent? Hardly.

Over reaction is exactly what these unlikely allies are fishing for. The coincidence of declared threats by both countries is a bit too convenient. By cranking the nuclear threat pressure simultaneously, both North Korea and Iran are hoping to walk away with the most handouts.

US_Infidel--

Why risk a nuclear strike when we can impose something even more shock-and-awe inspiring: UN SANCTIONS!