Iran - The Bomb

[strictlybroadband]

The CIA says Iran couldn't build a nuke inside the next 10 years. What do you know that they don't?

[King Pin]

I do feel a bit queasy hearing Blair talk tough on Iran which means he is willing to sacrifice somebody else's son or daughter for his own neck

[Pervert]

You can be pretty sure none of his sons will be in the front line any time soon. And the Windsor boys will be safely posted off to Germany once they get through Sandhurst.

Time for someone to start playing Army Dreamers again.

[RetroDon]

War is sadly inevitable, but is it that much different to the last few hundred years of history?
The middle east has always been a place of great instabilty, those murderous arabs and their barbaric religions cannot and will not get along with each other, never mind the greedy colonial west (and the UK taught the US all it knows about that, and has effectively passed the baton), add to that the corporate western worlds greed for their oil and you have a recipe for all the wars, death and sacrifice anyone could dream of. Bliar may not be a total idiot in the mould of Dubya, but the man is owned by the same multi-nationals that control the US government so he will never stand up against America in these instances.

[Officer Dibble]

"I do feel a bit queasy hearing Blair talk tough on Iran which means he is willing to sacrifice somebody else's son or daughter for his own neck"

Do I take it you mean that our Tone's life is in danger and he's hatching a plan to spark a war with Iran in an effort to save himself? How did you come by this intriguing info, King Pin? Please, do go on, you have the floor...


Officer Dibble

[Officer Dibble]

Hmmm, some interesting comments and all that, but once again, no one has really addressed the question head on (folks seem to glance off many questions at tangents).

So, I?ll try and put it more starkly and simply - a nutty, erratic, belligerent, third world regime, with a history of aggression, is just months away from acquiring 'the bomb'. So, what do we do about it?

1) Do we do nothing and keep our fingers crossed?

2) Do we get together with the UN, EU, or whatever, and talk a load of interminable, inefficient, time wasting bollocks, because no one can unanimously agree on any individual course of action (due to cynical, self serving, agendas)?

3) Do take no nonsense, decisive, military action to quickly crush their nuclear ambitions?



Officer Dibble

[King Pin]

Perhaps diplomacy would be a better way of doing things rather than all this knee jerk gung ho war mongering.Mr Blair's track record on war and sending OTHER people's children in to the killing fields doesnt give much hope for peace.
The Iranian president says he wants to wipe Israel off the map right now messrs Bush and Blair are probably thinknig the same thing about Iraq if it wasnt for the oil.

[Officer Dibble]

"Perhaps diplomacy would be a better way of doing things rather than all this knee jerk gung ho war mongering."

Maybe it would. But the question I'm posing here is - what if the people you are trying to negotiate with are irrational, unstable, and intransigent? What if they snub every diplomatic overture you make and continue on a belligerent nuclear path? What then?


Officer Dibble

[diplodocus]

'we' (I assume you mean the West here) do nothing, we let the all powerful Israel blow the bollocks off them then block all attempts at UN sanctions (handy thing that veto eh) and everyone's happy....simple

[David Johnson]

Hi Officer,
Given that the likes of France, UK, Israel and particularly USA have sufficient nuclear bombs to wipe out if not the planet, at least the Middle Eastern countries you refer to e.g. Iran, then it is hardly a credible step for Iran to launch a nuclear attack on anyone, knowing that their country will be obliterated in return. Stalin wasnt anyone's most stable, friendly leader, but Russia's large arsenal of nuclear bombs were never used for that reason. A pre-emptive attack creates the situation the western countries are trying to avoid i.e. a rapid proliferation of nuclear weapons. An additional problem is the pre-emptive attack could be based on incorrect intelligence e.g. Iraq and result in a country being in a lot worse mess than they were originally.
Diplomacy and trying to remove the causes of distrust strikes me as a more realistic alternative
Cheers
D