Swift Sword

Ok, so I took a pot shot at Mr. Bush and you choose to call lit a non-sequitor. However, even though it did nothing to add to my argument as you have pointed out, it is still a legitimate observation.

When a leader lets someone he calls an enemy openly engage freely, profitably and rationally in dealings with competing powers and other potential enemies with no apparent counter move, I would question his rationality and reason as an actor.

Mr. Bush may indeed have a plan of some sort with which to pleasantly suprise us but he better deploy it soon as the window for decisive US action whether it be diplomatic, economic or military is fast closing.

Iran would fit the description, assuming you consider Iran a fundamentalist Islamic government. We could also add Saudi Arabia to that list if we are to assume that it is a fundamentalist Islamic government (powerful Wahibi influence internally combined with export and support of fundamentalist (neofundamentalist Pan-Islamic perhaps?) ideology).

What makes you so sure?

Some of the same people that claim to speak with authority on the Iranian WMD program also said Iraq was improving its WMD capability and expanding its stockpiles of WMD. They also said North Korea had no bomb but now they say perhaps 2 or 3 with and option for six.

I will make not assummptions as to how advanced the Iranian program is, the quantitiy of fissile material at their command or whatnot. It appears to be fairly advanced and the facts support the conclusion that any country that has mounted a serious effort to acquire fission weapons has managed to do so.

Or empty shells yet to be filled or decoys. It is quite possible the buildings you refer to may be redundant production capacity and we have no clue where the rest of the factories are.

You might wish to examine the historical case studies of attempted military pre-emption of WMD assets and production capability.

If I had to bet today, I might be more inclined to bet on Iranian C3D2 and against US and allied BMC4ISR.

If you care to familiarize yourself with the facts surrounding combat deployment of larger ballistic missles, you will find that most of them ever fired were of the highly inaccurate and ineffective HE type but proved to tremensously effective weapons.

Furthermore, even a highly inaccurate and ineffective HE ballistic missle occassionally manages to hit a juicy target. I defer to Captain McBride "it is not the one with your name on it that gets you, it is the one adressed "to whom it may concern".

Furthermore, Iran has other assets at its disposal with which it has successfully struck at US and Israeli interests in the past. It could employ these again, perhaps even with a CW/BW or radiological weapon if you want to investigate contingencies for getting-worse case scenario.

Swift Sword

Sounds like what many people used to say when talking about Libya.

That will mostly likely come to pass and fairly soon.

A panel of four generals from both sides of the aisle (I want to say Franks, Meyers, Clark and some other guy) were on one of those Sunday morning political programs several months back. They all seemed to agree that current commitments will leave the USAR bent and the National Guard broken within a 15 to 20 month time frame, IIRC. Anybody else catch that interview?

However, look at the bright side: by smartly investing in a certain small shipyards and vendors of helicopter parts, you too can get a juicy piece of the pork from the Bush Administration's budget.

I would not buy that argument either.

However, I might entertain the notion that war as we know it is getting much more expensive and much less profitable.

There is a point of diminishing returns out there somewhere and the strategy and tactics will no doubt evolve to meet the new reality but I do not think that war is irrelevant in the sense of Mr. Friedman's position.

Confed999

Pretty much what I said: "The current government has the ability to repress the people's economic growth. Best way to get ahead is to know someone, and be a loyal supporter."

__________________
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I agree completely with this Administration’s goal of a regime change in Iraq-John Kerry
even if that enforcement is mostly at the hands of the United States, a right we retain even if the Security Council fails to act-John Kerry
He may even miscalculate and slide these weapons off to terrorist groups to invite them to be a surrogate to use them against the United States. It’s the miscalculation that poses the greatest threat-John Kerry

Confed999

Libya was pretty quiet after the bombings...

Praxus

Saudia Arabia certainly has a fundamentalist islamist tilt to it.

There is no evidence to suggest that they do have one. They certainly havn't tested any, so even if they had a nuclear weapon they wouldn't even know if the design would work properly.

Sooooo...

I'm for the elimination of the Iranian Government on top of the Iranian nuclear program. The Iranian Nuclear weapons program is no the primary reason for attacking them; their support for fundamentalist Islam, is.

Shoot cruise missiles and and drop bombs (via. Stealths) at everything you think is related to their NBC and Ballistic Missile programs.

Really, name one war against the west where they shifted the course of the war. I'm not sure, but I bet you can't name one anywhere where it shifted the course of the war.

It's war, people will die, it is the nature of war. However the ammount that die, will be significantly less then the number of people that would die from terrorism because Iran has a nuclear deterent. They could openly aid the Islamist war against the west.

Ok...

You mean people would die in a war against Iran?

I mean really, thanks for telling me that, I couldn't have figured it out on my own.

Swift Sword

Libya was indeed quitet after the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq but not because of them.

If you go back ten years, you see something interesting happening in Libya: instead of of the usual suspects coming and going from Qaddafi's tent, you start seeing guys with business suits starting to come and go.

It would appear that a lengthy course of Clinton Administration backed European diplomacy is why Libya is where it is today. The revisionists cry from the rooftops that the display of US and British military power in Iraq deterred Libya and brought them to the table but like many other revisionists, they are wrong.

Swift Sword

And Washington and Riyadh use their mutual powers of reasoning to cut deals all the time.


It is not neccessary to test a fission weapon to see if it works properly. If you have studied the Manhattan Project, you will recall that the gun assembly weapon was not tested; combat deployment against Hiroshima was the first test.

If the Iranians are pursuing an implosion assembly design, they could still run a zero yield test on the core and skip a certain amount of testing.

Furthermore, we do not know how much technical assistance on bomb design and physics the Iranians have received from places like Pakistan or North Korea or private parties and how much it has accelerated the Iranian program ahead of any theoretical timeline.

So, the people that supply the intelligence to COTUS and POTUS (and the Clinton Administration for that matter) have a slight credibility problem. In lieu of adequate intelligence on the Iranian WMD/BM program, I would think it prudent to overestimate Tehran's capability rather than underestimate it.

Than why do we not go after our allies who have a lengthy history of sponsoring fundamentalist Islamic movements? I have heard it said "if you are standing on the porch and there is a wolf in the yard, it is better to go after the wolf inside of the fence than the wolf outside of the fence".

This approach has already been discredited in combat operations. The US tried that in Operation Desert Storm and post war intelligence found that the target list was shy about 9 to 1.

Too, US allies as well as US competitors/threats have supplied more than one turn key, dual usechemical plant to the extensive Iranian biochemical and agrichemical industry which complicates target selection...well, complicated in lieu of strong diplomacy and foreign policy.

I would not say that such missles altered the final outcome of a given war if that is what you mean. Your premise is a bit flawed becuase a single weapons system cannot reasonably be expected to do such a thing in and of itself in any war.

However, the facts show that the use of such weapons has caused large numbers of causalties and/or caused the reallocation of resources in such a manner as to cause one side to change its dispostions at a much greater cost than the missle chucker has incurred upon himself.

Military force is used for the purpose of causing the enemy to change his dispostions or induce him to actions he was not intending. The historical record of Western wars amply proves that inaccurate, ineffective HE missles have proven to be extremely effective in getting the target combatant to change his dispostions.

Less capable missle forces than those posessed by the Iranians have caused Western forces to engage in costly manuevers which is precisely why you should not underestimate them. If all other things are equal, they might just change the course of a war.

So what do you propose to do? Follow President Bush's lead and do nothing while Iran secures that deterrent? Employ a historically discredited and historically ineffective form of military adventurism?

Reason dictates the exploration of options.

You might do well to study the Romans. If you read Gibbon, there are some interesting comments on the hows and whys of getting into war.

Bluesman

That is perhaps the most unsupportable post you've made to date, and that's going pretty far.

You have no dam' idea what the hell you're talking about.

There is no sort of a doubt whatsoever what brought him 'to the table', and he has said as much himself.

Are we to believe you know more about his motives than he himself did?

It is PRECISELY US military power that achieved Libya's disarmament. HE SAID SO HIMSELF.

Good GOD, believe whatever wild notions you like, but a lie that is so easy to refute posted up in here with the seeming voice of certitude is really insulting.

Go peddle your wares on whatever campus will have you. On your bike, pal.

__________________
"The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it, and if one finds the prospect of a long war intolerable, it is natural to disbelieve in the possibility of victory."
- George Orwell

Bulgaroctonus

I have noticed a good amount of debate about the specifics of missile warfare, I can't comment well on this note because I am not an expert.

Swift Sword, you are essentially recommending negotiations with Iran. If I am incorrect in this distillation of you argument, please correct me.

However, I want to reinforce my point the Iran is not amenable to negotiations. Libya acceded to U.S. demands finally for several reason, but one of them is certainly that Libya is a much weaker country than Iran. Most of the country is worthless desert. They have less population and resources than Iran, and therefore feel more threatened by the West. Therefore, because of the differences between Libya and Iran, I don't think the two systems are comparable in any helpful way.

Iran, unlike North Korea, has not offered any criteria upon which it would disarm. North Korea has repeatedly said that it fears U.S. attack. The U.S. therefore has something to deal with in that scenario, we know what action (a non-aggression pact) we need to take.

Iran has shown itself to be unhinged. Its leaders and considerable parts of its population are openly hostile to U.S. interests. Their fundamental interpretation of Islam also makes them hard to deal with. Statements like "Israel should be wiped off the map," indicate a dangerous mentality guiding the Iranian state. I can list ever more reasons that Iran is not negotiable.

Bluesman

Just so. As I mentioned before, there is NOTHING that we could replace their nuke weapons program with that would match what that would give them. They WILL NOT negotiate it away.

Libya did because its leader perceived that he had no choice, that we were no longer bluffing, AND because he'd been busted red-handed. Iran is trying as hard as it can to keep the lid on just a little bit longer, admitting nothing, and seeming to negotiate in good faith so that the fake negotiations can dupe certain people into thinking that they're 'bearing fruit'.

Iran is determined to do whatever it has to do to ensure it is a nuclear power SOON. I think we should be equally determined that they will NOT be.

ZFBoxcar

We should be. But let's say we aren't and we fail to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons. What do you think their next course of action will be, and what should our response be?

Leader

Getting nuclear weapons just means more innocent Iranians are going to die in a war. It won't change the out come. They still won't have the means to deliver it.

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Bluesman

At that point, we HAVE to treat with 'em, and on a completely different basis. We no longer have the 'gunboat' card in our hand, and as we all know (okay, as MOST of us know), diplomacy that isn't backed by some kind of compulsion is nothing but an auction, with the prize in question going to the highest bidder.

In short, we are now on a far more equal footing with an enemy nation that is energetically working to defeat our policy and kill our troops. Intolerable...inconceivable that we'd allow it to happen.

But then again, that's the State Department's default position.

So, what do i think they'd do next? Amplify and intensify their current outrages against us and Israel, while pushing around a Europe that's at a growing comparative disadvantage. THEY - not US - would be the regional hegemon, and if that won't keep you awake at night, then your name is the incredibly ironic Swift Sword.

ZFBoxcar

They won't have the means of delivering to North America, but they can hit US bases in pretty much the entire Middle East, and they can hit Israel, and they can hit Europe. There is always the chance the PAC III and Arrow II will stop them, but we can't say for sure.

Bluesman

Disagree. They have been improving on the North Korean design, and the Shahab series is very likely to give them a theater capability BEFORE they have a warhead. Once the technical problem of mating the two is solved, it is an unstoppable weapon, dependent only upon its own reliability, as we can do NOTHING to prevent impact once its fired.