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that's the startling conclusion I have come to after researching the veracity of a claim made today in the NY Times. 

http://www.iranfocus.com/en/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=32


http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=47742





http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/05/21/iran.nuclear/index.html




http://mvdg.wordpress.com/2007/11/07/iran-months-away-from-wmds/






I can't tell ytou how relieved I am to see the press are alarmist a***oles and we can go on with our lives, crashing stock market and two half won wars  knowing we don't have to worry about iran launching a nuclear attack against us

Unfortunately, they're eventually going to be right.

well we've got about 10,000 nukes our selves and thousands of miles of space between the Us and iran so...I think maybe I won't worry about this.  i'm more worried about zombie saddam hussein aquiring WMD

Months, years, it’s hair splitting. Since Iranian scientists are neither lazy nor uneducated, and in fact are very motivated, it's only a matter of time until Iran acquires nuclear weapons. I've had an interest in Persian culture and history and so have read about it off and on for years, and while I do admire the fact that the modern Iranian nation does not have a history of invading other countries, and in fact repudiated its own arguably justified claims to Bahrain, I suppose there is a case to be made for Iranian territorial non-aggression, and Iran’s international responsibility. However, Iran is also waist-deep in sponsorship of some of the most anti-American, violent, vile terrorist organizations on earth, so the thought of Iran having nuclear armaments isn’t reassuring. We live in frightening times while we lull ourselves with our Hollywood blockbusters.

like?


they don't support al queda.  that's the only anti american group I'm concerned with

Great question, lester! In answer, this comes from the official website of the Council on Foreign Relations:

"Does Iran sponsor terrorism?

In March 2006, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said, “Iran has been the country that has been in many ways a kind of central banker for terrorism in important regions like Lebanon through Hezbollah in the Middle East, in the Palestinian Territories, and we have deep concerns about what Iran is doing in the south of Iraq.” U.S. Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell told CFR.org in June 2007 there is “overwhelming evidence” that Iran supports terrorists in Iraq and “compelling” evidence that it does the same in Afghanistan. For these reasons, news reports in August 2007 cited U.S. officials as saying that the United States would consider adding Iran’s Revolutionary Guard to the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations. Iran has repeatedly denied involvement in helping attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Here's another:

"What terrorist activities have been linked with Iran?

The U.S. government first listed Iran as a terrorist sponsor in 1984. Among its activities have been the following:

    * Observers say Iran had prior knowledge of Hezbollah attacks, such as the 1988 kidnapping and murder of Colonel William Higgins, a U.S. Marine involved in a UN observer mission in Lebanon, and the 1992 and 1994 bombings of Jewish cultural institutions in Argentina.
    * Iran still has a price on the head of the Indian-born British novelist Salman Rushdie for what Iranian leaders call blasphemous writings about Islam in his 1989 novel The Satanic Verses.
    * U.S. officials say Iran supported the group behind the 1996 truck bombing of Khobar Towers, a U.S. military residence in Saudi Arabia, which killed nineteen U.S. servicemen."





Another website for a group called "Iran Terror" has much more to say on the subject, and can be found at:
http://www.iranterror.com/




Lastly but not least, our old friend about.com opines:

"Iran, State Sponsor of Terrorism:

Iran has consistently been described by the United States as the world's foremost state sponsor of terrorism. It actively supports terrorist groups, most prominently the Lebanese group Hezbollah. The Iranian relationship with Hezbollah demonstrates one accepted explanation of why states sponsor terrorism: to indirectly influence politics elsewhere.

According to Michael Scheuer, former CIA officer:

    State-sponsored terrorism came in the middle-1970s, and ... its heyday was in the 1980s and early-'90s. And typically, the definition of a state sponsor of terrorism is a country that uses surrogates as its weapon to attack other people. The primary example to this day is Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah. Hezbollah, in the nomenclature of the discussion, would be the surrogate of Iran."




So to sum up, I think the evidence is out there to hold Iran accountable for terrorism undertaken by proxy in its interests. I do find Iran an interesting nation with a long fascinating history, but that doesn't blind me to the reality of the harm it is capable of doing and is doing right now.

none of those are against the continental united states.  terrorism is just how they do thigns in the middle east.  all of the countries are a part of it, even the "good" ones we bribe to pretend they like us

So...since Germany gassed people, it was all right then for every nation in Europe to gas people, cuz "that's just how they do things there"? Since Germany wasn't gassing people on American soil, Germany wasn't practicing genocide? Lester, Iran sponsors terrorism. Iran sponsors anti-American terrorism. Iran sponsors terrorism that has caused the deaths of Americans. I guess you're saying it's all right with you that Iran does this but it's not okay with me.

I don't agree.  they don't sponser what I would consider terrorism.  hezbollah and hamas are part ofd the elcted bodies of their respective countries. 

saudi arabia,  whom we are in bed with,  absolutely support al queda who have and do seek to destroy us.  our enemeis and Irans enemeies are the more or less the same, sunni extremists. 

at any rate,  the hype abuot irans nuclear program is disingenius as is obvious when you note they've been "months away"   perpetually since 2004.

so my point one, it would appear based on the evidence that they are NOT months away from a nuclear bomb and even if they were it isn't very important to any of us unless we work in think tanks as the idea that they would launch a nuke against the continental US is ludicrous.  they'd be vaporized

Hey, remember how Iraq was always months away from a nuclear bomb?  Then we invaded and their stuff had been buried in the desert since 1990?  These are the same guys clamoring to bomb Iran. 

I sure as heck am not clamoring for more war, and I'm not convinced invading or bombing Iran would achieve the solution some think it would, but to argue that because intelligence was wrong about Iraq's capability to produce nuclear weapons we should disregard current reports of other nations being close to doing so is illogical. You know, actually, I hope those who say Iran isn't close to getting nukes are right, I just wouldn't sit back and base foreign policy on their optimism. It's only a matter of time till Iran and many other US-hating nations who export terrorism produce nuclear weapons.

Keep in mind that just because they haven't completed the last few months worth of work needed to build a bomb across the last 4 years, does not mean they aren't at that point. It would be stupid for them to finish a bomb now, because they know they couldn't keep it's completion a secret.

Personally, I don't doubt they are within months, they just don't have an interest in having one. Seem like it brings more problems than it solves. At the rate our economy is declining and our military is tiring, beating the US is more of a waiting game than anything as I see it.

ghouck-  bin laden said something to that effect a while back.  he was like, I can just paint al queda on a piece of paper and send it to some part of the world and the US will spend billions trying to find out what' I'm doing.  that's the new 9-11 playing on our paranoia

So be it, , but you missed the point. Your point that they haven't moved from "months to go" in several years does NOT mean they aren't at that point. That's all I was saying, relax a little, OK.   :smile:

?  I am relaxed.    but your point is silly.  these articles aren't  stating that iran is within range of creating a nuclear weapon and only need to complete the final step and thus are perpetually "months away from a nucelar weapon"

they are  saying that iran is   on it's way to making a nuke and if not stopped will have one in a few months.

  it's logically imopssible to be "months away" from making a nuclear bomb for more than couple of months.


it's like saying that because my new house is closer to a lake than my last house that my next home will logically be in the lake.


If I am "moving closer to the lake" it doens't mean I'm eventually going to be in the lake, the articles are saying iran is in the last stages of becoming a nuclear power and are moving towards that goal at a alarming rate

I have a 1000 piece puzzle sitting on my table. It's finished, except for about a dozen pieces. It's been sitting there for four years. Now, with a straight face, tell me there's more than five minutes worth of work left on that puzzle.

No, it's not. It's nothing like that. I don't know how you can compare the two.

I've enjoyed this topic and it's been a blast---haha---reading over input from all sides. (Which definitely includes you, lester, even if I don't totally agree with you. Thanks for starting it up.  :smile:)

My quasi-official final thought on this matter is that however close Iran is to getting nuclear weapons, my worry is not that on day one (or day 1000) after getting them Iran is going to launch a strike against the United States or even Israel, a more realistic horror scenario is some disgruntled fanatic maybe years down the road managing to get bomb making materials, especially dirty bomb materials, into the hands of an organization that will gladly use them. A nation like Iran can be expected to have at least some constraints based on self-preservation if nothing else, but how can you restrain or bargain with a terrorist cell of fanatics who want nothing more than their own martyrdom, preferably obtained while assaulting Americans?

That's the innermost danger of Iran having nuclear technology. That's what will keep so many people up at night should Iran reach that point, as I do think it soon will.

ER-  meanwhile,   the only one to ever launch a chemical WMD attack on us was someone from our own government, the anthrax letter guy.  whatever.  if we want peopel to stop trying to bomb us we shuold stop invading and occupying their countries.  they come over her ebecause we're over there.

ghouck- I feel the point of the articles is to make the reader want to support bombing iran.   I don't see how this would make us any safer.  it would create more anger against us.  yes it wuold solve one problem, iran would not be a nuclear threat, but 9-11 wasn't a nuclear attack.  there are a thuosand of ways they can terrorize us without nuclear weapons. 

At what point did I argue any of that?

Hey, just one question for the road, please, lester.

"if we want peopel to stop trying to bomb us we shuold stop invading and occupying their countries.  they come over her ebecause we're over there."

Can you show me one period in history in which humans lived in amity, mutual tolerant respect and peace, making your statement  true?

Thanks in advance, bud.  :smile:

ghouck-  you and I have such a different wayu of debating it's almost ipossible for us to communicate.  isn't that interesting?

ER-  well,  that's my point.  we're never going to be free from the fear of annihilation, so we should not spend all of our time and money in trying to look over our shoulder all the time

Thank You.

We....are never going to be out of danger of annihilation...so we should...not not look out for ourselves? Assuming what you wrote wasn't a typo, then, shrug, you're entitled to your opinion. I guess your opinion of humankind's peaceful nature is higher than mine. Still, thanks for the reply to my question.

well,  all right let me clarify.  how do we actually look out for ourselves:  we are a nation that has a constant flow of immigrants, some legal some not from around the world.  we have tourism.  we have two huge and for the most part unprotected borders.   


So,  I'd say America as a nation, if I weere looking at it from another country as a consultant,  is pretty much undefendable from terrorism.


not all countries are.  you take israel.  they are small.  they have an apparatus to keep an eye on pretty much the entire border.  the only citizens there, outside of th ffew remaining arabs,  are all jewish and all have the same culture and so forth. 


this doesn't mean they are free from terror threats, I mean that's obvious.  but they are better able to defend themselves from it and thus can take more forward positions towards their enemies if they want.


So  look at our situation relative to theirs.  should we really be p**sing off terorrists?

ceertainly we have to have SOME security measures and even defnse measures,  but I don't like the ideea of relying on our government to protect us, nor do we have the money  to start all these wars!!

I feel they've made it perfectly clear that our mere existence p!$$e$ them off. Should we all just commit suicide to please them?

"I feel they've made it perfectly clear that our mere existence p!$$e$ them off"


read the 9/11 report or any of michael scheur's books, he was the head of the CIA's bin laden unit.  read osama bin ladens ridiculous messages themselves.  they hate our foreign plicy not our "way of life". 

noam chomsky put it best they dn't hate us because they reject our principles but because they agree with them!  am i the only one who saw "red dawn" and cheered?

I disagree. They hate our way of life as well as our foreign policies. They hate us, ourselves. They hate the fact we are not like them. They hate the fact that they cannot make us be as they are, or control us. They are ruled by hate, and hate takes people over and unbalances them. As for bin Laden's messages, which you're right, are ridiculous, in my opinion when bin Laden masterminded the murders of 3,500 civilians on September 11th his opinions as to America's supposed mistakes ceased to matter. I take that back. Long before then, after his first murders, he lost his right to criticize anyone.

Do you think, though, lester---and I'm asking sincerely, here---that if America changed in the ways you suggest it should, that we'd really have peace? Or that those who hate the US and the west would stop hating us?

I don't think hate works that way. Hate is as all-possessing as love, every bit as illogical, and maybe just as strong. I don't think it can be shut off that easily. The hate radical Islamists have for us is out of control.

Even if at times America's foreign policy has been imperfect and has resulted in giving those who hate us legitimate complaints, we still have to defend ourselves. Would it truly atone for anything to allow more Americans to be killed by terrorists? I don't think it would. And while we hopefully try to peacefully better our standing in the world, let's keep our guard up. Don't you think that's wise?

look, here's the problem:  it's not just terrorists who hate our foreign policy.  it's pretty much ALL muslims.


example:  the saudi people don't lke the saudi royal family.   the saudi army is garbage and can't defend itself because if they put together an army the size they would need it would turn and kill all the royal family most likely.


we support the saudi royal family,  for our own reasons.  so we are supporting a dictatorship that is despied by it's people.  same in egypt.


not surprisingly, most of the 9/11 hijackers came from these two countries. 



so no,  people like bin laden will never like the united states ofr  number of reasons.  but as i think mao said, the insurgnecy swims in the body of the people or something.


more to the point,  our foreign plicy isn't making us safer.  we haven't had any attacks since 9/11 but that' s mosyt liekly because all the jihadists are headed to iraq or afghanistan.  those wars have to end someday.  and no matter how many terrorist we kill they'll make more.  in syria the govenment has something called a "family medal"  that's given to you if you have 12 kids or something. 


so terrorism and potential terrorists can't be squashed like cockroaches.  and they don't "respond to force"  we've given them force since 9/1 and there is no abating the number of terrorists ready to come and die. 


you can't win a p**sing contest with a skunk right?  how many more cliches can I use here?

So is that a no or a yes. I see your point about us having different debating methods: I can count at least 4 places where you won't answer a question presented to you. You're sounding more like a politician with every post. You said it yourself, "Your enemy is the Government". It shows. .

By the way, you think maybe the reason Muslims hate our foreign policy might have something to do with their religion expressing that non-Muslims be eradicated? Think maybe you're playing right into their hands by believing their hate is based on our foreign policy? Oh wait, you already avoided that question once, please disregard. 


Most likely? Have you ever heard the term "weasel wording"?


No, it's our way of life. All the things their younger people want, that we have and they don't, is what they hate about us.

so you dont need to read what the 9/11 commision wrote or  what the people who study bin laden wrote. 






you have no actual information but you can draw the correct conclusion from "your own ass" as they say.





I 'm pretty sure when we sanctioned Iraq and the people , rather than the dictator,  suffered,  that a normal person would dislike rather than like that.  If I were unable to get medical supplies and saddam hussein was i would not see this as a good policy for me personally. 

 thus, it's isn't hard for me to imagine that it is our foreign policy not, say, our right to a speedy trial or other elements of our "way of life"  that muslims hate. 


have you ever talked to any muslims about these issues?  check out www.shiachat.com or other discussion boards.  don't listen to me or any "experts"  see for yourself.    thoseare the people we are talking about, they aren't abstractions

I've read it, not impressed. Yes I DO know Muslims, , and they freely admit their religion at it's roots demands the eradication of non-Muslims. I think your stance of "The US Government is my enemy" is clouding your judgment and objectivity. With that stance you have taken, I'm not surprised at all at what you're posting.

so what are you advocating policy wise?

I mean,  if you believe islam isdedicated to killing every non muslim in the world or whatever that isone thing.  but what are you suggesting be done about it?

i am not trying to change anyones view of islam or the middle east so much as trying to get our government to stop spending my tax dollars on what is an ineffective strategy for combatting it or protecting us from it.

I don't think spending billions on wars in the middle east has done a good job in protecting us from terrorism or stopping terrorism. 



take iraq.  we covertly supported the ooverthrow of the monarchy or whatever it was,  then we supported saddam again iran.  then we sanctioned saddam, then we fought a war against him.


all in all, we spent a ton of time and money  and accopmlished nothing.  this is not a criticism of our actions so much as a general appraisal of what all that stuff ended up being worth.




if we had done absolutely nothing and let things run their course, I maintain we'd not only not have wasted so much money but we and they would most likely be in a far better position.

the world is chaotic.  this is not new


I mean, north korea has an insane dictator.  we haven't invaded north korea and I don't really lose sleep over the fear of an attack from them or the plight of their long suffering people, mainly because i don't see what we could do to change it, though I think if we were to invade north korea we could end up killing a ton of starving north koreans.


let people who live under bad systems continue to untill they can't take it anymore.  let the muslims re establish the caliphate, it will fail like it did before.

we lost vietnam, the vietnamese lived under communism for a couple of decades then decided they'd had enough.  now they are trading with us and begging us to let nike open sweatshops there.  anti war, anti state, pro market!

What YOU believe is ineffective. You said it yourself that we haven't had a major terrorist attack since 9/11, but then of course went on to pull things out of YOUR ass as an alternate explanation. probably probably probably.

I never said anything about changing policy. I never said I had any grand scheme, but "we should just stop pi$$ing them off" is laughable to me. I pointed that out, and you couldn't manage to address it directly. If you read back at the points I've made, the other ones you wouldn't address, but rather changed the subject when approached, you'll see where I'm coming from. You start with some crap about Iran NOT being mere months away from nuclear capabilities, and your 'proof' is that they've been at that point of several years, , I pointed out that that idea is illogical, , and you deflected. You state that Muslims don't hate our way of life, again, more deflection. ER asks a simple, outright and direct question, and again, you just can't take it head-on. See a pattern developing? How many times in the thread have I had to point out that you're trying to push a point I never argued in the first place?

You're right, we do have much different ways of debating. PM me if you want to know what the difference is, because you won't like me posting it in public.  :lookingup:

why do you always get so excited when we debate stuff?  it's just a thread on the internet, we aren't the heads of rival factions of a political party or something.  nothing we say is of any magnitude.


so you attribute this to what then?  I don't know why we haven't had a major terrorist incident.  my GUESS was that most of the real hardcore terrorists went to iraq.  we also have poured alot of moneyi nto homeland security.

so,  I'd say between those two things that's probably why we haven't had another 9/11.  that and no group of people on an airplane would sit still for a terrorist if they took over a plane.  due to cell phone technology that didn't even last long enough to get the 3rd or 4th plane whereever it was supposed to go on 9/11.

how am I deflecting anything or weasel wording.  how does it serve nay purpose of mine to say what I think a reason for something is?


why? why would people want to retaliate against us if they had nothing to retaliate against us over?  al queda hasn't atacked sweden or iceland or many other democratic countries just for existing.   i don't think even the most ardent neoconservative would say that our foreign policy is not one of the main reasons we are disliked in the arab world.  Egypt is a dictatorship, we support it's dictator.  obviously the egyptian people are not going to like us.  would you like someone who supported someone who was oppressing you? 




you still don't understand what the article is saying.  the article is saying that iran is HEADED towards having nukes in as soon as a few months, not that their technology is such that they could begin making them now and have some in a few months. 

you are twisting the "months away" phrase.

I think this is turning into an example of why some people hate political threads.  I wish everyone would try to remember to attack the other poster's position, instead of attacking the other poster. 

I wouldn't be at all surprised if AndyC posted a picture of a dog in this thread at any moment.

Once again, this political thread is not doing anything productive.  Locked and done.