LA Times editorial: Avoiding WWIII: Threatening Iran is poor strategy.

[ProSense]

Avoiding WWIII

Threatening Iran is poor strategy.

October 20, 2007

The war of words against Iran grew scorching this week when President Bush declared that "avoiding World War III" requires preventing that country from developing nuclear weapons.

The Bush administration continues to insist that it seeks a diplomatic solution to the Iran crisis -- and the White House says the president didn't mean to lay out a case for war. Yet senior U.S. officials increasingly trumpet their frustration with a regime that, nearly 30 years after the Islamic revolution, has grown richer, more willing to challenge the United States and interested in filling the power vacuum created by the U.S. overthrow of its longtime nemesis, Saddam Hussein. To the mounting evidence that Iran is accelerating its nuclear weapons research under cover of a civilian energy program has been added credible U.S. allegations that Iran is arming and aiding Shiite insurgents who are attacking U.S. military forces in Iraq, as well as arming terrorists in Lebanon and Afghanistan. The resulting angry brew is being heated and stirred by a coordinated public campaign by U.S. neoconservatives favoring military action against Tehran.

Despite the very real causes for U.S. complaint, the escalation of American threats against Iran is unwise. It is grossly premature. It is dangerous, as it greatly increases the likelihood of accidental escalation into a preventable war. It is alarmingly ill-timed, as an isolated United States wages simultaneous ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and both conflicts are going badly. And it is diplomatically counterproductive. Congress and U.S. opinion leaders should slam on the brakes -- if they can.

Under ordinary circumstances, the U.S. commander in chief shouldn't have to publicly rule out the option of using military force if necessary. Ordinarily, presidents should be able to bluff or threaten in order to win concessions from a foreign adversary. But these are not ordinary times, and the Bush administration's judgment about what is "necessary" to protect U.S. national security has been shown to be extraordinarily poor.

Military threats are a last resort and should only be made by nations prepared to make good on them. But the United States is militarily unready and politically unwilling to open a third front against Iran -- nor should it, because Iran poses no imminent threat. In February, Bush's own director of National Intelligence, Adm. Mike McConnell, and director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, told Congress that the earliest Iran could develop a nuclear weapon or intercontinental ballistic missile with which to deliver it would be 2015.

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[orpupilofnature57]

1. What do facts have to do with 400% profit?

[Disturbed]

4. As usual, Busholini is full of shit.

He was talkin' crap about how Iran cannot be allowed to gain knowledge of Nuke creation. Does anyone believe that Iranian scientists do not have this knowledge? The question should be: Is Iran seeking to develop Nuke weapons? No one has the answer to that. Even if they were doing so, it would take another ten years to achieve that. Does that sound like an eminent threat?

All this BS about Iran Nukes is a smokescreen, as were the WMDs lies about Iraq. It is about control of oil flow in the ME.

[daninthemoon]

6. Seeking the "knowledge " of how to build the bomb is now a thought

crime punishable by massive bombing. He's going to bomb the country for having what he deems "knowledge". I guess he learned not to attack based on tangible WMD, because he might be asked to produce them.

[Bravo Zulu]

2. ?*?

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

3. ...Do ya think?

[CGowen]

5. Adm. Michael Mullen: U.S. can strike Iran

U.S. military forces are capable of conducting operations against Iran if called on to bomb nuclear facilities or other targets, the new Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said yesterday.

"From a military standpoint, there is more than enough reserve to respond if that, in fact, is what the national leadership wanted to do, and so I don't think we're too stretched in that regard," Adm. Michael Mullen told reporters when asked if current operations had worn out U.S. forces.

Adm. Mullen said he has been concerned over the past year and a half with Iranian leaders' statements of intentions, Tehran's support for bombers in Iraq and Iran's covert drive for nuclear weapons.

"All of which has potentially a very destabilizing impact on a part of the world, a region of the world which is struggling in many ways already," he said in his first press conference since becoming chairman Oct. 1. "So they're not being helpful."

...

http://www.washingtontimes.com/article/20071019/NATION/110190089/1002

[kineneb]

7. considering L.A. is also called "Tehrangeles"...

the area has the largest Iranian community anywhere outside of Iran... mighty polite of the LA Times to not follow the BushCo line... and maybe, just maybe, someone at the paper has a notion of the outside world...

[ProSense]

8. Cheney's lips move

Cheney Warns Iran of `Serious Consequences' on Nuclear Program