I just don't know if I have the stomach to keep up with current events.

indicates that we have learned nothing

it is also in the narrow interests of the House of Saud that Iran be attacked, they would like to see the powerful Shia' state pounded, so I think that they are playing an unhelpful, though less visible, role.

it is all very distressing.

the corruption stuff around Olmert is growing fast.

I have thought for a long time that there was a much higher likelihood that Israel would attack Iran than the other way around. Which nation has a history of attacking its neighbors? Israel has probably attacked more neighoring states than any other nation since Nazi Germany. Which one is armed by, protected and egged on by a powerful big brother?

It speaks volumes about our sick society that Obama was compelled to separate himself from Trinity UCC, but had to suck up to AIPAC. I mean, who is the real extremist?

this is good reporting, but scary as hell.

- tragic for the people of iran - iran has no nuclear weapon and no means of delivering one if they did have it. nor will they, if ever, have that capability until long after cheney and bush leave power. WHY NOW?

- exceedingly dangerous for the people of the united states and israel for it's actions like this that birth terrorists.

- a military/security exploitation of the u.s. general election similar to the exploitation that occurred in 2002.

cheney and the neo-cons never sleep.

everyone remembers, no doubt, that cheney was sec def for bush I.

Imagine if Clinton and Obama had gone to AIPAC and said there was no justification for the US or anyone else to attack Iran and that now was the time for diplomacy.

Ours is a sick and twisted political culture.

What makes you feel more safe:

(a) an Iran with active nuclear reactors

or

(b) one without?

I don't like war anymore than any other Liberal, but we cannot allow Iran to have nuclear power, imo. The thought of that scares the hell out of me more than the thought of war with Iran.

We are in a seriously bad position, where each choice is just as grim as the other, accept in that a successfully outcome of (b) makes us exponentially more safe, whereas allowing (a) to happen is like writing a death sentence to millions of innocent people.

While there are millions of moderate, peaceful, western leaning people in Iran, there are an equal number of Iranians that loathe the west and are plotting our destruction, and they happen to be in complete control of that country and it's ambitions.

There is nothing peaceful about Iran's nuclear program. That is just a smokescreen. I think the Iranian program is all about getting nuclear weapons into the hands of terrorist groups, much in the same way Iran has armed Hamas and Hezbollah, so that those groups can carry out Iran's ambitions while Iran claims they are not involved.

I wish there was an easy solution, but unfortunately, Iran is unwilling to give up their dreams of nuclear power, so it must be taken from them by force. And if that means the United States has to act, then we cannot afford to be divided the way we have been on the elective war with Iraq. This will be another fight for our very existence.

I don’t like war anymore than any other Liberal, but we cannot allow Iran to have nuclear power, imo.

why not? we allowed Pakistan and India to have nuclear WEAPONS. We allowed N. Korea to have nuclear weapons.

we allow Israel to have nuclear weapons.

nations have a right to self defense, we can't attack a nation just because we think there might come a time when it has nuclear weapons.

If Israel attacks Iran the entire Middle East, South Asia, and Near East will be destablized.

Sadr will take the opportunity to cut our supply lines, surround the green zone in Baghdad, and cut us to pieces.

What passes for a government in Afghanistan will completely collapse and be over run by the Taliban.

Pakistan might collapse and be taken over by the Taliban.

Confessional violence in both India and Lebanon will increase.

Turkey might send additional troops into Iraq, and not for our interests.

Turkish society could become more radicalized.

China could refuse to buy anymore US Treasury Bills and our currency could collapse.

An attack by Israel against Iran is a really really really bad idea.

One more thing, the Mubarak government could fall and be replaced by a radical government which would not honor the Camp David Agreement.

Attacking Iran solves no problem, but makes all other problems worse.

Also, it is a war crime to attack a country without provocation. The possibility that they might acquire nuclear weapons at a future date does not constitute provocation.

nuclear power does not equal nuclear weapons. There are ways to permit one without the other.

I was getting all worked up to say a lot of the same things, now I don't have to.

The question posed, "What makes you feel safer?" is the same one that allowed the U.S. populus (news organizations included) to be hearded like sheep into supporting the Iraq clusterfuck.

What makes you feel more safe:

(b) one without?

Definitely a.

This isn't the answer you were expecting so allow me to elaborate.

Iran has a rapidly growing population, a baby boom in fact. Those kids are growing up and will need jobs and consumer goods, or else. If they don't get a piece of the pie they will be looking for someone else's pie to take or at least ruin in spite.

That rapidly developing economy needs energy. Iran currently gets most of its electricity from natural gas, but that's depleting and has a rapidly increasing export value (needed to for tools and such from the western industrialized countries). So they forsee the need for fission reactors -- it's the only large scale viable power technology that's ready to go for them.

That said, there's more than one kind of reactor available.

The US design, pressurized light water, is a derivative of Navy reactor designs. Navy reactors have to fit on ships and submarines and this compromised the design. PWRs need enriched fuel, so they need a fuel enrichment infrastructure that is also useful for making bombs. Also, they don't burn the fuel down that far, and leave plutonium in the "spent" fuel elements that can be extracted chemically (e-z!) to make bombs.

The CANDU (Canada Deuterium Uranium) reactor is different. It uses deuterium oxide (heavy water) as a moderator and is super-efficient in using neutrons. That means it will run on a large variety of fuels, including naturally occurring uranium, "spent" fuel from PWRs, recycled fission bombs, and even thorium (IIRC. There is a lot of thorium.) Summary: It doesn't need an enrichment infrastructure, and will run on nuclear garbage.

Iran needs nuclear power, how about we make it the safest kind possible?

yours is a very thoughtful and informative comment.

thanks

I was under the impression the IAEA said Iran was under compliance (or at least partially), complimenting what the NIE had stated?

Sixth, the Bush administration whose hands have been tied by the new National Intelligence Estimate (that argued that Iran had suspended its program of development of nuclear weapons) would thus be able to strike Iran – via Israel - before the end of its term. Such October surprise by Israel would also certainly lead to the election of McCain and defeat of Obama as a national security crisis of such an extent would doom the chances of Democrats to win the White House. So both Israel – that prefers McCain to Obama and is hurried to act as it is wary of the constraints that an Obama presidency may put on its ability to act against Iran – and the Bush administration would guarantee the election of McCain.

I think such an attack would remove all doubt that the Republicans are a pack of crazy loons who must be driven from power and that Israel can no longer be given a free pass.

This should also be of interest. Sorry for posting a full article, but I don't want to cherry pick:

IAEA 'alarmed' by Iran's alleged nuclear weapons work: diplomat by Simon Morgan
Thu May 29, 1:25 PM ET

Inspectors from the UN atomic watchdog are "alarmed" that Iran has in its possession a document describing the process for making what could be the core of a nuclear weapon, a western diplomat said Thursday.

And at a closed-door meeting with diplomats, the International Atomic Energy Agency's chief for inspections, Olli Heinonen, revealed that the agency had gathered intelligence from around 10 countries suggesting Iran was engaged in weaponisation studies in the past, the diplomat said.

Tehran has repeatedly dismissed the intelligence as "fabricated," and the allegations that it was seeking to build a bomb as "baseless".

At a briefing to prepare IAEA board members for a meeting of the full board next week, Heinonen talked about the so-called uranium metal document, the diplomat said on condition of anonymity.

The 15-page document describes the process of machining uranium metal into two hemispheres of the kind used in nuclear warheads.

"And the term he used for this document was 'alarming'. He essentially said there was no reason why a country would need to possess such a document unless they wanted to produce uranium hemispheres for a nuclear weapon," the diplomat said.

Iran has told the IAEA that it received the document back in 1987 along with design information for the so-called P1 centrifuges used to enrich uranium.

Tehran insists it did not request the uranium metal document.

But the IAEA said in its latest report that it needed to understand the precise role of the document so that it could determine the true nature of Iran's disputed nuclear programme.

When contacted by AFP, Heinonen declined to comment on what he had said at the briefing, which he described as an "informal technical meeting".

But another diplomat close to the Vienna-based IAEA confirmed that Heinonen, who is the agency's deputy director general, had used the term "alarming" in the context of the uranium metal document.

In a sternly-worded report released on Monday, the IAEA expressed "serious concern" that Iran is hiding information about the alleged weaponisation studies, as well as defying UN demands to suspend uranium enrichment.

Experts and observers detected a tougher tone in the language of the report, suggesting that the IAEA was becoming frustrated by Iran's persistent stonewalling of its investigations.

"It's one of the toughest I've seen," a western diplomat said Thursday.

The report, a copy of which was obtained by AFP, said the IAEA was "of the view that Iran may have additional information" regarding intelligence that suggested it may have looked into high explosives of the sort used in implosion-type nuclear bombs, and explored modifications to missiles consistent with making them capable of delivering a nuclear weapon.

Iran's ambassador to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, speaking to reporters after the briefing Thursday, again dismissed the intelligence as "lousy" and "fake" and accused the United States was trying to influence the IAEA inspectors for its own political ends.

One of the Tehran's main arguments against the authenticity of the intelligence is that none of the documentation had any official stamp marking it as confidential or top secret.

That and numerous other discrepancies were proof that the intelligence was "forged and fabricated," Soltanieh said.

Western countries such as the United States remain unconvinced by such statements, however, and insist the onus is on Tehran to actively disprove the allegations rather than simply dismiss them as untrue.

"As today's briefing showed us, there are strong reasons to suspect that Iran was working covertly and deceitfully, at least until recently, to build a bomb," said the US ambassador to the IAEA, Gregory Schulte.

"Iran has refused to explain or even acknowledge past work on weaponisation," Schulte said.

"This is particularly troubling when combined with Iran's determined effort to master the technology to enrich uranium. Uranium enrichment is not necessary for Iran's civil programme but it is necessary to produce the fissile material that could be weaponised into a bomb," Schulte said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080529/wl_...

Where'd they get 'em?

Google "Hamas Iran". There's alot of cooperation, both militarily and financially between the two, who both share the same desire to destroy Israel.
Again, there's two Palestinian factions...a peaceful faction which has accepted Israel, and a militant faction which resorts to terrorist acts against innocent people that wants to destroy Israel, which would be Hamas.

Hamas resorts to terrorism while Israel defends itself with targeted killings, because there would be such a difference.

The charter offered land to Palestinians who wished to stay.
Many chose to leave, and remain in "refugee camps" to this day -- the third, fourth, fifth generations. Jewry as a people had, quite literally, no where to go at the end of WWII...and while many believe Europe owed them a haven, the sons and daughters of Abram have, since the fall of the Temple, been saying to each other, "Next year in Jerusalem."

I'm so old I remember when the nation's capital was Tel Aviv and its friends were the Soviets.

The Palestinians were shelling Israel on a daily basis in the 1960s; there are yet Arab kings who believe that "until every Jew is driven into the sea, we will allow no peace."

Usama bin Laden is one more such king.
I hold no brief for the Intifadeh, in any of its incarnations; and nor have I any sympathy for those who deny the right of the nation of Israel either to exist, to defend itself, or to prosper as it can.

I remember the 1972 Munich Olympics quite vividly.
I remember the raid on Entebbe quite vividly.

I salute Dan Shomron to this day.

Anti-Semitism is NOT a liberal or progressive value. It just is not.

and i remember abba eban -

how much i loved to hear him speak on teevee

how much i loved his diction,

his pronunciation of israel, pronounced as it is sung in handel,

how much i admired his articulate u.n. speeches in support of this tiny land during the seven days war (was that it - it's been so long?).

but today is not 1967. for palestinian families to be cooped up like chickens in the hell of gaza for 50 years is not acceptable to my personal sense of justice and injustice.

israel has to change; it has to concede.

morals aside, mine or any else's

population tells the tale.

if israel doesn't solve its palestinian problem before the u.s. withdraws its support

it will not survive.

if only we could be guided by Jimmy Carter, the ONLY Pres who negotiated a peace agreement

and those whose cause is bolstered by truthiness always have the upper hand.

Right?

Anti-Semitism is NOT a liberal, or progressive, value.

And the Palestinians are a Semitic people.

Peace won't come from capitulation, and if Israel capitulates, it will cease to exist anyway.

My contribution to this got caught in the abuse filter.

No big, just want to note that while there is plenty of blame to go round, it's not evenly distributed.

i was so pleased to see this in print:

"And the Palestinians are a Semitic people."

just so.

it's been a long, deadly feud between ethnic brothers.