Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Should we be Worried?

According to Seymour Hersh's article in the New Yorker this month, administration officials consider Iran's President the equivalent of Adolph Hitler in 1935 and have moved beyond contingency planning for military strikes on Iran to operational planning, which is more detailed and serious. Also disclosed, one of the contingencies planned for was using tactical nukes to penetrate and destroy enrichment facilities 70 feet under bedrock. The pentagon got nervous and wanted to take that option off the table as plans went forward, but the administration refused. Bush just said today, that option is on the table:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060418/wl_nm/nuclear_iran_dc;_ylt=Au.n.N734K9JYzjYAEYKy8tbbBAF;_ylu=X3oDMTA4NTMzazIyBHNlYwMxNjk2

Meanwhile Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the aforementioned Iranian president has not backed down an inch and basically said, "Bring it on," to Bush. (He really said he'd "cut the hand" of any aggressor, but same idea, right?)

I just watched an awesome documentary series from the BBC called: Nazis: A Warning from History that is still fresh in my mind as the Bush administration calls Ahmadinejad Hitler in 1935. After all, both are leaders of a humiliated nation that considers it's treatment at the hand of stronger nations as crimes. Both want to annihilate the Jews. (1935 was the year of the Nuremberg laws that stripped Jews of citizenship and banned intermarriage and so forth.) So the question arises, with Bush's stated policy of pre-emption, should we be worried?

If the UN doesn't act and/or Iran does not moderate or compromise, will dubya be the first President to nuke since Truman? Will he nuke to make the world safe from nukes? Do we really have anything to worry about?

Our intelligence about Iran's program and plans are no better and possibly worse than that we had on Iraq, prewar. And some believe Ahmadinejad is super-radical and would use nukes against Israel, to wipe it off the map. Others don't believe Ahmadinejad has any real power and that the mullahs, who do have the power, are more pragmatic. Still, it only matters what Bush thinks, doesn't it, since he's already proven he'll ignore info that doesn't fit his beliefs.

So, yeah. We should be worried.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

All bark, no bite. Iran's leader would not dare use nukes against Israel. Israel has got the most sophisticated missle defense system and it would be unlikely a nuke would get through. If they tried, successfully or not, there would be no more Iran.