Yes, once again, Bush is doing damage to American foreign policy to enhance his poll ratings. Or, rather, Rove is. He’s strengthening an evil regime in doing so. And he doesn’t care.

close your eyes and I’ll kittz you, tomorrow I’ll fitz you

Good morning all. Yes, Prof. Cole should be THE middle east expert/talking head on shows attempting to do news, but I’ve only seen him on PBS The News Hour.

I’ve learned a lot from reading his blog.

Fitz me another!

Dr. Cole is not far from the Stratfor assessment March24.
https://www.stratfor.com/reports/podcasts.php
Different event but same underlying theme.
Of course the nightmare is that rhetoric will actually lead to conflict.
Before the Iraq invasion I would not have been so nervous.
The bus cannot come soon enough.

EPU’d
The foreign policy of our nation has never been so bereft of dialogue and diplomacy. I am not talking about threatening sanctions and calling names– those are sticks I have no faith in. Because no carrots are out there– it is: do it our way or the highway.

We don’t talk to Iran or North Korea. WHAT? WHY?

How much sense does that make? None. It is as though a marriage is falling apart and there are 12 kids suffering from neglect because the parents do not work toward a resolution and some semblance of harmony. Nobody wins and the dependents are the ones to pay the highest price. The husband and wife continue to verbally abuse, threaten and dominate each other– rather than agree to move on as parents and not as a married couple. Responsible to their children and not their pride. This may be a silly analogy.

bushco continues to exhibit a breathtaking failure of imagination and profound rigidity that threatens the world.

Thanks Redd, that’s indeed a must-read piece by Cole.

btw – does Prof. Cole say how many watches would be required?

Professor Cole is correct in the short run. Modest enrichment is necessary to get a reactor up and running. The real danger is in the middle term — after the reactors have been up and running. Reactors create plutonium (Pu 239 and Pu 240) as a by-product.

If the Iranians not only enrich uranium but also install a reprocessing facility to recover the Pu 239, then it’s time to worry. The declassified bits of our country’s experience with nuclear weapons suggests that Pu is the efficient way to go. Pu can be isolated chemically from U. Chemical isolation is orders of magnitude easier than isotopic enrichment, not to mention more efficient.

The most interesting piece of the whole article is Khamenei’s statement that nuclear weapons are not Islamic.

BC

Dang. EPU’d. I must learn how to think faster.

Can we really trust that this is all just sabre-rattling? Religious fanatics have a funny way of doing things that the rest of us would call stark raving lunacy. All this talk of Bush’s ‘messianic vision’ sends dark-ages shivers up and down my back.

My post-left-in-the-electronic-dust asked how we can change this movement towards destruction without gathering the same kind of ugly power that these clowns have; do we have the time to stop this juggernaut without further destroying our political and social process?

Oh, and in case no one else has yet – Fitz!

RE: The Trailer Trash story:

Snotty did what we all expected, he blamed the CIA, and the media:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12285521/

The racist nature of this is often ignored. The good ol USA is always up for dropping big ones on non-whites/non-Christians.

A scholarly case could be made that that’s what it’s all about.

There was a fantastic post on dailykos a year or two ago explaining why the claim that Iraq was trying to procure 500 tons of yellowcake from Niger was absurd on its face. The author, a physics prof I believe, pointed to some of the same facts Prof Cole mentions. Basically, making weapons grade uranium or plutonium is really really hard and it takes a very sophisticated effort over a long period of time to even begin to have a chance.

Where are the phycisists and why aren’t they screaming about the “threat” from Iran that isn’t really a threat? Has anybody here heard a peep from the scientists?

And while we’re discussing Iran and nuclear weapons, Mr Preznit really needs to get out the bubble.

His saber-rattling appears to be causing a crisis of conscience in the military’s officer corps. Apparently some general officers who would have to counter-sign an order to use WMD have announced they would not do so. I know quite a few of the ROTC cadets on our campus and the more thoughtful among them are trying to figure out what to do.

I’ve never heard ROTC cadets questioning the command authority before. Not even during the Vietnam wind down.

BC

If this is all about both regimes wanting to improve their popularity couldn’t we have a nice dramatic single combat between Bush and one of their guys?

It would be fun. One bout in Iran with doves realeased and costumed dancers before the joust; the second in Washington with cheering crowds; the final one in some neutral country with good scenery.

Back inside from working in the veggie beds — Christy, I just have to tell you how beautifully well-written, and spot-on accurate, your writing was in the last thread. I’m really impressed.

BC, i keep on mentioning this, but no one has picked up on it yet. If there is an order to nuke Iran, this will have to go to officers who are especially trusted. Who are those?
People like Boykin—crazy, end-timer christians who want to bring on Armageddon, whom Bush will use for his own purposes, whatever they are.
I really think that if there is a way to look at recent officer promotions for suspicious patterns, it would be worth doing.

I believe the main character in the book “The Davinci Code” has the same watch as this one.

Speaking as an engineer (who has never worked in nuclear weapons), I have to disagree just a little bit. If a nation with sizable financial resources has any degree of enrichment available, they can make at least 2-3 bombs (not necesssarily weapons) in a few years if they try hard enough.

Cranky

dannyboy at 16 — thanks. It seems I do decent work on heavy cold medication. *g* This is one of those long-term consequences issues where I can see how horribly things could go — but I lack the real world experience to really come up with good solutions. Which I why I try to keep up with Prof. Cole and others as often as I can. All of my int’l relations studies never really prepared me for a foreign policy analysis of an Administration THIS out of whack. SIGH

The problem is that Bush is a messianic psychopath, determined to prove that he is right and everyone else is wrong, and fuck everyone who stands in his way in the process.

How do you reason with that? You can’t — the only hope is there is someone or something that can stop him. I am not optimistic.

At TheLeftCoaster, Mary has an excellent piece, riffing on a TPM post — Bush is our own little Mao, in Bolshevik drag:

http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/007347.php

Having carefully watched Bush for years now, I must say that having someone like Bush in charge of our nuclear weapons has been a personal nightmare and one of the main reasons I opposed the Iraq war before the first bombs dropped.

What I saw was a person with no limits. Here is what I wrote for Bill Keller on Feb 8, 2003 when he cheerfully jumped on the Liberal Hawk bandwagon having been conned by Colin Powell’s performance before the UN.

The most dangerous thing about this administration is how closed it is to outside input, how sure it is that it has all the answers and how unwilling it is to listen to any points of view beyond their own. I don’t understand how it is possible for anyone to feel comfortable with how decisions are made by this administration. They subvert science when it doesn’t conform to their views. They subvert international treaties because they have no trust in relations and believe we can live in this world by ourselves. They propose budgets that are worse than a joke. And yet you think they can make a decision to go to war?

…The fact that there is no counterweight to secret government is precisely the reason we are more at risk than ever before. Now there is no check except regional courts which all can get checkmated by the Supreme Court. Besides the war, it is the most serious concern we have because as it has often been said:

Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Mao started out as a person who was fighting for something bigger than himself. He ended up as one of the more extreme monsters the earth has known. If you look at what happened to him, he became totally convinced that he knew better than anyone else what was real and people stopped trying to correct his mis-impressions. And millions died when he decided he knew how to “improve the agriculture systems” by edicting that it would be 5x a reasonable goal. I don’t think that he started out wanting to do such evil, but he did.

The biggest danger with this administration and the right-wing group in power is they do not let reality intrude in their deliberations.

Many women died making those “glow-in-the-dark” watches. The workers painted the watch-hands and would moisten the brushes with saliva off the tongue to get a good pointed tip. Over the years, the radioactivity was ingested and the ladies eventually died of mouth and jaw cancer … gruesome!

Cranky, I think there might be some significant hurdles to overcome. Centrifuges, especially the ultracentrifuges that are necessary for enrichment (as I understand it), are not all that straightforward to come by…

What really freaks me out is that we heard the same rhetoric before Iraq, about how these are just contingency plans, how there’s no real desire to do this, etc, etc… yikes, it’s the same freakin’ thing again.

ccmask – yes, I’m reading The Da Vinci Code right now, and Robert Langston does indeed have a vintage Mickey Mouse watch.

Regarding nukes…can we dig up some old “Duck & Cover” instructional movies? I’m a little out of practice, and I just wanna be prepared!

EPU’d from “No Room For Errors”, but pertinent here as well. (re NRFE *ilson #19)

When Truman faced the decision of whether or not to use the A-bomb in 1945, no one outside of the project (except numerous Soviet spies) knew about it. HST himself didn’t learn about it until he was informed (by Stimson, IIRC) a few hours after FDR died. Also, obviously, no one had any idea of the long term affects such as fallout, etc. But the key factor was that he was getting estimates from the JCS that the invasions of Kyushu and Honshu, planned for October, 1945 and Spring, 1946, respectively, would likely result in 500,000+ KIA for the US forces alone. This, plus growing concern about the geopolitical implications of the Soviet Union entering the war against Japan, led to his decision. If he had not used it and the casualty rates of the invasions of the home islands had been in accord with projections he would have been villified.

Things are very different now, and there’s no excuse for the use of nuclear weapons, even “tactical” ones, not being dismissed out of hand. In today’s environment there is no such thing as a “tactical” nuclear weapon because their use would have profound strategic blowback. In this I disagree with Billmon’s awsome post of yesterday.

Anyone morbid enough to want to pursue this topic should check out The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes.

FDLurker said:

Basically, making weapons grade uranium or plutonium is really really hard and it takes a very sophisticated effort over a long period of time to even begin to have a chance

It’s not that hard. We did it in four years, in two different ways (a U-235 bomb and a Pu-239 implosion bomb.) And we didn’t know it could be done, though we had every reason to believe it was possible.

What making weapons-grade fissile material does take is a large (and very hard to hide) industrial base. If your goal is Pu-239, you need breeder reactor(s) using slightly enriched U to make Pu-239 from U-238. Then you need a pretty large reprocessing plant to separate the Pu from the U.

If your goal is U-235, you need a large gas separation facility. Gas centrifuges are more effective than gaseous diffusion, but the plant is still going to very large (and very power-hungry, besides.)

And there is the secret technical know-how to operating the reactors and/or the enrichment facility. Basically, the most important knowledge is that it can be done. The basic science behind the technology is very well-known.

If the experts say they’re 10 years out, then maybe they’re 10 years out. But experts have been very wrong about how far out countries are from obtaining nuclear weapons. After the second world war, General Groves (the military head of the Manhattan project) said the Russians were 20 years out. They exploded their first fission bomb in 1949.

BC

Who’s the 4th general to speak out ?

uranium enrichment is a very slow process so you have to do a lot of it in parallel. In theory, one centrifuge could concentrate “raw uranium” to well past the 90% U235 needed for bombs. It would take this one centrifuge over 100 years to produce an ounce of U235. You need 20-30 pounds for a bomb. Therefore you need zillions [sic] of centrifuges working all at once to produce useful amounts. Iran has 160 centrifuges going now…

Christy, 20 — NO ONE in the reality-based world could ever be prepared for the foreign policy of this administration. In a sense, it’s the perfect storm: bigots, a population of disinterested, seemingly decorticate workers clinging to their jobs with a hope and a prayer (for those outsourcing said jobs), greedy economic ideologues, Protestant, Catholic, Jewish and Muslim nutjobs,and the reins of government of the most powerful nation on the planet held by a group of people so severely pathological it’s amazing they’re able to function. Now what training could every prepare anyone for that?

wrt to phyicists and nukes see this:

Petition by physicists on nuclear weapons policy, September 2005
As physicists we feel a special responsibility with respect to nuclear weapons; our profession brought them into existence 60 years ago. We wish to express our opposition to a shocking new US policy currently under consideration regarding the use of nuclear weapons. We ask our professional organizations to take a stand on this issue, the Congress of the United States to conduct full public hearings on this subject, and the media and public at large to discuss this new policy and make their voices heard.
http://physics.ucsd.edu/petition/

Will The U.S. Nuke Iran?

Professor of Physics Highlights The Dangers

In an August 2005 issue of The American Conservative, former CIA officer Philip Girarldi raised the alarm over in-process Pentagon contingency plans drafted in preparation for another terrorist attack in the United States. The response includes a plan for a massive air assault on Iran with the use of both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons regardless of whether Iran is any way involved in such an attack against the U.S.

One month after the publication of Giraldli’s warnings, physicists from around the world, including numerous Nobel laureates and prominent figures, signed a petition expressing their dismay at seeing the architects of Bush administration policy embrace the use of nuclear weapons as a tool in warfare like any other. The new US policy to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear countries has been officially formulated in two US government documents Nuclear Posture Review delivered to Congress in December 2001 and Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations dated March 15, 2005.

In the new video produced with the support of volunteers of the Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran (CASMII), the UC San Diego Physicist and signatory to the petition Dr Jeorge Hirsch outlines the devastating consequences that are certain to follow if the U.S. pursues a policy of deploying nuclear weapons. He urges the US public to ask the Congress to confront this possibility.

With Iran’s civilian nuclear program having been singled out for referral to the United Nations Security Council, destructive sanctions and/or military action against Iran seem imminent. In this context, any U.S. policy that paves the way for the use of nuclear weapons is particular cause for alarm.

We urge Iranian, U.S. and international media to take note of this alarming development in official U.S. policy and to meet their responsibilities in revealing its dire implications.

Video available here:
http://www.informationclearing…..e12569.htm

It would be helpful if the Pakistian bomb story was available. There’s the blue print, they’re a hell of alot poorer than Iran, and it didn’t take em’ long.

Hey, I get it now! Cheney was talking about his pitching career: when he said last “throes” he meant “throws” – it was a curveball the liberal biased reporter didn’t pick up on.

Why do Hillerich and Bradsby hate America?

ck – different Mary, but Mao came to my mind the other evening as well. Chairman Bush – they could spin it too. Not king, just Chairman for life. *g*

fdlurker 13, I don’t know, but I think a couple of things were at work. All the yellow media was focused on getting the money quotes from the sexy sources, and no one was much interested in lengthy, dry explanations.

I also seem to remember reading several places that many scientists that thought things like the Niger story and aluminum tubes story were tripe, nonetheless thought that there was no way Bush would actually be taking us to war unless there were concrete evidence that Iraq had already acquired enriched uranium from another source (more so than producing it) and that is part of what kept them quiet.

The “softball sized” amount of enriched uranium – they thought our govt was sure Iraq had it already, and also – funding for science is very tied to govt support. Look at global warming research and what Bush has managed to pull off. I do know that several scientists were speaking out on aluminum tubes and delivery systems, bc I remember reading and passing the information on, at the time. I just don’t remember any major yellow journalism outlet focusing on the information being provided.

*ilson46201 22 –

The same thing is still happening, although without the radioactivity. I read a story about a 20 something Korean woman, who’s eyesight and health were failing from chemicals involved in computer board assembly. Her teenage co-workers called her “grandma.” Automated assembly has reduced these particular risks, but plenty of others still exist. San Jose has some of the most polluted industrial sites in the country, from the chemicals used in computer clean rooms. In India, western ships are broken up on the beaches, with no regard to the asbestos contamination. In China and elsewhere, poor people break up old computers to recover anything of value — the phosphorous and mercury poisoning is the byproduct.

And as far a radioactivity is concerned, the BushCo excellent adventure in Iraq has contaminated Europe with Depleted Uranium — which is anything but depleted, although it’s the extreme toxicity of U-238 that is the major problem:

http://tinyurl.com/lo6pc

Face it — people are disposable, it’s money and power that matters.

Marky at 17.

It’s less promotions that have to be watched than it is assignments.

The military is probably the prototype of a heirarchical bureaucracy. I’m not sure exactly which general officers in the National Command Authority have to countersign orders to use nuclear weapons in the absence of a nuclear attack. I know that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs is one of them, and I’m sure there are others.

Among the military officer folks I know (and they are O-6s and below. I’ve met a few admirals and generals, but wouldn’t say that I know any) there is a clear recognition that nuclear weapons are different. They are not something to use on a whim. I believe that this feeling goes all the way up the command structure. There will always be a few knuckleheads like General Jack D. Ripper who think a bomb is a bomb. Fortunately, they appear to be pretty rare.

The real problem with such a study would be trying to assess the attitudes of the generals in question. Military officers tend to avoid taking overtly political position. Idiots like Boykin are not common.

BC

I have a suggestion. Maybe this will backfire, but who knows.
I can’t help but think that GHW Bush has to be shocked, horrified and ashamed of W. by now. We know that his most trusted advisers have spoken out strongly against Bush’s foreign policy, but Daddy remains mum.
Does he make many speaking engagements? What about a letter-writty campaing to him, and maybe some public “for shame” protests?
He bears responsibility for W in so many ways…
I think he owes to the country to disown W now. It’s his patriotic duty.

If nuclear weapons are not Islamic then how come Pakistan has
them and reports of Saudi Arabia developing them as well. Are we
to believe the Ayotollah’s in Iran?

BC 35, thanks for the response.

fdlurker #13–
The Union of Concerned Scientists does care and has issued a statement saying so.
http://www.ucsusa.org/news/com…..clear.html
Then go over to the Global Security section, they’ve got some good stuff posted.

Agreed that more folks from all walks of life: scientists, business people, students, homemakers, teachers, retail workers, everyone should yell and march and make our country’s survival as a free nation priority one…but damn the rent is due and the job is tenuous and the grants come from the government and the kids are in trouble in school and so on. We just don’t seem to have the time to become passionate enough about our demoncracy. Maybe we are suffering from a cultural burn-out?

TRINITY AND BEYONDâ„¢
(The Atomic Bomb Movie)

I’ve informed my wife that if we attack Iran, I’m out of the military. I will resign my commission, as hard as that will be because I’m 5 years shy of eligibility for retirement benefits. If we nuke Iran, I’m out entirely: out of the country. I’ll take my PhD and make use of it in Latin America on the short term and somewhere else longer term.

I wont have anything to do with offensively nuking anyone. Not as a military officer and not as a citizen.

many Christians including the Pope say nuclear weapons are un-Christian so why does England, France, Russia and the USA still have them? why do we believe these bishops?

close your eyes and I’ll kittz you, tomorrow I’ll fitz yo
–Sharkbabe #2

Just as an aside, and as an fyi, Sharkbabe, it was I who posted in the last thread about half of that Juan Cole quote that Christy has chosen to use for the lead in to this thread.

I used it for the same reason that Christy stated that she used it. Juan Cole knows of what he speaks, and he get it across in a way that we can all understand.

Gordon Prather has done a ton of great writing regarding the technical end of the nuclear issue along with the IAEA issues over at antiwar.com.

Praedor Atrebates -

Lemme make sure I got the logic right: In order to demonstrate the moral unacceptability of nuclear weapons, we must USE them pre-emptively on a nation with whom we have no Congressional Declaration of War?

I must be trippin’.

I have been reading Jake my trusty dog the comments in this
section on Iran. He tells me the fundies on both sides are stark
raving mad. He does not hold out much hope for dialogue between
Iran and America. He loves Persian carpets and hopes they don’t
get vaporized and sent to heaven. He’s quite shaken up by this
madness. He tells me the Pope needs to go talk to the Ayotollah’s
over there.

We don’t talk to Iran or North Korea. WHAT? WHY?

It’s a similar attitude to the one often heard from the Likud in Israel — “we need a real negotiating partner; we can’t negotiate with someone who has killed so many of our people.”

Hello! Who else do you negotiate a peace treaty with, other than the people who’ve been fighting you? Whenever a politician says this, I can only take it as a clear signal that they have no interest in diplomacy, and believe they can massacre their enemy to the point of unconditional surrender.

OT: the wingers are now hollering about the Left’s “War on Easter”. For me, this was encapsulated by the classic New Yorker cover from a few years ago showing the Easter Bunny on a cross. Blasphemous as all hell and quite, quite hilarious!

FDLURKER SAID “WHERE ARE ALL THE SCIENTISTS”

http://www.stevequayle.com/dea…..tists.html

Sam(37): If nuclear weapons are not Islamic then how come Pakistan has them and reports of Saudi Arabia developing them as well. Are we to believe the Ayotollah’s in Iran?

I don’t think Cole’s point was that we should simply believe it, but that it was interesting that the clerics would be saying that. One would think if their intention was to develop a bomb no matter what, they’d be building it up as a point of national and religious pride, like they are with the nuclear program in general.

marky #36
I’ve been thinking about some of that too. I can’t imagine that daddy Bush is too happy with his son these days. If anyone would have the “moral authority” to speak out publicly against W it would be him. Babs probably wouldn’t let him.

Speaking truth to power has to be done by someone who has some power, if not literally, then figuratively. GHWB figuratively has that kind of power. The other thing he could do would be to go to his son and tell him it’s time to resign before the hole he is digging himself into gets any deeper.

But those are thoughts from fantasyland. I do believe that this man and his whole administration has to be taken down before they destroy the planet. Fitz may be our only legal savior on the horizon, but there could be others who could do the heroic deed.

All of the postulating about a “tactical” nuke tossed into Iran only brings thoughts of Armageddon to my head. It doesn’t go with my theology. I’m a peace and justice kind a gal. It’s way to scary for me to even think about the consequences of bombing Iran.

Bomb Iran and they with their low grade material will have enough for dirty bombs to retribute, and they will.

Spelling—it’s Laura RoZen

Praedor Atrebates -
Lemme make sure I got the logic right: In order to demonstrate the moral unacceptability of nuclear weapons, we must USE them pre-emptively on a nation…
Eh? I don’t like nukes any more than the next guy but that is totally different from a “need” to have them. Without them, the Cold War would NOT have been won. Having them, it is extremely difficult to give them up. It isn’t simply a matter of saying, “Eieww! Icky! Let’s get rid of them!” Insanity so long as ANYONE else has them. There is no way to be sure that the other guy with the nukes, whom you are willing to ignore so as to just dump yours, is going to remain a good guy. Or the follow-on guy to the current “good guy” may be a bad actor. What do you do in the face of nukes when you have none? Plead and beg?

Also, there ARE uses for nukes (very special circumstances) that do not involve military attack.

I served nuke alert for 7 years (B-52s) during the Cold War. I am no lover of nukes but I understand the political need for them. They are all but useless militarily but plenty useful politically.

Iran again holds hostages — Bush and the GOP
President lacks ‘political capital’ as he confronts Tehran’s nuclear threat

By Howard Fineman

Josh has a great bamboozlement up TPM about declassifying intelligence. Scotty just tied himself up!

Although my natural reaction is to mistrust the Bush administration and believe that hyping the threat from Iran is occuring, there is a valid concern that Iran having a nuclear bomb would be destabilzing. The EU, Russia, and China agree on this point, although we should remember that all of these suffered the Iraq weapons of mass delusion syndrome too.

I think that Iran justifies pursuing a low level nuclear enrichment for nuclear power generation as its legal right under the non-proliferation treaty which it has signed. The fear is that Iran, with its oil resources, doesn’t need nuclear power but rather aims to go to much higher enrichment as is required for nuclear weapons. They are probably a few years, at least, away from that stage. I don’t know if Iran is in compliance with the NPT regulations on inspections which are designed to prevent such a leap in enrichment. If they are not, then that adds to the fear.

Is Iran intending to build a nuclear weapon? I’d guess probably unless there is a diplomatic breakthrough. Why? Iran only need look at what the U.S. did in Iraq to see what happens to a country when the U.S. decides that regime change is needed. That said, a tactical nuclear weapons strike at Iran by the U.S would be grossly insane, to say nothing of completely counterproductive for stability in the Middle East.

Praedor Atrebates says:

April 12th, 2006 at 9:43 am

Same here, and taking all the family with me…

I have a few questions, not snarky, just real. When was it established the USA would be the enforcer for the world’s nuclear policies? Did we just take charge of this mission after Japan?

And a comment. If the USA is the world enforcer who is to say someone, um,like Bush, might just press the button with total disregard for the consequences?

*ilson46201 48 –

The Pagans are outraged at the X-tians war on Ostara, and the blasphemy of ripping off her festival of sacred bunnies and eggs.

Expanding re Bargain Countertenor #9 and immanentize #56 in the previous thread (No Room For Errors)

From what I’ve read (Richard Rhodes and elsewhere) it’s my understanding that the two basic fissioin bomb technologies have diametrically opposed challenges. If you’re going the uranium route, the tough part is separating the U-235 from the U-238. Since different isotopes of the same element react the same chemically, the separation has to be done by physical methods based on the slight difference in density between the two isotopes. Once you have the uranium sufficiently enriched (70 or 80% U-235, IIRC, from the original 0.7%) building the bomb is so easy that the Manhattan Project folks didn’t see a need to test the Hiroshima design.

If you go the plutonium route, however, and assuming you have access to sufficient spent fuel from a power or research reactor, separation of the Plutonium from the other stuff is relatively easy, since that can be done by chemical means. However, as Bargain Countertenor points out you get both Pu 239 and Pu-240, and the latter is a problem. It is unstable, it’s even harder to separate physically than the two isotopes of uranium, and if you try to build a bomb using the easy, “gun” design of the uranium bomb, it will begin to fissle prematurely and thus the bomb will fizzle instead of going boom. So to speak. Instead you have to place precisely-shaped pieces of plutonium inside a sphere of precisely-shaped conventional explosives. These in turn have to go off with sufficient timing precision to assure an implosion that causes all the Pu pieces to converge with microsecond-level simultaneity. It’s a very tough problem, and it was this design that was tested at Alamogordo and used at Nagasaki.

Thus, either way it’s likely that Iran is at least several years, and maybe five or more, away from deployable nuclear weapons

Just look at the map. Iran nudges against Afghanistan on the east and Iraq on the west. Both of these countries are occupied by hostile US military forces. On Iran’s southern borders lies Saudi Arabia and the UAE, both friendly with the US and currently providing us with bases for armed troops, war planes, etc. Oh, and not too far to the west, Israel possesses nuclear weapons. And, Iran sits on not inconsiderable oil reserves, coveted by western powers.

What are a small country’s choices in this situation? Well, it can roll over, expose its underbelly to the larger predator, and become submissive. Or, it can puff itself up, make loud noises, and look threatening in the hopes that the predator will think twice about invading it and go look for someone else’s oil.

The US has a long history of interfering in Iran’s internal affairs, such as deposing democratically-elected leaders and installing despotic Shahs. A reaction to the Shah’s Western-leaning,tyranical ways produced a Islamic fundamentalist religious uprising.

Bush is just the culmination of decades of US (and other countries) messing around with oil-rich countries. Although, one hopes that a more diplomatic leader would have made for a smoother ride, the bottom line is that these benighted regions possess a resource that our life-style desperately needs. We will find an palatable “excuse” to make that resource available to us. There is too much money riding on it for us to fail. (Being cynical here).

Thanks for the info.

It makes the new claim that Iran can make unkes in 16 days make sense:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/…..world_news

Gotta go for the rest of the day, but as the first night of Passover approaches at sundown, we might think about how we can be liberated from the Pharaoh in the White House. He is the oppressor-in-chief, the bringer of evil, the one who brings plagues upon his people and others across the planet.

May we all, through the message of Passover find a way to escape the tyrant’s grasp and make our way to freedom and peace.

To our Jewish FDLers , Good Pesach.

… and to the north of Persia is Russia. During WW2, the country actually was occupied by foreign troops: Russians from the north and Brits in the South. Is it any wonder they might be a tad tetchy about independence and sovereignty?

By Howard Fineman
MSNBC contributor
Updated: 12:17 p.m. ET April 12, 2006
“A nuclear-weaponized Iran is every sane person’s worst nightmare.”

No Howard, I’m afraid that ranks way down there on my list and I’m very sane. My wife diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor, my son killed in a car wreck, my legs getting gnawed off by a rabid wolverine as I watched in horror, all rank higher than nukes in Iran. Call me when they have an ICBM to mount it on and can lob it several thousand miles with any sort of accuracy. I might move your worst nightmare to 21st or 22nd on my personal list at that time. Otherwise shut the fuck up.

Terry Gross on Fresh Air is covering the Iran clusterfuck today — interviewing Sy Hersh?

RevDeb 51 & Marky 36

I’m inclined to think that GHWB going public re his son would backfire big time. It seems to me that there are major Oedipal issues between Dubya and his parents, and that the old man going public would simply spur Shrub on.

I’m about 2/3 through Kevin Phillips’ American Theocracy and he builds a pretty good case for GWB personally and deeply buying in to the whole imminent end-times scenarios being pitched by the far religious right and the likes of Tim LeHay and his Left Behind series of books. It seems to me it’s time for the mainstream Christian denominations to get off the dime and start countering this stuff. Being a recovering Lutheran for the last 40 or so years I’ve kind of lost touch with what’s going in those circles. RevDeb do you have any insight on that?

*ilson46201 – “War on Easter: Must be that cute little ‘bunny in the crosshairs’ Blogad that’s been running of late, no doubt a subliminal directive orchestrated by the evil Liberal overmind.

Praedor Atrebates -
Lemme make sure I got the logic right: In order to demonstrate the moral unacceptability of nuclear weapons, we must USE them pre-emptively on a nation…
Eh? I don’t like nukes any more than the next guy but that is totally different from a “need†to have them. Without them, the Cold War would NOT have been won. Having them, it is extremely difficult to give them up. It isn’t simply a matter of saying, “Eieww! Icky! Let’s get rid of them!†Insanity so long as ANYONE else has them. There is no way to be sure that the other guy with the nukes, whom you are willing to ignore so as to just dump yours, is going to remain a good guy. Or the follow-on guy to the current “good guy†may be a bad actor. What do you do in the face of nukes when you have none? Plead and beg?

Also, there ARE uses for nukes (very special circumstances) that do not involve military attack.

I served nuke alert for 7 years (B-52s) during the Cold War. I am no lover of nukes but I understand the political need for them. They are all but useless militarily but plenty useful politically.

FALSE DILEMMA.

We should start calling this “Bush’s Pearl Harbor plan” or some such. If you think Pearl Harbor was a good idea, then by all means support bombing of Iran. I can’t believe Bush wants to replay WWII, with the US playing the part of Imperial Japan.

BTW, Pearl harbor was a freakin’ war crime. There were people executed for it after the war, IIRC. Bush would become Pinochet Plus for this. This is just a nightmare.

WH rebuts mobile labs story:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House on Wednesday angrily denied a newspaper report that suggested President George W. Bush in 2003 declared the existence of biological weapons laboratories in Iraq while knowing it was not
true.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/200…..sa_labs_dc

Then Juan Cole delivers this– LOL while remembering the seriousness:

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Top Reasons You Wouldn’t Want a Mobile Biological Weapons Lab

Not only did Bush and Cheney and Libby tell bare-faced lies about the alleged “mobile biological weapons labs” in Iraq, the idea of such never made any sense anyway.

1. How could you have a clean room in a mobile biological weapons laboratory?

2. Petrie dishes might vibrate off the table.

3. Germs might get carsick. Now that’s something you don’t want to have to clean up.

4. Biologists keep pulling up at the drive-through at McDonald’s.

5. What if you hit a big bump while working on the plague?

Call me when they have an ICBM to mount it on and can lob it several thousand miles with any sort of accuracy.

Even then it is not too big a deal. Honestly, one or a dozen ICBMs, each with a single warhead. Small Ritz Bits. They WONT have a dozen nukes on a dozen true ICBMs (not for a long time, at least, if ever) but even so…they would be useless in the “real world”. They would find that such weapons are militarily useless, the way all sane military planners and civilian command authorities in earlier, pre-Shrub daze found.

ANY use of such a missile and warhead WOULD end with Iran no longer existing. Truly. They cannot produce enough missiles and warhead to NOT make this the case.

I’m not saying that Iran should therefore (and everyone else) be allowed to just build “da bomb” willynilly. I’m just saying that even if they do, it isn’t earthshaking in the objective universe sense, only in the mental sense for some (many) people. Not the same thing at all.

A couple of points here

1. FDLurker (#13)–many physcisist are speaking out. I’m not the most effective or the most important, but I’m an existence proof. I have the feeling more than one of the other commenters is as well but perhaps they prefer to stay a little more undercover. The central point–that enrichment is hard, is completely correct.

2. (#31) Pakistan’s program was of fairly long standing. I know it goes back at least fifteen years, and it’s likely longer than that. It was not an overnighter.

3. I agree completely with the engineering statement above from CO (19) and BC (26). If you want to devote the resources to do it, the time to enrich enough material is largely under your own control. I think most estimates for the time to enrich enough material for a weapon implicitly make one of two asumptions: either “at current rates”, or “through slow diversion, slow enough that the IAEA doesn’t notice”. It has already been proven (by the US Manhattan project) you can go from start to finish, without even knowing how to do it, in under four years if you’ve got the resources and don’t care how big a footprint you make. Today, it’s well known how to do it.

4. ccmask–please. Just please.

5. Harry 52–actually uranium in general is a terrible dirty bomb material. In fact, the more it’s enriched, the worse it is for dirty bombs.

BC seems to have it right on the technical details of building a bomb. Centrifuges are a great way to bootstrap yourself to a nuclear reactor which can be used for plutonium production. However, although fast breeder reactors can produce Pu in abundance, they are very complicated and expensive beasts.

AFAIK, most or all Pu production for weapons use is done with thermal reactors, which are the most common type of reactor. Iran already has one pressurized water reactor (a type of thermal reactor) up and running, courtesy of Russia. The dual peaceful/military use of reactors is why Iran’s claim of developing enriched uranium for power production doesn’t alleviate proliferation concerns. (I don’t buy the claim that nukes are “immoral” according to Islam either. Obviously there’s room for a difference of opinion on this in the Muslim world — witness the immense popularity of Pakistan’s nuclear ascendancy.)

The timeline of Iran’s nuclear program becomes much murkier once they readily produce the 4% enriched fuel needed for a thermal reactor. Intelligence gathering becomes paramount at that point. (Gee, intelligence operatives working on Iran and WMD — why does combination seem so familiar? )

Note: I’m not in any way justifying the insanity of the WH crew — just throwing out some thoughts on technical matters.

Jesus H. Christ. Has anyone read the gaggle with Scott McClellan this morning? Wow. http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com

If anyone wants to become an “expert” on the making of atomic bombs and the physics, chemistry and scale of manufacturing needed, I strongly suggest you read Richard Rhodes’ Pulitzer Prize winning book The Making of the Atomic Bomb.

The scale of the manufacturing resources needed, even if you know “how” to do it, is staggering.

One of the best books I ever read.

“dirty bombs” are quite over-rated – the idea of it scares the hell out of people (just ask John Ashcroft and Jose Padilla!). Serious anti-terrorism planners dont take dirty-bombs too seriously. It can “dirty up” several blocks (taking down Times Square, Capitol Hill, etc) but it can also be cleaned up fairly quickly …

An itty-bitty, teensy-weeny tactical nuke can level several square miles of a city…

Minnesotachuck (61)–you’ve got it quite right; you get to choose between difficult separation (U) and difficult weaponization (Pu). The first problem is solved by “brute force” application of resources; the second by “finesse” of technical know-how.

The beauty, from a policy-maker’s point of view, of a brute-force technique is that (a) it is guaranteed to work and (b) you can decide the pace, and increase the pace simply by paying more money.

Iran is pursuing both U and Pu.

There is a certain status perceived by many of the worlds citizens when a country has nuclear capabilities. Both India and Pakistan have grown in stature in the eyes of their own citizenry wih the advent of domestic nuclear capabilities. Similarly, Brazil is tooting its horn over blasting a human into space and bringing him back again.

We Americans take nuclear capability for granted, like we take $5/hour minimum wages for granted. We rule the world as if having nukes makes us kings. This comes through loud and clear to lesser countries. But we have little understanding of what they want. I mean, do we gringos really understand why all the hispanics are mobilizing? Yeah, there is the immigration legislation, but to the Mex-Americanos I have spoke with, they are beginning to feel more empowered about other political topics. And most gringos (including myself, Bill Frist, and Nancy Pelosi) havn’t the foggiest notion what their other concerns are or how they are going to use their awareness of political clout.

As an economist, all I can say is “Viva la free market!”

The wild card in this are the Israeli’s. Jake tells me that not only the
Pope should meet with Ayotollah’s over there but also send a
high delegation of Chief Rabbis to work out some kind of peace
amoung these monotheistic fundies of the Abraham clan.

Scotty did mess up a bit on the declassification.

What I would like to hear him asked is why the initial field report and/or follow up report from the ace technical inspection has still, several years later, not be released to the public, even in a redacted form? A report that flat contradicts the white paper, received before the white paper released, contents discussed with CIA before report filed and later is confirmed by Iraq Survey Group findings.

Why has it not been released, but for the embarassment and cover up factor?

Scotty? Why not put it out – you know, “get it out there?”

And why not let us in on who decided it should be stamped and shelved?

Thank you all for all the feedback. I guess my central question relates to the administration’s claim that we need to attack now, as opposed to some point in the future when everyone can agree that Iran is a real threat.

Shouldn’t the administration have to show that the threat is real? And shouldn’t the explanation have to satisfy the physicists? BC, and others, your point is well taken that thermal reactors can lead to wepaons grade plutonium, but there’s clearly some dispute over the timeframe required for that threat to materialize. Why are the physicists not being heard?

fdlurker:

This admin does not believe in science, only ideology.

I’ve appreciated the production/delivery info – thanks all.

Oh my…reading over that post on TPM…we’ve got to do something nice for Scottie. I mean the way he’s spinning, I’d be worried about Iran trying to acquire him for further enrichment projects.

Can we send him a truckload of spinning tops or something? Man.

Juan Cole. When it comes to the ME, I don’t discuss anything until I see what Prof Cole has to say on it. He’s a blessing to the blogsphere. Kinda like FDL.

Oh… if you want a good laugh on a depressing day…just check out the title of this diary.

“Thank you all for all the feedback. I guess my central question relates to the administration’s claim that we need to attack now, as opposed to some point in the future when everyone can agree that Iran is a real threat.”

We attack a nation because once it’s imprecisely deemed a “threat”?

And, like it’s incontrovertible that an Iran in possession of one of two nukes would risk the national vaporization that would immediately follow their attempt to launch it/them.

Right.

OT: The ballpark footage of Cheney CNN DIDN’T show. Apparently, his first pitch actually hit and killed a quail that had had the misfortune of flying into the stadium. Dead-eye Dick just has a knack…

http://www.bgladd.com/BYEBYE_Birdie.mpg

Various commenters here have stressed the significance of “oil†as a factor in the current crisis over Iran’s nuclear program. I agree with the general thrust of the argument about peak oil, but I think the focus on the price of oil oversimplifies.

The more basic factor is the drive to secure strategic control over oil supply (regardless of price), in the context of growing demand from emerging industrial competitors (China and India) which themselves lack substantial domestic supply or control of access elsewhere.

This issue of strategic control of natural resources has been a central feature of imperialism for centuries now and was at the root of previous conflicts between global powers, including earlier conflicts in the Middle East.

The present conflict has its own special features, not only because of the “peaking†of oil, but also because of the depth and breadth of its global ramifications (oil is a “basic†input in the sense of Sraffa, oil revenue and financial transactions derived from it move the global financial system, the value of the dollar depends on it, etc.) and because US global hegemony, transcendent after the end of the Cold War, now faces newly emerging challenges (economic and political).

In this context, liberals make a serious mistake in confusing the responses of the Bushco gang as the product of “madnessâ€. While some of their tactics may be regarded as objectionable (hence, cause divisions between them and others), the basic imperative that drives the strategy is widely accepted within the elite. That is why we should expect many of the leading Democrats to fall in line, earlier with the Iraq invasion, and soon when the call comes for war in Iran, Syria, or wherever.

It is therefore crucial to maintain a critical understanding of the broader forces at work in order to be able to mount a proper response at the grass roots.

Excellent points! This really hits the nail on the head vis-a-vis the Iran war talk – and in both directions. Somehow we have to get this out into the wider media.

wow, bobbyg just highlighted something i need to correct — the “everyone can agree it’s a threat” thing. BY NO MEANS am I saying that justifies a pre-emptive attack. No question that’s a war crime and the absolute depth of depravity. But I think even the Bushistas agree that it’s the baseline they ahve to achieve before launching pre-emptive war.

Wilson (79)–thanks for saying it, I was working so hard to contain my “dirty bomb rant” (it makes me feel callous) and concentrate on the physics.

And EPU (77) is right–Rhodes’ book is the best thing going out there.

FDLurker (85)–there’s a big difference between “why are the physicists not speaking” and “why are they not being heard”. The latter I just can’t answer for you, sorry.

As to your timing question: policy is tied up a lot in the question. “Forever” is how long it would take if the Iranians decided not to do it. “Five to ten years” is probably how long if they wanted to go right up to the line before withdrawing from the NPT (the North Korea approach). “Rather shorter than five years” if they wanted to go all-out and not care whom they pissed off in the meantime (more like the Pakistan approach though Pakistan didn’t have the level of resources). There are technical issues that constrain the range of options, but which option will be ultimately chosen is hard to guess.

Although the entire book is fascinating, one of the more fascinating aspects of The Making of the Atomic Bomb is scientists’ questioning of the morality of building it, and after having built it, who would control it. All of these scientists were brilliant minds, but there is a naivete exhibited that they, the scientists, and not the politicians would control not only its development, but is use. They did speak out at the time (not all, Teller was always a bomb thrower), but their arguments/protests fell not necessarily on deaf ears, but on ears that had different aims/goals/agendas and saw the world in a very different way then the “international” world view, openness and collaboration of science.

If the scientists are not being listened to now, it is just more of the same – the issue isn’t science, its politics.

fdlurker -

In my line of work “threat” has a distinct meaning vis a vis “risk.” The latter can/should be quantifiable (either in the empirical or a priori sense) in terms of “expected value” (probability x the payoff, or cost), whereas “threat” properly means “unknown magnitude of risk”.

Of course, demagogues always butcher language in the service of their hype.

Why can’t Iran just buy the nookyular material they want/need from say Pakistan or North K, or a former Soviet country? They sure have enuff oil to trade (3,000,000 barrels/day?). Aren’t there a lot of loose nukes in/around the former USSR? Incidentally, I wonder how the Chernobyl sarcophagus is holding up? Should be due for repair/replacement about now.

thank you to EPU and Prof Foland. Those are thoughtful comments. And, yes, Prof Foland, I did intend to ask why are they not being heard, not why are they not speaking.

bobbyg — that’s a helpful way to consider those terms. I would add that, aside from the quantitative aspect of “risk” that distinguishes it from “threat” in your line of business, most people would think there’s a qualitative difference as well. Specifically, risk is generally something you can choose to avoid or to assume or to minimize. A threat is generally imposed from the outside, and is not as easily controlled.

But I want to apologize for leaving the impression that threat = justification for pre-emptive war.

EPU 95 (now, ironically, EPU’d): drop me a line, andyfoland at hotmail

Unfortunately Prof. Cole, who I read every day and usually can depend on for good info, is mistaken.

A nuclear weapon can be built with only 20% enriched uranium.

However, Iran is still nowhere near getting even that.

Wow it take em long. State is now telling the world they van build a bomb in 16 days. see
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/…..er=germany

Gawd does this sound familiar? Here we go again!

Bob Adams @24—I remember those old duck and cover films all too well. We’d practice doing that, and I’d look out at the dusty playground. Imagining the mushroom cloud, the radioactive dust.
Taking cover under a desk didn’t exactly fill me with hope for survival.

Bush will live no matter what–cockroaches survive most anything.

EPU 77 If anyone wants to become an “expert†on the making of atomic bombs and the physics, chemistry and scale of manufacturing needed, I strongly suggest you read Richard Rhodes’ Pulitzer Prize winning book The Making of the Atomic Bomb.

Does that come with the NSL, or do they issue it later?

MNchuck #68

I stay FAR away from the end-times folk and theories. W was brought up Episcopalian which is as mainline as you get. Presumably he turned to Jesus to get over his drinking . . . no comment . . .

If he has a messianic thing going, someone in his inner circle is feeding that beast for their own political gain, not for the rapture of it all. Don’t know how to put those pieces together but he seems so delusional about everything else, that I can see him buying it.

Cervantes 100-what you say is true, though building a weapon with 20% U is silly. A 20% weapon combines the worst of all worlds–the separation difficulties of U and the weaponizing difficulties of Pu. The way a cascade works, 20% enriched U is closer to 90% enriched than 0.7% enriched. In general, a state that had enriched enough 20% U for a weapon would find it faster to enrich it to 90 than to pursue weaponization of the 20.

Here’s the problem, if you listen to the Administration’s language they are saying that not only will they not allow Iran to have nukes but they will not allow Iran to have knowledge of how to make nukes (Scott McClellan is currently reiterating that point in today’s White House briefing). The “knowledge” threshold has been crossed even though large scale cascading of centrifuges has not been built by Iran yet. Iran, however, has notified the IAEA that it plans to create productions facilities with 3000 cascading centrifuges – certainly enough to build bombs.

But, we dont need to look that far. The Administration will use this event as a casus belli on the march to an attack on Iran.

I posted an article today posing an argument of how to avoid this confrontation. Although I am sure the Administration has made up its mind and is now in the process of fixing the facts and intelligence around that decision.

Mash- comment# 106

Interesting viewpoint. Clear, concise writing.
Thanks

Not to diminish Juan Cole, he isn’t a nuclear expert. Stratfor is a very strange site which I would not rely on for anything.

Folks, there are places to go. FAS.org. Globalsecurity.org. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

The key phrase in Cole’s article is “perfectly legal.” Once you arrive there, it doesn’t matter how close or how far Iran is from manufacturing a weapon. It puts the US in the status of lawbreaker when it threatens war.

And Mash, you are spot on. George Bush denies that the Iranian people have a right to know how to build nuclear weapons. The only way to accomplish that is to kill them all.

Believe him on that. He tells the truth a lot more than he is given credit for.

new thread

A few hopefully-relevant comments about this topic:

(1) most scientists or engineers with real-world know-how about this topic cannot readily speak up in the media, because in order to learn this stuff, they must sign open-ended nondisclosure agreements with very strict penalties for noncompliance (think “capital punishment”). Any serious work in this field requires the highest levels of clearance (e.g., a DOE Q), and virtually all information on this topic is born classified, so it’s not something knowledgeable people can speak in detail about without risking serious legal problems, or worse.

(2) reading both of Rhodes’ books on this topic is about as good an introduction to the field as one can find in the open literature. Simpler introductions can be found at wikipedia.org or elsewhere on the web. But there’s really no good reason for citizens to learn more than these basic principles. This kind of information is not something we would ever want widely-disseminated, for obvious reasons. There’s no need to know, and there really shouldn’t even be a want to know (unless graduate work in engineering physics is your idea of a good time).

(3) worrying about a handful of Iranian centrifuges is just plain silly at this point. There are far more important nuclear threats in the world today, including Khan’s network of nuclear miscreants based in Pakistan, our painfully complete uncertainty about what the North Koreans are up to these days, and the fact that there is no good accounting of Russian tactical nuclear weapons (a problem that our current UN Ambassador has his fingerprints all over). Those venues are where our worries should begin.

If our administration was serious about global nuclear nonproliferation, they’d be taking a very different tack than the one they’re on here. The fact that they’re obsessed with Iran while they’re ignoring the real threats that exist elsewhere today implies that they’re either missing the entire point, or that they’re pursuing a shadow agenda.

Or perhaps both of these are true… and that’s not a very comforting thought!

RevDeb said:

I’ve been thinking about some of that too. I can’t imagine that daddy Bush is too happy with his son these days. If anyone would have the “moral authority†to speak out publicly against W it would be him. Babs probably wouldn’t let him.

Bush on the couch is a very worthwhile read for those of us who would like to understand our sociopath-in-chief. Frank makes it clear that the Preznit is ‘damaged goods.’

Another point that some authors have made (Al Franken, in Lies… among others) is that Babs is exceedingly protective of her adult children. It’s a crying shame she didn’t pay better attention to parenting when her children were, well, children. We might not be in quite this mess if her oldest son wasn’t such a Freudian diasaster.

But the idea that Babs would lean on GHWB to not speak out publically against this insanity raises protective to whole different level. Maybe even to the point that it requires a new word different.

Do you think Babsie’s that loco, Deb?

BC

Now lets follow the logic of preemptive bombing to its very logical conclusion.
Saudi Arabia sees that Iraq has been occupied by the US. It further is hearing about how the US will shortly be attacking Iran. The instability in the region that would be caused not least by the Sunni-Shiite divide, as well as radioactive and other fallout threatens the national security of SA. Since nations are free to attack other sovereign ones according to GWB’s doctrine to protect their national security, they launch an attack on the US, using a combination of conventional and unconventional weapons.
No, I did not mean to provoke howling laughter, but realize quite well that this may well be the unintended result.

Atthe State Department, Rademaker says that Iran can make a nuclear bomb in 16 days.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/…..orld_news#

WTF? Rademaker needs to be called on this astounding piece of propaganda. The Bush Administration never had any shame, but this is beyond belief! It is a repeat of Condi’s “mushroom cloud”.

What a nightmare!

…its leaders, including Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei, say they do not want an atomic bomb because it is Islamically immoral…

Yea, and so is strapping on a bomb and blowing up civilians at random, so they say.

Perhaps I quibble, but you mentioned Bush’s base somewhere in the mid 30s. I must respectfully disagree. In the latest ABC/Washington Post poll only 20 percent answered they strongly support the president. It is my opinion that that is his actual base of support, considering that only those individuals would remain steadfast in the wake of the devastating reports of criminality and/or incompetence, one after another after another, over the past six months.

If my premise is correct, we will continue to see more slippage in his approval numbers between now and November — and beyond. I suspect we’ll see somewhere between another 10 to 15 percent loss overall before he hits bottom.

There are three main players in this “nuclear” crisis: the nutty Bush administration, the batshit-crazy Iranian leadership and the Israelis.

The Israelis, just like in the case of Saddam Hussein in the early 1980s, don’t want the batshit-crazy Iranian leadership to get nukes. I can understand why. I nuke hidden in a suicide car bomb could really ruin one’s whole day.

However, if the Israeli leadership decides to pre-emptively take care of all suspected Iranian nuclear sites, they will be playing into the hands of both the nutty Bush administration and the batshit-crazy Iranian leadership.

Why?

Once the first Israeli airstrike inside Iran occurs, the Iranians are bound to retaliate in some way.

The Iranians have already threatened to attack shipping in the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz, and have demonstrated the anti-ship missiles they intend to use.

If the Iranians do attack shipping, this would be all the excuse the Bush administration would need to launch an attack against Iran, as Bush rolled out “U.S. national security” as the reason. You know, the oil.

Of course, if Israeli bombs did start dropping, Bush might just join in for the “hell” of it without waiting to see how the Iranis might respond. Or Bush might decide to do the Israelis a “favor” by hitting Iran first.

I don’t know which scenario is more likely. But I do know that, based on what’s happening in Iraq, that if one bomb drops on Iran, then we are going to be unleashing a beast on the world that will surprise many, though not me.