Psychopath Dick's Nuclear Hypocrisy
Joe Conason has some great insights to share at Salon on the disingenuousness in our never-elected dick-head's obsession that we must attack Iran. Of course the unelected shrub is as always incapable of even forming a coherent thought on the subject, never mind coming up with an independent opinion.
Aside: it's incomprehensible to me how a person married to a librarian could be so antithetical to the concept of an "inquiring mind." I have to conclude that, probably among many other deviant and probably certifiable behaviours amongst this family/house-of-horrors, many by now well-documented, we are dealing with a Fake Librarian.
But, to get back on task, noting in passing that excerpting here damages the original - please follow link to whole article:
Trying to understand what is on George W. Bush's mind when he opens his mouth is often a fruitless exercise, but his latest statement concerning Iran, nuclear weapons and World War III was troubling as well as opaque. Just what did the president mean when he uttered those apocalyptic remarks on Wednesday?
"We've got a leader in Iran who has announced that he wants to destroy Israel," he blathered. "So I've told people that, if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon."
Sorry, but the Iranian leadership and many other unsavory figures around the world cannot be prevented from "having the knowledge" needed to build a nuclear weapon, since, as Matthew Yglesias has noted, the scientific and engineering information is commonly available.
What the Iranians don't have yet is the industrial capacity to make enough weapons-grade enriched uranium for that purpose and then to transform that material into a bomb. What they do have, unfortunately, is the means to achieve that end eventually -- and thanks in part to the irresponsible policies of the Bush administration, they also have both a motive and an excuse.
It is true that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's ugly speeches about the Jewish state and the Holocaust leave little doubt about his attitudes. Moreover, there is no question that the Islamic Republic rejects Israel's legitimacy and has sought to undermine the Middle East peace process through every means at its disposal, including terrorism.
-clip-
Let us leave aside for a moment the Bush administration's abject failure in rallying the world for any purpose, let alone regime change or even nuclear sanity in Iran. Six years of neoconservative "toughness" has done nothing to discourage the Iranian regime, and instead has encouraged a harder line by the mullahs -- who have enjoyed a vast improvement in their regional power because of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. But the problems with Bush's approach go even deeper, because he has consistently provided the Iranians with excuses to do precisely what we and our allies want to stop them from doing.
Even before 9/11, the president and his policymakers set out to undermine the nuclear nonproliferation treaty (NPT), the same treaty whose strictures they cite in seeking to impose sanctions (or worse) on Iran. What almost nobody in the United States ever mentions -- but the Iranians and other hostile regimes know very well -- is that the Bush administration blatantly violates the NPT every day. The treaty's sixth article says in plain terms that the United States and other signatories that possess nuclear weapons are obligated to disarmament, in exchange for all the other signatories agreeing not to develop those weapons in the future.
-clip-
All these large and small hypocrisies undermine our moral case against Iran's nuclear program, especially when there is still no proof that the Iranians have a bomb-making program at this stage -- and when our own intelligence estimates suggest that any such capacity is probably still eight to 10 years away. The flaws in the American argument against Iran are amplified by Bush's continuing rejection of direct negotiations.
-clip-
What would we do if we were interested in "avoiding World War III"? We could start by engaging Iran in direct negotiations to bring the regime into the global and regional system, so that hard-liners like Ahmadinejad will have fewer excuses for pursuing their nuclear mania. And we might at last abandon the neoconservative fantasies of nuclear dominance, by restoring the American commitment to eventual nuclear disarmament as the only path away from worldwide proliferation.
Aside: it's incomprehensible to me how a person married to a librarian could be so antithetical to the concept of an "inquiring mind." I have to conclude that, probably among many other deviant and probably certifiable behaviours amongst this family/house-of-horrors, many by now well-documented, we are dealing with a Fake Librarian.
But, to get back on task, noting in passing that excerpting here damages the original - please follow link to whole article:
Trying to understand what is on George W. Bush's mind when he opens his mouth is often a fruitless exercise, but his latest statement concerning Iran, nuclear weapons and World War III was troubling as well as opaque. Just what did the president mean when he uttered those apocalyptic remarks on Wednesday?
"We've got a leader in Iran who has announced that he wants to destroy Israel," he blathered. "So I've told people that, if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon."
Sorry, but the Iranian leadership and many other unsavory figures around the world cannot be prevented from "having the knowledge" needed to build a nuclear weapon, since, as Matthew Yglesias has noted, the scientific and engineering information is commonly available.
What the Iranians don't have yet is the industrial capacity to make enough weapons-grade enriched uranium for that purpose and then to transform that material into a bomb. What they do have, unfortunately, is the means to achieve that end eventually -- and thanks in part to the irresponsible policies of the Bush administration, they also have both a motive and an excuse.
It is true that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's ugly speeches about the Jewish state and the Holocaust leave little doubt about his attitudes. Moreover, there is no question that the Islamic Republic rejects Israel's legitimacy and has sought to undermine the Middle East peace process through every means at its disposal, including terrorism.
-clip-
Let us leave aside for a moment the Bush administration's abject failure in rallying the world for any purpose, let alone regime change or even nuclear sanity in Iran. Six years of neoconservative "toughness" has done nothing to discourage the Iranian regime, and instead has encouraged a harder line by the mullahs -- who have enjoyed a vast improvement in their regional power because of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. But the problems with Bush's approach go even deeper, because he has consistently provided the Iranians with excuses to do precisely what we and our allies want to stop them from doing.
Even before 9/11, the president and his policymakers set out to undermine the nuclear nonproliferation treaty (NPT), the same treaty whose strictures they cite in seeking to impose sanctions (or worse) on Iran. What almost nobody in the United States ever mentions -- but the Iranians and other hostile regimes know very well -- is that the Bush administration blatantly violates the NPT every day. The treaty's sixth article says in plain terms that the United States and other signatories that possess nuclear weapons are obligated to disarmament, in exchange for all the other signatories agreeing not to develop those weapons in the future.
-clip-
All these large and small hypocrisies undermine our moral case against Iran's nuclear program, especially when there is still no proof that the Iranians have a bomb-making program at this stage -- and when our own intelligence estimates suggest that any such capacity is probably still eight to 10 years away. The flaws in the American argument against Iran are amplified by Bush's continuing rejection of direct negotiations.
-clip-
What would we do if we were interested in "avoiding World War III"? We could start by engaging Iran in direct negotiations to bring the regime into the global and regional system, so that hard-liners like Ahmadinejad will have fewer excuses for pursuing their nuclear mania. And we might at last abandon the neoconservative fantasies of nuclear dominance, by restoring the American commitment to eventual nuclear disarmament as the only path away from worldwide proliferation.
posted by Sir Gumbo at 10:36 PM
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