To the public, it appears baby Bush is trying to provoke Iran, but I think this is all show, along with members of Cheney ‘s staff daily calling for recommendations to bomb Iran. They know well enough that Iran is not seeking to fulfill some scriptural promise and start all-out wars in the region and neither is it an expansionist power. Iran wants to become a pivotal state in its region so it’s no direct threat to the US.

Unless they are completely nuts, the Bush administration’s plans for Iran is not a nuclear attack but a containment plan. So containment might be at the heart of its Middle East policy, which they believe is the solution to the Middle East's problems (stabilize Iraq, Palestine, the de-clawing of Hezbolla, the Israeli-Arab interest in deflating Iran’s power, etc). But it’s a Cold War containment model that won’t work because the US wouldn’t be able to effectively implement it and it would create more problems than they started out with. It doesn’t understand the diverse views of Arab states. They assume that Iran can be handled like the Soviet Union and that the Cold War model applies to the Middle East. They wrongly beleive that the containment strategy also assumes broad Arab solidarity. And the US cannot maintain large numbers of troops in the region indefinitely.

Also, the unclassified version of NIE said that Iran was "less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005". Less determined. The US has never had enough people who understand and speak the language fluently enough or understand the culture so anything coming from an NIE report to me is doubtful and filled with too many intelligence gaps. I think they let us believe they know more than they do.

Pointless

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The White House’s propaganda campaign laying the groundwork for military action against Iran dates back almost six years—to Bush’s 2002 State of the Union address in which he designated Iran as a founding member of the “axis of evil.” Since then, this drumbeat has waxed and waned as other concerns—primarily the disastrous invasion and occupation of Iraq—have often commanded center stage. My 3-minute YouTube video entitled “Forewarned Is Forearmed: Bush On Iran” is available HERE. It offers a very brief but deeply troubling chronicle of the president’s public warmongering and demonization of Iran.

Such manipulation of public sentiment has been a key part of the White House’s entire Iraq war enterprise, so we should not be surprised to see it play a similar role in regard to Iran. For those interested in a psychological analysis of this warmongering, I have also recently completed a 10-minute YouTube video entitled “Resisting the Drums of War.” It examines how the Bush administration’s messaging targets five core concerns that often govern our lives--concerns about vulnerability, injustice, distrust, superiority, and helplessness. The video describes these warmongering appeals and offers suggestions for how to counter them. It’s available for viewing HERE.

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Since the Conservative Party in Canada has been in government, there has been a new front group for the Bush admnin--on Columbia free trade,the super NAFTA highway, the environment as in Bali, and now Iran. The Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs was just in Afghanistan accusing Iran of supplying the Taliban. However true that is, this is a performance role for this particular Canadian government, a heightened propaganda role in avid support for their Republican ideological masters. Bush's international allies also deserve scrutiny.

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You know, there are some coincidences that may be only that (coincidences but, then again, they may not.
The one I'm going to state may, efectively, be a coincidence, but anyway, is an unlucky one.
From the middle eastern islamic countries, there were only 3 that escaped the radical wahabitic sunni pattern.
You may say that Iran is a Theocracy, but even as a teocracy, it is much lighter than, let's say, saudi arabia.
As for irak, in spite of having been an iron dictatorship, was a laic state.
Well ! Even with all the open or concealed geo-strategical reasons to what happened or is about to happen, it is very curious that the USA are destroying the only alternatives to that wahabic state pattern in the region.
Who comes next ? Egipt ?
When will Syria's turn arrive?
Who are the real USA allies ?
Who is, or will, really finance these wars, by keeping the dollar as the trade currency for oil ?
How far goes the liaison between the wahabic families and states with the corporate oil interests in the west ?

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The Texas Turd 'provokes" me everytime I see him,or hear him, and I'm a nobody. So why wouldn't he do the same with a mere Middle Eastern country. After all, he is the decider.

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Will he please just let us murder everyone? I am so tired of hearing about winning the hearts and minds of the people whose country we are occupying.

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I'm living in China and watching the military and strategic alliances being pursued with several other countries, most visibly in the time that I've been here since September with Russia and India.

Missing from the U.S. internal dialogue about the Bush administration's intention to invade Iran is the larger context of how other countries will respond to such unwarranted aggression.

I'm a pacifist and I am observing with incredulous horror how the largely unchecked megalomania of the Bush administration to dominate the world with its hegemonic goals of total control of world politics is provoking other countries to allocate resources for military development to stop this course of destruction and aggression against them.

If American citizens continue to passively stand by and do nothing to stop the Bush administration in its military insanity, other countries (this is no longer just about an impending invasion of Iran) are banding together to wage war against the U.S. to check it.

Wake up, Americans! The U.S. is provoking the entire world with its hostile actions. Do you think for a minute that countries at war with the U.S. make any distinctions between the actions of its leaders, its military, and its people? It's time to stand up for what you believe in, and if you want peace in the world, then oust these warmongers and make sure we've got a democracy that works. Then start mending fences with other countries with great intention and determination because right now the fences that make good neighbors have been bombed to pieces.

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Seems that alot of people will be disappointed if we DON'T go to war in Iran. Bush does not act on 'intelligence'. He makes his decisions with his 'gut. definition, he's crazy. He shouldn't be allowed to make this decision. He is meeting with resistance from various sides. Including Russia. Thanks, ANNA

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Even though the recent NIE is the consensus of all 16 US intelligence agencies (all 16 that we know of, anyway), some Americans on the Right and in the Bush Administration still believe that the report is full of bologna. These people, including the President, should probably be very concerned about the fact they might have angered someone in the US intelligence community -- Maybe their phone will now be tapped, or maybe they will be whisked away in the middle of the night to be held in a dark cell where they will be tortured. Hey, to echo the Right's arguments on the topic, speaking of torture, shouldn't the intelligence gotten by the CIA etc be quite reliable, since it was obtained through "enhance interrogation"? If we can't trust these brave men and women in the intelligence agencies -- who have set aside any morality for the patriotic good of America -- to tell it to us straight about Iran, then who can we trust?
Maybe JFK from the grave might have a warning for President Bush about crossing the CIA. Bush and Cheney should watch themselves.

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I was struck by the comments of Saltoafrontiera as "Some Curious Things." The relationship between the religious right in the USA by the Republicans (particularly the Bush constitutional junta) since Reagan and the religious right is horrifyingly similar to the Faustian deal made by the Saudi princes and the Wahabites in the 1750s. "You give me the people politically and you can have religious hegemony." Bush etc have learned from the masters. It's worth some investigation. Ahmedinejad and his masters gain power from Bush's sabre rattling...and Bush and co know it. Create a crisis! One doesn't want to be moderates when there is a possibility of multi-lateral cooperation and balancing of power, especially in the mid-east with AIPAC in the background. It's Orwellian. The Bush think tank, the Project for the New American Century, are very adamant on the policy of "constant state of war" and it, so far, has been working. Note that religiosity has taken a huge amount of candidate's debate time (shocking in a modern post-enlightenment country) so that choice between religious-oriented (legally secular) leadership is the issue and not the separation of church and state, in fact. My hats off to them. They know the history and the myths of the culture they are dealing with. Therefore....
Do investigate the historic manipulation by politics of religion. Again, I could be wrong, but the above commentary by Saltofrontiera rang bells.

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That some people (correctly) believe that in our beligerent foreign policies, we're planting the seeds for an invasion of the U.S. Prezdint hit, er I mean bush as usual doesn't see the big picture. In fact, he doesn't see the little picture either, and that's why he has babysitters to look after things. It's almost beyond belief that Germany, a country the size of Wisconsin could wage war across a thousand mile plus front in Russia, while at the same time have a war machine in North Africa and most of Europe. One can imagine what mischief a country with our size and with our vast resources could wreak and what it would take to stop us. If we're not thinking about this, you can bet the Europeans are, and quite a few Asians as well.

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The USA was born of violence with its revolution, slavery and it horrible civil war. It created its great land mass by murdering millions of Indians, regardless of the hundreds of peace treaties they had signed; it stole half of Mexico, and got involved in two world wars and the destruction of Korea, Vietnam, most Central and South America and Africa, and Indonesia, in order to become the greatest country on the face of this planet.

It has supported and /or created every dictator from Batista, to Hitler to Stalin to Franco to The Shah of Iran, to Duvalier, to the Saudi family, to Marcos- or yes and Saddam Hussein. It is the American way. We know how to get what we want.

It has helped support racist Israel and its theft of Palestinian land, its destruction of Lebanon and its creation of the largest concentration camp in the world- Gaza.

It has overthrown any and all leaders who tried to save their own people: such as Lamumba, Mossadeq, Pinochet, Batista, Nasser, Aristide, Castro and Chavez. And it has used both the World Bank and the IMF to ruin the economy of dozens of countries. It is what America does best.

It destroyed Yugoslavia a few years ago. And for at least ten years it destroyed Iraq's water and sewage plants thus killing at least 750 000 kids. It will not stop at anything to maintain it position in the world, including the jailing of million of its own citizens.

It has lost only 4, 000 soldiers in Iraq, a small price to pay for its way of life. It annually kills close to 100, 000 a year on its highways or with hand guns. So why should it stop now? It doesn't make sense. Its conquest of the oil fields in Iran will protect our way of life forever. No one said the conquest of the world would be easy.

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All empires in the history of the world have worked in the same way. America is no different than Great Britain, Rome, or the Hapsburgs. Get over it. Maybe instead of talking about how rotten our history is, you might offer some practical ways of changing the present and the future.

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See William Arkin on Iran, Russia, Israel and the United States

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It is the saddest truth we must learn. Yet we must never give up.

The surest way to get any results is STOP PARTICIPATING.

What we say here is good but only frustrates us for it's lack of affectiveness. Congressman Wexler has made a meanial amount of progress in getting the Miami Herald to make a public printing of His push for Impeaching Cheney. Kucinich's bill was sent into the dole drums of the judiciary commitee for who knows what !
But We have to support his and Kucinich's efforts. Pelosi and Feinstein won't!

Small showings of dissent in the government are buried in camoflaged piles of procrastination. 911 Truth efforts may well go into a circular file deeper than the Kennedy Assasination, until Bush is dead from (un)natural causes.

We people must fire up in mass and get momentum or these so called leaders whom are suppose to represent us will stay in the shadows and make no effort to rid our country of these pirates that have quite literally hijacked our country. The democratic part is a chicken sh*t as any tweeker I've ever known. They are so damn "politically correct" while the Ice holes and cork sukers in the republican party run over them like a sheeps foot soil compactor.

And those citizensthat keep their brains in consummer
la-la-land need the "awakened ones" (us I presume) to save their stupid way of a life of denial and complacentcy. Maybe we have it all wrong. Why save the idiots? Why in hell do we care?

If I was to stand in front of a crowd and declare I will initiate the changes we all want... well would you follow me to lead us?
I will but why should I? Most everyone is a scared little worm.
Most everyone won't lift a hand to throw out the trash and always want and hope someone else will do it, shunning from the dirty deed.
All while looking through the corner of their eye, maybe.

I really think America is over. The ecosystem of the planet is well on it's way and it's basically too late to really make affective change.

Well enjoy your real estate defaults. Bush has assured the same will happen to the loans he made on your behalf from China PAkastan, Japan. The only thing keeping this nation from sudden death is Bush's threat of Nuclear anilation. And as long as the congress keeps passing out blank checks, to keep the endless war going, the only thing that will stop the maddness is when the military runs out of gas, literally.

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No amount of intelligence will get Bush to stop doing anything, becuase the man has no amount of intelligence to begin with.

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This just in: President George W. Bush has just been apprehended in the political rest room taking a "wide stance" with a guy named Pervez.

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This article should ask if Iran will provoke us. Iran is currently engaged in financing, training, and equipping Islamic insurgents who attack U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.

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Broadsides I have received from my unpopular comment, Too many assumptions, I believe is partially misunderstood because I didn’t regurgitate the usual anti-Bush rhetoric here at Alternet others have not failed to rally around (Bush deserves the endless criticism of course), but I'm looking at it from the broader historical perspective, that America is still the only force in this world that will take down regimes and tyrants like Saddam and dissolve theocracies like Iran, regardless of the illegality of it or the hypocrisy of America’s own standards (even if they did or not have WMD, the Saddam tribe was an organization of cruel thugs and needed to go, and thousands of Iraqis and Kurds would have continued to be tortured, murdered, and gassed). I’m sure no matter what party is ruling the US will be getting round to the other tyrants in the future.

Even if Bush, controlled by the neos, did not exist I believe Iran would still be dangerous under any American president and there would still be an East-West confrontation sooner or later. There is more to it than Iran developing capacity to launch nuclear missiles. There is also a global religious-cultural clash. Having visited Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel, Saudi Arabia and talked with the people I think I understand more than I have ever read in the few books I have come across on Islamic culture. And living in Europe I understand and see on a daily basis the growing Islamic influence here which Europe is afraid or too complaisant to deal with. Europe is busy being rediscovered by droves of Muslims who are breeding larger communities and will influence politics simply be their sheer numbers and dwindling European voters). What does this have to do with Iran provoking the Bush administration? Everything.

It’s about taking a firm stance against tyrants and religious extremism everywhere. Even in America, around the clock security details are required of people like Hirsi Ali who have spoken out against Islam. They want her head. Even on CNN when showing pictures or representations of the Prophet they pixel them out for fear of Muslim backlash in America. We can’t have this happening in the USA. It is giving up your right to critize a religion without the threat of having your head chopped off, of giving into a religion that only believes in debating with a gun on their side of the table.

Never mind the previous history of US interference in Iran’s affairs or the fact that Israel is armed and more dangerous than Iran and that the US has poured more dollars into Israel than Iraq, so far, over the years. Never mind this administration lied us into a war. Never mind this administration’s closed circle of comradely neo-cons and laptop bombardiers have been pursuing Middle East hegemony at any cost for decades prior to 9/11. Now is no time to act righteous after we have installed twice a stupid president in the White House while we should have seen it coming long before, since our government has been screwing us for decades under both political parties.

People are forgetting the very serious threat of militant Islamism, Hindus and Muslims killing one another, one-party elections in Musharrif's Pakistan, roaming terrorist organizations, also a backlash against globalism, who will soon be capable of assembling nuclear do-it-yourself kits in any country they chose, and a number of authoritarian governments still reigning with a free hand. We are no longer in a world were we can sit idle and hope it all goes away. President Ahmadinejad may be sincere, but he doesn’t run Iran, the Mullahs do. And to always believe the intelligence agencies reports is as naïve as having initially believed Collin Powell’s presentation at the UN. What we need is leadership in America who doesn’t let extremism win, in any form, that comes from outside or inside its borders by evolving into anOrwellian state

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This estimate that Iran has ceased to be a candidate member of the nuclear "club" is fatuous. Iran still has the desire and the capacity to acquire the weaponry and retains the means to do so, and it has been caught lying and cheating about the process. Iran may have suspended the overtly military elements of the project but it has persisted in the implicit aspects. Example 1 is the installation of gas centrifuges at the plant in Natanz and example 2 is the building of a heavy water reactor at Arak.

All that the estimate of the NIE has done is to define weaponry down, to suggest a distinction without much difference between a "civilian" and a "military" dimension of the same program.

Acquisition of enriched uranium and of plutonium, for any purpose, is identical with the acquisition of a thermonuclear weapons capacity. Iran is continuing to strive to produce both and neither are required for civilian energy needs. Ask any nuclear engineer about this.


Pointless

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