When I went to see "James Dobson--Live!" in St. Paul, Minnesota last year, the Mighty Dobster talked a lot about how he wasn't gonna let the Mark Foley scandal make him sit out the 2006 mid-term elections. But he spent a lot more time talking about Iran, which should worry the country a lot more than than the Mark Foley thing, the Larry Craig thing, or anything.
Dobson, you see, was making all sorts of references to Islamo-fascism, Ahmadinejad, and comparisons to Hitler's strategy as laid out in "Mein Kampf." He has such a hard-on for this war, and there seem to be millions who share that same exact hard-on.
(continued)
And that's a problem, this running attempt by neo-cons and the evangelical political movement (EPM) to prepare these millions to create the "grass roots" demand for a war in Iraq. Facts (Iran has already been involved in numerous "acts of war" against US troops in Iraq that already provide grounds for another war) plus mindless pro-war propaganda (lies about what Islam teaches and requires, about the level of danger we're currently facing from Iran, about WMDs (again) etc. etc.)--all to support another headlong charge towards the war--NOW.
But as I was decorating the house for "National Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week", I wondered--if the Iranians are working on a nuclear weapon so they can use it against the US or Israel: how close are they to that goal? Then I saw this.
Iran seen to need 3-8 yrs to produce bomb
http://tinyurl.com/...
By Jon Boyle Mon Oct 22, 12:45 PM ET
PARIS (Reuters) - Iran would need another three to eight years to make a nuclear bomb, the head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said in an interview published on Monday, warning against any rush to use force to curb its nuclear ambitions.
Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told France's Le Monde newspaper there was plenty of time for diplomacy, sanctions, dialogue and incentives to bear fruit.
(Well, the guy is the head of the IAEA, but the wing-nuts who are petrified with fear at the thought of Islamo-fascism are probably not going to accept assurances from someone with a name like that. Remember--a lot of this "let's destroy Iran" thing has to do with bigotry, xenophobia and "apocalyptic end times prophecy.")
Vice President Dick Cheney said on Sunday the world would not stand by and let Iran develop a nuclear weapon, and Washington has not ruled out an attack. Iran says its nuclear plans are peaceful and denies it wants to make an atomic bomb.
(And who are you gonna believe--Dick Cheney or Ahmadinejad? Talk about a dearth of credibility choices...)
"I cannot judge their intentions, but supposing that Iran does intend to acquire a nuclear bomb, it would need between another three and eight years to succeed," ElBaradei told Le Monde. "All the intelligence services agree on that."
(But who listens to them, if they don't give the administration permission to go to war again?)
(What I don't understand is: if the Iranians really want a nuclear weapon so bad--why can't they just buy one? You buy one, you duct tape it to a missile or send it the parts out with a bunch of suicidal kids and send it to Israel or the US for screwdriver assembly--and bingo, you're in business. They've got all that oil revenue, there's guys peddling nuclear arms all over Central Asia--what is all this macho "do it yourself" mania, sweeping the world these days?)
(I won't even paint the garage myself; you're not going to catch me killing my weekends putting hundreds of millions of dollars into building labs and cyclotrons, just so the USAF can take them out with pre-emptive strikes for the next three years.
If they want an effin' atomic bomb that bad, right now, they're gonna have to pile the kids into the SUV and go out and shop for it. But why am I supposed to believe that they want one so bad, when it's a sure-fire casus belli for the US?
I mean, you knew that the "axis of evil" nations were going to scramble as fast as they could to acquire WMDs as soon as Bush invaded Iraq. Everyone with more than half a brain knew that; it's a no-brainer: if Bush demonstrates that he is willing to do pre-emptive strikes on enemy regimes and the American people won't stop him from doing that--what the hell else are you going to do, except scramble as fast as you can to develop a murderous deterrent?)
"I want to get people away from the idea that Iran will be a threat from tomorrow, and that we are faced right now with the issue of whether Iran should be bombed or allowed to have the bomb," the Nobel peace prize winner said.
(Nobel peace prize winner, eh? Well, we all know how much that gives you credibility with American war hawks, these days...)
"We are not at all in that situation. Iraq is a glaring example of how, in many cases, the use of force exacerbates the problem rather than solving it."
ISRAEL BOTHERED
There was no immediate comment from Iran on his remarks, but Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said during a visit to Paris that ElBaradei should be more concerned about Iran.
"If Baradei thinks Iran can have a bomb in three years and it doesn't bother him, well it bothers me," Olmert told reporters after meeting French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
(It bothers me, too, Ehud--but what it means is that we don't have to go to war with Iran NOW, or even next year. And if we do end up doing that--it's going to have more to do with American domestic party politics than with any existing threat from Iran.)