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| Israel has 8 Days: Bolton | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Aug 17 2010, 05:16 AM (451 Views) | |
| George K | Aug 17 2010, 05:16 AM Post #1 |
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Finally
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100817/wl_afp/irannuclearpoliticsisraelusmilitary_20100817120240 Israel has '8 days' to hit Iran nuclear site: Bolton WASHINGTON (AFP) – Israel has "eight days" to launch a military strike against Iran's Bushehr nuclear facility and stop Tehran from acquiring a functioning atomic plant, a former US envoy to the UN has said. Iran is to bring online its first nuclear power reactor, built with Russia's help, on August 21, when a shipment of nuclear fuel will be loaded into the plant's core. At that point, John Bolton warned Monday, it will be too late for Israel to launch a military strike against the facility because any attack would spread radiation and affect Iranian civilians. "Once that uranium, once those fuel rods are very close to the reactor, certainly once they're in the reactor, attacking it means a release of radiation, no question about it," Bolton told Fox Business Network. "So if Israel is going to do anything against Bushehr it has to move in the next eight days." Absent an Israeli strike, Bolton said, "Iran will achieve something that no other opponent of Israel, no other enemy of the United States in the Middle East really has and that is a functioning nuclear reactor." But when asked whether he expected Israel to actually launch strikes against Iran within the next eight days, Bolton was skeptical. "I don't think so, I'm afraid that they've lost this opportunity," he said. The controversial former envoy to the United Nations criticized Russia's role in the development of the plant, saying "the Russians are, as they often do, playing both sides against the middle." "The idea of being able to stick a thumb in America's eye always figures prominently in Moscow," he added. |
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A guide to GKSR: Click "Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08 Nothing is as effective as homeopathy. I'd rather listen to an hour of Abba than an hour of The Beatles. - Klaus, 4/29/18 | |
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| John D'Oh | Aug 17 2010, 06:55 AM Post #2 |
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MAMIL
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What an odd thing to come out and say publicly. Obviously everybody is thinking it, but nevertheless.... |
| What do you mean "we", have you got a mouse in your pocket? | |
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| Piano*Dad | Aug 17 2010, 07:28 AM Post #3 |
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Bull-Carp
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Bolton is an odd sort of guy, what can I say.
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| Copper | Aug 17 2010, 07:33 AM Post #4 |
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Shortstop
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Yes it is kind of politically incorrect to upset the enemy these days. He would get more favorable media coverage if he bowed and told the Iranians what a swell job they did with the reactor. |
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The Confederate soldier was peculiar in that he was ever ready to fight, but never ready to submit to the routine duty and discipline of the camp or the march. The soldiers were determined to be soldiers after their own notions, and do their duty, for the love of it, as they thought best. Carlton McCarthy | |
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| Kincaid | Aug 17 2010, 07:40 AM Post #5 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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Or maybe they'll wait until the thing is loaded and drop a nuke - that would really spread the sh!t around. |
| Kincaid - disgusted Republican Partisan since 2006. | |
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| George K | Aug 17 2010, 09:44 AM Post #6 |
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Finally
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Hitch: It's Not Just About Israel Six more reasons why we can't let Iran get nukes. By Christopher Hitchens Posted Monday, Aug. 16, 2010, at 11:41 AM ET With Russia's ever-helpful policy of assisting Iran to accelerate its reactor program, allied to the millimetrical progress of sanctions on the Ahmadinejad regime and the increasingly hopeless state of negotiations with the Palestinians, there is likely to be no let-up in the speculation about an Israeli "first strike" on Iran's covert but ever-more-flagrant nuclear weapons installations. I have lost count of the number of essays and columns on the subject that were published this month alone. The most significant and detailed such contribution, though, came from my friend and colleague Jeffrey Goldberg in a cover story in the Atlantic. From any close reading of this piece, it was possible to be sure of at least one thing: The government of Benjamin Netanyahu wants it to be understood that, in the absence of an American decision to do so, Israel can and will mount such an attack in the not-too-distant future. The keyword of the current anguished argument—the word existential—is thought by a strategic majority of Israel's political and military leadership to apply in its fullest meaning. To them, an Iranian bomb is incompatible with the long-term survival of the Israeli state and even of the Jewish people. It would be a real pity if the argument went on being conducted in these relatively narrow terms. A sentence from Goldberg's report will illustrate what I mean:
Why Tel Aviv? It is admittedly the most Jewish of Israel's centers of population, and it was built only in the course of the last century. It is also the most secular and modern and sexually licentious of Israel's cities, which might also qualify it for the apocalyptic wrath of the mullahs. But it is also home to many Arabs and Muslims, as are the coastal towns adjacent to it. And, as I never tire of pointing out, there is no weapon of mass destruction yet devised that can discriminate on the basis of religion or ethnicity. So why did Netanyahu not say Jerusalem, which he and his party regard as Israel's true capital? Surely because this would immediately raise the question of whether the Iranian theocracy seriously intends to immolate the Dome of the Rock and the other Islamic holy places along with the poisonous "Zionist entity." And that's to say nothing of the number of Palestinians who would be slaughtered in any such assault. There is something sectarian, almost racist, in the way this aspect of the issue is always overlooked. I tried to raise the same question in print when Menachem Begin ordered the bombing of Iraq's Osirak reactor in 1981. On that occasion, the worst he could find to say about Saddam Hussein's genocidal ambitions was that they, too, constituted a threat to Jewish survival. Yet every knowledgeable person understands that if Saddam Hussein had come into possession of a bomb, he would have used it in the first instance on what his propaganda always defined as "the Persian racists." (This is why the Iranian air force had tried and failed to hit the very same reactor a short time before.) When speaking of the Zionist foe, incidentally, Saddam's most aggressive public speech promised only that with his chemical and other weapons, he would "burn up half of Israel." The late megalomaniac was not notorious for speaking of half-measures. It's possible that even in some part of his reptilian brain he understood that Palestine is not populated only by Jews. The whole emphasis on Israel's salience in this matter, and of the related idea of subcontracting a strike to the Israeli Defense Forces, is an evasion, somewhat ethnically tinged, of what is an international responsibility. If the Iranian dictatorship succeeds in "breaking out" and becoming a nuclear power, the following things will have happened: 1) International law and the stewardship of the United Nations will have been irretrievably ruined. The mullahs will have broken every solemn undertaking that they ever gave: to the International Atomic Energy Agency; to the European Union, which has been their main negotiating interlocutor up until now; and to the United Nations. (Tehran specifically rejects the right of the U.N. Security Council to have any say in this question.) Those who usually fetishize the role of the United Nations and of the international nuclear inspectors have a special responsibility to notice this appalling outcome. 2) The "Revolutionary Guards," who last year shot and raped their way to near-absolute power in Iran, are also the guardians of the underground weapons program. A successful consummation of that program would be an immeasurable enhancement of the most aggressive faction of the current dictatorship. 3) The power of the guards to project violence outside Iran's borders would likewise be increased. Any Hezbollah subversion of Lebanese democracy or missile attack on Israel; any Iranian collusion with the Taliban or with nihilist forces in Iraq would be harder to counter in that it would involve a confrontation with a nuclear godfather. 4) The same powerful strategic ambiguity would apply in the case of any Iranian move on a neighboring Sunni Arab Gulf state, such as Bahrain. The more extreme of Iran's theocratic newspapers already gloat at such a prospect, which is why so many Arab regimes hope—sometimes publicly—that this "existential" threat to them also be removed. 5) There will never be a settlement of the Israel-Palestine dispute, because the rejectionist Palestinians will be even more a proxy of a regime that calls for Israel's elimination, and the rejectionist Jews will be vindicated in their belief that concessions are a waste of time, if not worse. 6) The concept of "nonproliferation," so dear to the heart of the right-thinking, will go straight into the history books along with the League of Nations. These, then, are some of the prices to be paid for not disarming Iran. Is it not obvious that the international interest in facing this question squarely, and in considering it as "existential" for civilization, is far stronger than any political calculation to be made in Netanyahu's office? |
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A guide to GKSR: Click "Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08 Nothing is as effective as homeopathy. I'd rather listen to an hour of Abba than an hour of The Beatles. - Klaus, 4/29/18 | |
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| John D'Oh | Aug 17 2010, 10:06 AM Post #7 |
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MAMIL
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In all seriousness, this situation frightens me half to death. Somebody needs to stop Iran. |
| What do you mean "we", have you got a mouse in your pocket? | |
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| Piano*Dad | Aug 17 2010, 10:21 AM Post #8 |
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Bull-Carp
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But let 'the Jews' bomb Iran's facilities and all the goodists on the planet will demonize them. |
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| bachophile | Aug 17 2010, 10:32 AM Post #9 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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ive got a pretty full schedule for the next 8 days... but im probably going to australia in november for a conference, so there is a window of oppurtunity for me to miss the fireworks then. |
| "I don't know much about classical music. For years I thought the Goldberg Variations were something Mr. and Mrs. Goldberg did on their wedding night." Woody Allen | |
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| Mikhailoh | Aug 17 2010, 10:33 AM Post #10 |
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If you want trouble, find yourself a redhead
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The international community needs to grow a pair. Of course that will not happen with our friends the Russians. So.. How about that cowboy W, eh? Doesn't look quite as reckless now that Obama's promises to talk with Iran have been met with nothing but scorn. Edited by Mikhailoh, Aug 17 2010, 10:39 AM.
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Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead - Lucille Ball | |
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| John D'Oh | Aug 17 2010, 10:37 AM Post #11 |
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MAMIL
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The US isn't going to do it alone, if at all, and there aren't enough European countries that would be willing to help, particularly after the Iraqi cluster-f*ck. |
| What do you mean "we", have you got a mouse in your pocket? | |
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| Piano*Dad | Aug 17 2010, 10:56 AM Post #12 |
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Bull-Carp
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This is what motivates this utterly alien regime: Youth Olympics
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| Rainman | Aug 17 2010, 11:13 AM Post #13 |
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Fulla-Carp
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I remember the speech Bush gave, where he said, "Whether we find WMD or not, we're going to have to deal with Iran, so we'd better be strategicallist in establishing a huge boot, lots of bases, in the middle east." Oh wait. That's the speech he couldn't give. |
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| John D'Oh | Aug 17 2010, 11:48 AM Post #14 |
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MAMIL
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That sounds like something he'd have said.
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| What do you mean "we", have you got a mouse in your pocket? | |
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| George K | Aug 17 2010, 12:07 PM Post #15 |
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Finally
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptAoJedxFzU |
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A guide to GKSR: Click "Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08 Nothing is as effective as homeopathy. I'd rather listen to an hour of Abba than an hour of The Beatles. - Klaus, 4/29/18 | |
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| jon-nyc | Aug 17 2010, 01:39 PM Post #16 |
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Cheers
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What an odd thing to say. The approach (so far anyway) to Iran hasn't changed - both administrations pursued sanctions in a similar fashion. |
| In my defense, I was left unsupervised. | |
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| John D'Oh | Aug 17 2010, 01:44 PM Post #17 |
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MAMIL
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I thought Bush attacked Iraq? Don't tell me, he meant to hit Iran, but mis-pronounced the attack order! |
| What do you mean "we", have you got a mouse in your pocket? | |
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| Mikhailoh | Aug 17 2010, 01:48 PM Post #18 |
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If you want trouble, find yourself a redhead
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Oh, please. How all of the forum left extolled how much more effective Obama would be because he would talk with Iran. |
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Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead - Lucille Ball | |
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| John D'Oh | Aug 17 2010, 01:53 PM Post #19 |
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MAMIL
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So was Bush more effective? |
| What do you mean "we", have you got a mouse in your pocket? | |
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| George K | Aug 17 2010, 02:22 PM Post #20 |
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Finally
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Like the sign I used to have in my office in the OR: "If you can do better, Please do so." Still waiting. |
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A guide to GKSR: Click "Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08 Nothing is as effective as homeopathy. I'd rather listen to an hour of Abba than an hour of The Beatles. - Klaus, 4/29/18 | |
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| Copper | Aug 17 2010, 02:42 PM Post #21 |
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Shortstop
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Unlike more recent administrations Mr. Reagan began the presidency as soon as he was sworn in. And the Iranians were so respectful they gave up the hostages immediately. |
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The Confederate soldier was peculiar in that he was ever ready to fight, but never ready to submit to the routine duty and discipline of the camp or the march. The soldiers were determined to be soldiers after their own notions, and do their duty, for the love of it, as they thought best. Carlton McCarthy | |
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| John D'Oh | Aug 17 2010, 02:57 PM Post #22 |
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MAMIL
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I seem to remember that he made up for it by stopping about 2 years early. |
| What do you mean "we", have you got a mouse in your pocket? | |
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| Axtremus | Aug 18 2010, 02:03 AM Post #23 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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Bush took out the regional power that used to keep Iran in check. Bush was negeffective. |
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| Mikhailoh | Aug 18 2010, 06:33 AM Post #24 |
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If you want trouble, find yourself a redhead
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And replaced it for the interim with the US military to both the east and west. Major effective. |
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Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead - Lucille Ball | |
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4:34 PM Jul 10