Stones Cry Out

If this is supposed to be a secret program why is information on it being released? People with special classified type clearances usually lose such privileges for revealing any information that is classified, and they lose their position. I have a friend who works at a defense contractor and he has a very high clearance level, and none of us know what he really does. He gets an annual lie detector which asks him if he has discussed any classified information outside of a classified area. If he fails, then he is fired, that's it. I believe Iran will have to be stopped with force as they seemingly have nothing to lose. Diplomacy isn't going to work with them. A full scale invasion could be difficult right now also. The situation is more dire than most anything we face at this moment. Israel is the target of Iran's nuclear program as they have stated they plan on destroying Israel. If a nuclear attack were launched on Israel from Iran I believe that Iran would be wiped from the earth.

You can't possibly be serious. The Iranian people do not support their rulers. "Wiping them from the earth" is foolishness.

Last April California Yankee posted Flying Saucers Invade Iran:

State television on Wednesday showed a sparkling white disc it said was filmed over Tehran on Tuesday night.

More colorful Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) have been spotted beaming out green, red, blue and purple rays over the northern cities of Tabriz and Ardebil and in the Caspian Sea province of Golestan, the official IRNA news agency reported.

Newspapers and agencies reported people rushing out into the streets in eight towns on Tuesday night to watch a bright extraterrestrial light dipping in and out of the clouds.

Today the Washington Post explains that Iran's UFOs are U.S. reconnaissance drones.

The intelligence problem with Iraq was that Rumsfeld & Co. chose not to believe the UN inspectors on the ground, who were able to discredit US claims.

If the agenda determines the "intelligence", the means of collection don't matter. Really it's cheaper to just dispense with them, and go with a faith-based alternative.

Or in Bush fashion, spend the money AND go on faith.

I agree with Matt. Our cold war is agains the government of Iran and the government of North Korea. If either of these governments launched a nuke, I would be hard pressed to support any retaliatory nuke launch on any area where there are civilians.

This is why the nuke tipped bunker busters that Kerry railed against so vital. This is why preemptive action is sometimes the best course of action. Wiping a bunch of civilians off the face of the planet because of the decisions of a few dictators is not the answer. Japan's national will had to be broken - that is why they got two bombs. Iran and North Korea's will do not need to be broken; only their leadership.

tubino, the weapons inspection regime is a joke. When every intelligence agency in the world says one thing, why would you trust the word of a handfull of spot checkers who were routinely blocked from obtaining access to certain areas and frustrated time and again? Not a very smart gamble. Bush made the right decision to trust his intelligence. Only good could come from removing Saddam. He's gone and the world is a better and safer place.

you exaggerate the degree to which world intelligence agencies agreed that Iraq posed a credible threat, and unfairly minmize the impact and effectiveness of the inspection regime.

This much was known at the time of the build upt and invasoin of Iraq:

Iraq had fully dismantled its nuclear program and was not making any effort to reconstitute it.

Iraq had no credible stockpiles of chem/bio weapons and had no capacity to make more. This capacity was destroyed before 1991 and was know to INSCOM at that time.

What we do know is that the Bush administration presented false evidence to the American People and the UN. We also know that the British intelligence report was based on false and exaggerated evidence as well. Both sets of evidence were compiled using unvetted material and gave no consideration to evidence that contradicted the Bush Administration claims.

Was Iraq a dictatorship? Certainly. But so are many of the countries that we claimed as part of the "Coalition of the Willing". Uzbekistan stands out as a particularly egregious example of a Saddam-like regime that we willingly associated ourself with for the Iraq invasion.

Our practice of rendering suspects to countries that practice torture, our Attorney General's claim that torture is legally justifiable, and that the US President may ignore any law that is inconvenient bot makes the US seem like it is no better than any other totalitarian regime.

As for the world being better off: 200 billion dollars spent on a war based on false pretenses and the deaths of 100000 Iraqi civilians and over 10,000 American soldiers dead or wounded, and the concomitant loss of American prestige abroad speak otherwise. The huge amount of money spent (contributing to Bush's deficit) and the lost prestige represents incalculable opportunity costs. What could we have done with that money? Universal health care, real election reform here at home, boosts in educational spending, indcreased investment in research. None of that can be realized now that Bush has had his way.

It is time for the Right to wake up to themselves and stop pretending that they and their president are helping the world. They are hurting it. And they are destroying our country and its promise.

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Rick,
As some of the comments here indicate, there are those who will never admit taking action to defend ourselves can be correct.

Iran poses a real threat and one that requires diplomacy, backed with genuine capability to back up our words with action. How much the loss of secrecy affects our efforts remains to be seen. But I'm pleased to learn that we have been active in gaining information that can lead to an effective military strike, if necessary.

I take it jri didn't see the picture of the woman in full veil with a tear coming out of her eye as she held up her purple finger... No... "those" people over there could never embrace democracy...

I take it jri also thinks "WMD" was the only justification Bush ever gave for the war. I don't blame him -- the media and many sites online have repeated this lie (ironic, isn't it?) But if you just read a single Bush speech (the 2003 state of the union, for example) it's clear he gave much more than this.

The Iraq war was based on the following justifications:
1) Saddam continually violated the terms of the 1991 cease-fire, by:
a) shooting at US warplanes
b) playing games with UN weapons inspectors
c) failing to document / account for the destruction of all of his WMD *and* the programs to produce them

2) Saddam's deception meant that we couldn't be sure he didn't have WMD, and it was likely he did. (So it turned out he didn't -- he was bluffing. That was his mistake, not the US's.)

3) Saddam tortured and murdered his own citizens in various ways

Too often, I see ignorant people who never understood what Bush was saying in the first place complaining that he lied, because they only ever partially understood point #2. Too often, I see the same people try to show that, possibly, one or two of the other points or subpoints apply to some other nation, as if the fact that we haven't invaded every country that matches any one of these points makes it wrong to invade a country that matched them all.

jri, it's time for YOU to wake up from your delusion that replacing the governments of Afghanistan and Iraq with what's in place now has hurt the world or the US. It's hurt your warped worldview, but it's improved the world at large.