I think you forgot the one where Iranian intelligence got the US to invade Iraq on bogus planted stories about WMDs that it gave to an administration that wanted to hear precisely those excuses.

All very clever of the Iranians, of course, as they wagered that the Americans' attempt to civilize the natives in Iraq would be doomed for the obvious reason that it was the Americans doing it. And Iran won the bet. Whenever the US leaves, Iraq is theirs. They can wait as long as it takes, coz it doesn't cost them anything to wait.

Like I've said before, should make a nice bumper sticker: "Bush - Making Iraq safe for Shi'ite theocracy"

I have no doubt that should Iran continue with its weapons program, it will be bombed by either the US or Israel. But they are 7-10 years away from having sufficient enriched uranium, so there is plenty of time to escalate, via the UN. Bank accounts should be frozen, sanctions should be tried, blockades of Iranian oil...

And if by then Ahmadinejad is still in power (his base is weak because many Iranians agree he is bonkers) and showing further signs of joining Bush in talking o God, then perhaps the sites need to be destroyed.

But with nukes? Under no circumstances. And certainly not under Bush's watch. He's done way to much harm already. This needs to be handled by somebody competent. Luckily, he'll be out in 56 months, which is early days yet in Iran's nuke program.

This needs to be handled by somebody competent.

Oh, the simplisme of Bush's approach, huh? Let me tell you something: this needs to be handled by someone with a spine, and in that regard Bush is the most competent president we've had in decades. I know how much fun you have with his clumsy diction, but something that was glaringly obvious to me when I was at AU, and has dimmed not one watt in the decades since, is that spines aren't something they hand out in International Relations programs.

Bush has got a stronger vertabrate tendency than any other head of state of any Western nation of the last 50 years. And whether you like it or not that is what will carry the day.

Ahmadinejad is toying with your brilliantly educated diplomatic corps, and has been since he took office. He is smarter than your "competent" crowd, and he is laughing at you. Do you imagine he laughs at Bush? I doubt it.

But they are 7-10 years away from having sufficient enriched uranium, so there is plenty of time...

Please. You have no idea how long it will take Iran to develop the 100 or so kilograms of enriched uranium sufficient to build its first warhead, nor do I. That said, 7-10 years is fantastically wishful thinking. The United States dropped a uranium-235 bomb on Hiroshima in 1945. The 60kg of uranium in it was refined in two years with 1940s technology, with scientists operating solely on theory. Iran has better centrifuges, better computers, better detonators, access to Pakistani research documentation and the certain knowledge that such a thing is possible.

But at least you're not trying to deny that a bomb is what they're after.

Negroponte and some other high ranking intel officials seem to think Iran is at least 7 years away from the bomb. Of course, these are the same people who were certain about the WMDs in Iraq. Who the fuck knows? Personally, I'm buying an underground bunker.

Forgot the link:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=a881Gb5E2z9g&refer=top_world_news

The only one of these incidents that's actually happened in the past twenty years (that isn't a minor pretext for a nebulously-defined war) seems to have been revisited on the Iranians ten-fold with the sinking or damaging of a good portion of the Iranian fleet.

Next we'll be nuking Coventry because we haven't gotten proper redress for that nonsense in 1812.

My point is that Iran is a habitual belligerent. The destruction of the United States has been a part of official Iranian pronouncements since those wingnuts seized power in '79, and a rallying call to the wingnut faithful. I am not suggesting the U.S. should attack Iran in retaliation for these incidents listed above. My point is that the United States cannot be expected to tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran.

If you go screaming "Death to America!" for 27 years, and then you start to develop a nuclear weapons capacity, well, guess what? We're not going to let you do that.

As far as using nukes against Iran, no U.S. spokesman and no reputable journalist has claimed that the U.S. will use nukes to destroy the Iranian nuclear capacity. However, an attempt by a hostile power to deploy a nuclear weapon itself is worthy of a nuclear response. Obviously Muslim wingnuts all over the world would go even nuttier after that, so I doubt Bush will do that. Besides, Bush is saving the nuclear option for its use as a retaliatory deterrent.

You say habitual -- only one violent incident is listed here in the past 18 years. That's hardly 'habitual'.

The reason your saber rattling is even more silly is because most people see Iran as a credible threat to the region (not necessarily as a nuclear power), but the cock up that Bush & Co made out of Iraq undermines their credibility (and for good reason, since no one believes that could beat up a blind man successfully).

And don't mistake your bluster for bravery. Principled opposition to Iraq doesn't make us all undifferentiated pacificist. I, for one, don't care if we spend twenty years in Afghanistan cutting the throats of every Taliban fighter Special Forces can find (sure, he's a hack, but read the Sebestian Junger article in Vanity Fair for some good reason why I think this). And while we're at it, we can ask some hard questions of Pakistan, and get back to finding Osama. Cause some of use still want his hide.

And don't mistake your bluster for bravery.

I never mistake my bluster.

I only listed one violent incident in the last 18 years directed at the U.S. Don't forget that Iran was implicated in some bombings in Argentina, for one, and that any time Hezbollah goes on the rampage it's on Iran's dime. There's also a British author you may have heard of, named "Salman Rushdie". That "one" incident against the U.S. involved an attempt to kill hundreds of U.S. military personnel while they were sleeping - a repeat of the Beirut barracks attack with a MUCH larger bomb.

I keep hearing the left and other people with a vested interest in failure describing the war in Iraq as a failure. The Iraq War is over. We won it. The occupation is over. We won that, too. What's left now is getting a stable government on its feet, and while that is no small matter I have yet to hear a convincing argument that we won't also get that done.

No one intends to invade Iran. Iran is not worth the trouble of invading and occupying because we already have our basing needs met in Iraq and Afghanistan. All that needs to be done in Iran is for the USAF to break stuff, and guess what? They're very, very good at that.

Hey, Sterling just declared victory and went home. Awesome.

"As far as using nukes against Iran, no U.S. spokesman and no reputable journalist has claimed that the U.S. will use nukes to destroy the Iranian nuclear capacity."

Sy Hersch is batting just about .1000 when you add up all his major stories and how they have panned out. He's quite reputable. I hope he's wrong on this one, or that the plan never comes to fruition.

Actually, Hersh never said that the administration was actually planning on using nukes first and foremost, he just said that they wanted to have it investigated and presented to them as an option, and wanted to keep that option on the table going forward. The JCS wants to have that option removed from consideration altogether, hence the conflict between the civilian and "professional" leadership branches of the military on this issue.

Hersh is a fabulist hack. One of his tricks is to present something that is factual and quite ordinary as if it were remarkable or scandalous.

Let's take the current little scandal he's lit up. Does the United States have nuclear attack plans Iran? Surely it does. The United States probably has nuclear attack plans for France, Israel, Japan and any number of other ostensibly FRIENDLY countries with nukes or the means to acquire them. What do you imagine all those people in the Pentagon do all day? They draw up plans. They make preparations for scenarios. That way, when something happens somewhere in the world that requires a military response or military action, the U.S. is prepared to execute. The Navy has mapped the entire ocean floor, all around the world. The Air Force has mapped conventional and nuclear targets, all around the world. This is necessary so that when it's time to move, our armed forces can move.

So the news that the U.S. has plans to nuke Iran is not news - such plans are at least as old as 1979, and probably older than that. If the Air Force and Navy hadn't drawn up such plans by now it would be criminally negligent.

Another of Hersh's tricks is to just make shit up His anonymous quotes are frequently too pat to be believed. So I don't believe them. I've experienced too many journalists playing fast and loose with quotes they have actually attributed to me - when I read an anonymous quote I always take it with a grain of salt because there's no one to complain about its accuracy. I believe that the main reason journalists use anonymous quotes is to cover their own asses when they "fill in the cracks", not their sources' asses. So when I read an anonymous quote provided by Sy Hersh, I simply assume he invented it. The burden of proof is on him and he doesn't even come close to meeting it.

And I'm hardly the first person to call Hersh a liar.

BTW, everyone should take a few minutes to read Edward Luttwak's essay in Commentary, Three Reasons Not to Bomb Iran—Yet. It's a good piece of analysis.

Good point about the existence of contingency plans.

There are photos and video of Operation Praying Mantis at http://www.navybook.com/nohigherhonor/pic-prayingmantis.shtml.
Praying Mantis, carried out on 18 April 1988, was the U.S. retaliation for the 14 April mining of the USS Samuel B. Roberts.

actually, only about 5% - 10% is acurately mapped.

The indispensible Mark Steyn.