1 What about bad/very bad/very very bad/WORST: There is an article from News dot com dot au (which I cannot seem to post a link to for some reason)... From the article: IRAN may have received three shipments of sophisticated P-2 centrifuges capable of enriching uranium, diplomats said overnight, which could support Western claims that Tehran is hiding sensitive nuclear work. There were reportedly three shipments of one centrifuge each from the black-market network of disgraced Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan in 1997, one diplomat said. Centrifuges are used to enrich uranium for either nuclear reactor fuel or atom bomb material. Iran, which already has the less high-tech P-1 centrifuges, denies having received the more advanced machines, which make enriching uranium easier. Tehran says its nuclear program is a peaceful effort to generate electricity but the United States alleges it is hiding covert work on atomic weapons, for which highly enriched uranium is necessary. A second diplomat said the UN watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has been investigating Iran's nuclear program for three years, was investigating the P-2 report. Asked if this could be the "smoking gun" for the West's fears, the diplomat replied: "Yes. If this is confirmed the game is over." --------------- The game has been over since 1997 I would imagine...

2 I swear it just kills me to see everyone pissing their pants over a backwoods shithole like Iran. Sure, they've got a lot of cold-war era Soviet hardware and a large military, which worked out so well for Saddam, and yeah, they're developing nuclear weapons, and are only about sixty years behind us in technology, but let's look at the flip side. In Afghanistan and Iraq we have enough troops, battle hardened veterans, mind you, to stage an invasion and drive toward Tehran like a knife through butter. We could put three or four carrier battle groups, along with attack subs and missile subs, in the Gulf or Indian Ocean, and we could put one or two Marine divisions in anywhere along Iran's long coastline. This isn't even considering the Air Force's long range strike abilities, which would probably be the first, and last, the mullahs would know of the invasion. In short, we could have military supremacy within a month or two at most, possibly sooner, considering that muslims of any type are generally inept at warfare, and most Iranians don't really have a vested interest in seeing their government continue unchecked. It's forgivable that anyone who is not a student of warfare would not be able to grasp all the concepts of modern war, or understand all the complexities and intricacies of waging such, but anyone who isn't a complete idiot, (i.e., liberal), or who hasn't been living in a cave, (and many who have been), should be able to see that anyone who stands up against the most lethal military in the history of the world will not be long shuffling off this mortal coil. To put it in perspective, even with the tactics of remote bombing, suicide bombing, sniping, and rockets and mortars, the terrorists are losing men, if you can call them that, at a ratio of 20:1 compared to us. Any time they face US forces head on, they lose closer to 100:1. In Desert Storm, our approximately 50,000 combat forces faced, and destroyed, Saddam's forces which numbered over ten times more. Their losses were in the tens of thousands, while ours were less than 300 for the entire campaign, most of which were accidental deaths or friendly fire deaths. Our technology, equipment, battle doctrine, training, and the individual soldiers themselves are superior to anything Iran can put in the field, and is so by several orders of magnitude, and anyone who says otherwise is simply an idiot whose opinion is based in ignorance, and who should be roundly ignored. Not only could we invade, be we should invade, and by the end of the year if we can get the Afghans and Iraqi forces up to speed so they can fight the terrorists themselves and leave us to more important tasks. Let them keep the heads of the hydra busy while we go for its heart.

3 It looks like the US will let Iran get nukes --meaning it will make Israel do the dirty work of stopping them, if they are stopped. It looks like we are losing the race: democ racy in the ME, vs WMDs in the hands of Jew-haters.

4 Don't call the race until it's over.