That dirty rotten scumbag, Ahmadinejad, is going to come to the US to address that filthy worthless corrupt UN.

The temerity of this action along with his supplying weapons and other war materiel to our enemies in Iraq must be shown to him.  HE MUST BE PUNISHED!

THE PLAN:  Just as he is addressing the General Assembly vermin at the UN,  the US should bomb Iran's one and only oil refinery.  Not totally destroy it because that might cause a world war.  We should bomb it just enough to put it out of commission for 6 months.

The would be a real b*tch slap to the UN too.

I don't have any connections in DC.  But maybe some bigshots will hear about this if everyone just emails a couple of people and then they email some people.

Once again:  The US should bomb the Iranian oil refinery when  Ahmadinejad is addressing the UN General Assembly.

Lets have a battalion of D-10 Caterpillar bulldozers push the fuck'n UN into the goddamn river while the General Assembly is in session.

Great idea. That would push oil prices past $100 a barrel and create $4 a gallon gasoline.  That'll show em who's boss.

What it would do is cause chaos in Iran and the Mullahs might get overthrown.

Lots of people are fed up with the political and economic situation in Iran and that little b*tch slap could set off the explosion.

Ahmadinejad might wet his pants right in front of the General Assembly if he is told while he is givin g his speech.

and at the risk of agereing with a whiny little liberal(just kidding)I believe that Tusayan actually understates the repercussions. We would be lucky to only see $100 oil.

If a country like Nigeria faces the prospect of taking 200-300thousand BOPD off line (something that happens with regularity) the result is a 2-3 dollar increase in oil. If a hurricane hits the Gulf of Mexico resulting in just one million barrels taken off line, the result is an increase of almost ten dollars per barrel. Can you imagine the results of a very real threat of a shooting war with Iran, the results would be catastrophic, not just in the oil pits, but in all the other financial markets as well.

Nice sentiment though, pushing the UN into the river doesn't sound too bad either.

rarely pisses them off at their leaders.  Usually pisses them off at the bombers.  Think of how bombing campaigns went in Britain, Germany, Vietnam.  The only reason it worked in Japan was that they were being choked on their island, and then had to face the shock of a new and devastating weapon.  It seems that putting an enemy off balance is what works best, and that means doing the unexpected.  Bombing really works when it's tactical, and troops are in the craters before the smoke clears.

I think you could nuke most major targets in Iran, and kill half the population, and the other half would just dig in their heels.  They wouldn't be a conventional threat, but they aren't now.  The threat they pose is organizing terror cells, and nuking them wouldn't change that much - it's as likely to make it worse as better, seems to me.

You want regime change, you have to go do it physically, and it seems that there has to be some realization & acceptance that the defeated leaders fucked up to kill resistance.  Remember that the ayatollahs only got their hold in Iran as a reaction the the Shah, who was too western controlled and secular - the Iranian rednecks were the ones who installed them, after the Shah lost influence with the Iranian intellectuals & managers.

IOW, You're seeing this from your POV, instead of theirs, and bombing is more likely to make you feel like a big man, than make them feel you're a big man.  We can send you down to the carnival and get the same result cheaper.

Too many places for them to hide & re-arm.  Bombing would be like slapping at roaches.  If you really want to get them, you have to isolate & tent the place.  If you think we can occupy Iran, look at its geography, and consider the problems we have in Iraq now, and ask how the Russians would react.  They'd love to see us stick our dick out for any passersby to step on.

that Saddam was a Tito, balancing his fortune and neck on holding together an artificial country.

When we went in there like bulls in a china shop, we knew we were going to trigger a general collapse in the mideast, setting the shias (including Iran which had just been at war with Iraq) against the sunnis (including the Saudis) to say nothing of the Kurds, and also the rural fundies versus the urban secular Arabs, and create tremendous pressure to realign the borders along more natural but still undetermined lines.

So here's this house of cards in a region that is a geographical and oil critical area, and we decide we're just going to hit it with a flamethrower.   And do you really think we're doing this to CONTROL the oil flow?  How the hell was THAT going to work?

Now, it very well could have exploded any time on its own.   But exactly what is the benefit to us to spend trillions of dollars and tie up our military, at at time that we could be chasing Osama, to set this explosion off, and be holding the fucking bomb when it goes off?  

IOW, how fucking stupid can you be?

Well, GW may be real stupid, but it's not like they don't have something on their mind, and that something is most likely that Iraq is small potatoes - what they wanted to do was control DC, both politically and financially.   The problem is that it looks like they got greedy and stepped on their dick, but I don't know - the Democrats could still be stupid enough to hand them the 2008 election, and most Americans will just go along with whatever.

The oil security argument is legitimate, except for a couple of things - you don't get in a 2 front war voluntarily unless you're crazy as Hitler, and if you have ever actually been in a war zone, you understand why businessmen leave.  If you can't rely on people getting to work, you can't do business, and you can't turn a profit.  People who assumed the oil was going to get itself out of the ground and into their bank accounts were people who never actually ran a business or rifle company.

If you buy the oil security argument, you have to assume (and I know the State & Defense Depts told Cheney this) that we would have long term troops there to enforce the arrangement, so that the new democratic Iraqi govt (which was going to be just as nationalist and cutthroat, but more religious than Saddam) didn't abrogate it the minute we left.

So here we are, planning on occupying this place like Korea, and hoping the oil will finance our losses.   Nobody on the Joint Chiefs could let Cheney think that he could get oil profitably out of a field that had to be secured against civil war AND random terrorists, though career officers often have little appreciation for accounting.   Blackwater sentries cost 6 figures per year, per man.

Again, I think that the RNC was not looking to the Iraqi oil to finance the war.  I think they were looking to the US Treasury as a guarantor; and they figured that the rednecks, televangelists and crony capitalists would let them keep their boats and summer homes.

So I think that the locals are just letting us twist in the wind, losing big bucks and blood trying to get the oil going, while Osama is running around the hills blogging his buddies that he told them so, which just makes our problem in Iraq worse, and we're having to hire illegals (no shit) to secure our airports and stadiums.   The mideast muslims like us right where we are, and they're just going to keep sniping.

I really don't know a lot about having big balls, but I do know that it's not a good idea to park your platoon in a kill zone.  If you have a sniper, you do not hunker down.  You move out of the kill zone and go after the sniper, one way or another, and make damn sure he's not drawing you into an ambush.

-- Modified on 9/20/2007 10:36:41 AM

I was hoping it was not right next to the oil export port center.

I would never want boots on the ground in Iran. Let the Iranians live in their own hell.

Destroying 20% of their refinery would be a nice payback for the stuff they've done.

-- Modified on 9/20/2007 3:59:23 PM

out of the most advanced technologies, and making them pay thru the nose for it.

The problem with "payback" is that it usually winds up damaging us down the road.   So if you are going to do it, you have to make goddamn sure what the results are going to be, and that it's done right the 1st time.

Pissing off a people is usually much worse than just taking them out.   If you can't do that, it may well be better to work out a deal to stay in their pants.

Our mistake - I mean apart from taking Bush/Cheney seriously - was just as Cheney said, in thinking that we could step into a quagmire and any good would come of it.  

We are now in the damage control mode, and I think that the only difference in staying or leaving is going to be, fewer bodies and bills.   The mideast will still be a fucking hornets' nest, regardless of what else happens.

We might have been able to negotiate before we invaded, but once you take your drawers off, the time for negotiation is over.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Iranian_Oil_Refining_and_Distribution_Company

anything wrong with that, because there are times and places for eunuchs, too.

It's crazy to expect that every institution is going to solve problems.  We need some losers to make others look good by comparison.

And it does let us keep our eye on a certain number of 3rd worlders who would otherwise be off running drug cartels or comparable enterprises.

Of course the US largely created and ran the UN, and most of the world does see it as a western puppet, and that's fair enough.  Of course, the man in the street sees it as a circus, which is also fair, and of course righties get some cheap mileage out of twitting it, which is really just cheap sucking up to their redneck voters - folks who think they're not as weird as some nightgown wearing semi-literate 3rd worlder.   I mean, not from WV.

The UN is the small claims court of international diplomacy, and it keeps some problems small.  Think of it as an attractive nuisance for 3rd worlders.  If it didn't exist, we'd have to invent it - and the big surprise is that being there is actually any more useful than say praying for rain.

but rather that it is largely populated by corrupt members... who think nothing of taking bribes to look the other way while millions starve to death cause of the frickin poor plans of the UN....

I will give them this though, WHO (a UN sponsored org) has been largely responsible for a lot of good... maybe the only part of the UN which I support.

-- Modified on 9/21/2007 10:09:04 PM

but then the Republicans demonstrated how popular and profitable it is, and it's really hard to argue with that.   Pretending we're any different after Bush-Cheney will get you taken for a comedian.

the RNC has got to be one of the most serious collections of con-men in history.

-- Modified on 9/22/2007 7:24:38 PM

no fucking way they are anywhere near as effective in carrying out their plans.

hapless marines that Carter sent to their death in the Iranian desert (to say nothing of the complete bungle he made of the Iran hostage mess) - or the soldiers that Clinton dispatched to Bosnea.. and while acting with contempt of the military... yea... you are correct - they are not near as effective... thank god.

a stupid mistake.  You don't seem to know that it was army (Delta Force) in Desert One, so presumably you don't know why it was aborted.

That we got into it in the 1st place was probably a failure to read the Iranians, who were more nationalistic and less democratic, or, trusted their own ayatollahs more than the CIA.  Maybe not a good choice, but you know, that's the way people are.

Bosnia seems to have worked out just fine.

Iraq, on the other hand, was misconceived from the beginning on at least 2 major counts, and probably more, and that is exactly the way it has come down.   When you elect a president, he's supposed to be smart enough to play ahead a couple moves.  Simple country lawyers  should not be able to predict events blindly better than the NSC does.

Now Bush has cemented his reputation for rock stupidity for all time by announcing that we could
have saved the day if we had just stayed in Vietnam.  Lets not even ask where the fuck he was, because that's been asked & answered:  he doesn't know.

Somalia was in fact another doomed example of trying to save people from themselves.  While we might want stability, the only way to get it is let them burn their country down, then walk in and take control of the ashes.  Being nice doesn't work.  Being stupid works even worse.

What you folks don't seem to understand is that I am not opposed to military operations, at all.   What I am opposed to is stupidity, and especially massive stupidity.

Overall, the lesson seems to be that civilians (God bless their ignorant malingering asses) are far more likely to want soldiers to jump into something, than to ask exactly WTF they expect to achieve, and if it's worth the cost.

professional crooks or amateurs running the show in DC.   I don't understand the perverse pride people seem to have in knowing that their daddy is fucking the rest of the world, when his dick has to go thru them 1st.

but still that was a CARTER (DEM) lunatic adventure... where CARTER was unable to decipher the signs that the Shah was loosin it.

As far as Bonia H. is concerned, I am not so sure that all is ok there... as splitting the country in two, was the solution?  right?  

as far as Bush is concerned, I'm not defending his ever stupider announcements....  but I just don't think that the man has cornered the market on lunacy the way that you do.   I mean - after all if he were the only looney person in DC we would be in great shape... but he ain't.  So get over your smug self.

he just happens to be the only lunatic president with an entourage of snake charmers.

Normally, these people stay in their asylums, I mean churches, banging their tambourines and occasionally sending for the doctor, when one gets clumsy.

But when you put the loons in charge, it's not surprising this is what you get.

We were doing JUST FINE before Bush - I would much rather have BJs for entertainment on the 6 oclock news than wars, even if the choice is Lewinsky or towelheads.  We were doing better when we were only fighting the Japs & Germans 65 years ago.

Bosnia if FINE:  I don't care if they make it into fucking grains of sand, as long as it doesn't become WW3.

BTW - how many people did we lose in Bosnia?

As for Carter being unable to read Iran - shee-it, this administration can't read ANYTHING.

So come back when you sober up.

-- Modified on 9/23/2007 11:56:45 PM

to be exhibited by an occupant of the white house... hell, with Kennedy we had both BJs in the white house (Judith Exner, mafia concubine) AND the Viet Nam issue.  This was followed by LBJ.  Thanks, still have both my draft card AND my commisioning papers (charred by the fire on campus).

in fact, I think we need a law that would REQUIRE BJs in EVERY house; and just to make it fair, the eaters have to get eaten, too; but of course, we need minimal standards of sanitation and beautification, so we need half the fucking country to be riding stationary bikes hooked up to the power grid, and put all those fairies to work beautifying the ambulatory population.   (see, it's really not all that hard to figure out.)

I can understand Vietnam as an honest mistake for a while at least, but at some point it's not honest anymore.   LBJ backed out when that time came for him, and I respect him for that.

I think Nixon was smarter, ie more clever than LBJ, but he wasn't smart enough to understand the long term perspective, so he continued to throw good blood & money after bad, and eventually led him into thinking that he'd get away with watergate.   Way too often, smart people forget to hook up their emotional understanding that makes them see other PsOV.

I gotta say, I really have a real hard time respecting people who won't put their money where their mouth is, so listening to the Republicans talk about how we - not them, but we - should go to war makes me just a little cynical.

The problem is that we're following a bunch of people into Iraq who are about half dumb as rocks, and about half crooked as a hound's hind leg.   These are not people you would bet the family farm on, and that's just about what we're doing.

Yeah, I have my papers too, but they're not charred.  They're wallpaper - saves me buying shit to cover my office walls, so people don't think I'm some kinda hippie barbarian.   We all have our scams.

he came to the concluson that he did not know what to do... and could not just admit we were up to our asses in aligators.  And remember this was not a REPUBLICAN WAR it was a frickin Democrat war!  sheese.  Kennedy escalated it first and then Johnson came in a really turned on the troops.  

Nixon actually realized that 1) public support no longer would enable him to throw away american lives... so he had to get out... and he did... he just left.  and then what did Nixon do for an encore?  Ping pong.  yea, I guess he really was guilty of throwing blood & money around... lots of folks die, playing ping pong.  such a brutal sport.

just keep on a rewriting history.

He wouldn't run for a 2nd term, he didnt think he had a solution.

Yeah Nixon just left.  7 fucking years later, when the NVA overran Saigon.

Talk about re-writing history!!

in Demo Lib math that is 7 years.....  No wonder Gore cannot imagine that WE did not cause global climage change.... libs cannot even do math.

withdrawals only allowed a regiment (3,000) to stay behind? and don't forget http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayag%C3%BCez_Incident

Or that any way you cut it,  Nixon was responsible for pretty close to half the casualties because he didn't get it, that you can't save an unwilling country from itself - and I frankly don't see a material difference in Iraq.

Military forces are excellent for beating the shit out of other military forces, and generally threatening the hell out of people.   But they're not real good PR organizations, and you cannot bomb a person into democracy.  It's an obvious mistake to send an organization to do work it's not designed for.

It always comes back to the same thing, that chest-beating from the other side of the world does not accomplish the goal we want - if we're even very sure of it.  Of course, it does get a lot of votes from people who think that all we have to do is kill enough people to make them understand, and they're too fucking stupid to imagine how they would react to that.  But of course towelheads are different, eh?

the Dems did not.

Personally, I don't trust either as far as I can throw them.  The advantage of the Dems is that they are much more likely to shoot themselves in the foot before they fuck me; whereas the GOP is more likely to do both; and as they sure keep me uneasy, I like to return the favor, and keep them uneasy.

If you were more prone to using your head, you'd realize that the only reason Nixon got out was because the war was so immensely unpopular that he was forced out.  He couldn't get the people or money to support it, try as he could.   He did try manfully though, costing us about half our casualties after he should have known that we were pissing it away fighting for a disinterested people.

The underlying problem is that Democrats think that anything can be talked out, and weapons accomplish nothing.  That's as stupid and incompetent as the opposite Republican view, which is presently fucking up our country much faster than the Democrats could hope to.

when they warned Eisenhower to not put troops in VietNam... as they withdrew after the defeat at Dienbienphu.   Unfortunately the culture in Vietnam was so corrupt that honesty in government was non-existant.  This lead in 1956 to the cancellation of elections by President Diem.  This election would probably have resulted in the unification of north and south Vietnam.  This cancellation was viewed as an act of treason by Ho Chi Minh... and led to increased guerilla warfare to push for the reunification of the country.  To anyone this was a civil war... and then here comes the good ole Eisenhower folk to "help 'em out" without fully understanding the issues.... Kennedy escalated the effort... Johnson escalated the effort... Nixon (during his FIRST term) escalated the effort, but then reverted to the Eisenhower approach of Vietnamization... whatever that meant...

Yea Jack... he finally got the message - but He DID get the message.

As far as the current mess.... or the vietnam mess.... we could actually win these wars.... for a variety of political reasons we cannot...  but overall - as far as dealing with the fundamentalist Muslim issue (Which I view as separate from the Iraq mess) we gotta find another way to approach this problem... cause we cannot kill half the world's population...  that would truly be unacceptable.  There has to be another solution....  I think that the only way for us to seek that solution is total independance from foreign oil... ALTERNATIVE energy... yea, they are linked.... at the gas station.  Unlike Nam - where there was NOTHING of national interest in Nam... which was what made it possible for nixon to pull out.  We gained nothing by staying..... and they were not prepared to bomb our cities... Osama - well - he is.

he was the one who drew the line when they asked for help at Dienbienphu.

You can never draw exact parallels among wars, BUT you can make some damned useful generalizations, the 1st being you have to know what your objective is, and have a way of getting there that passes the laugh test.  

Conventional wars are easy.  Where we fall down consistently is when we have to mix politics and military action.  There is no automatic translation of one to the other, and that is what the GOP has had a hard time understanding since Ike.

The 2nd is that when you are in counterinsurgency, the people ARE the environment.  The vast majority of your intel comes from them, and if they don't like you, you are fucked.   You have to make it worth their while, and the only present & working strategy in Iraq seems to be buying off the militias (that wasn't predictable, was it?) which is good until they think they can get more out of us.  

The 3rd is timing.  Don't open 2nd fronts until you can manage the 1st.   And BTW, you don't start campaigns that you can't finish.

IMHO - we should have set the situation up well in advance, and not sent in military force until we knew it was going to come down our way.   Anything else is just sending your people into a clusterfuck and relying on them to do your job.

IMHO, the administration HAD to know these things.  They just have another agenda going, and they seem to be perfectly happy with their situation, because I don't see any changes or plans on changes for years in either direction.

Half your last paragraph is "we gotta find another way", but I doubt that it's an either/or, black/white thing that has to be done NOW.   I don't see dropping oil tomorrow or the next day, and oil security is certainly an issue.  But so is energy independence, and yeah, looking for Osama in Iraq is a little delusional, isn't it?

I can't say I think the Democrats are obviously competent, but the problem is that the Republicans' skills seem to be limited to fucking over their own country.  It's good to see guys like Hagel and Romney limiting their support for the GOP, but both of them have been aligned with the GOP for so long that I wouldn't trust them - as if I'd trust Hillary or much of any Dem.

IMHO:  we probably lost a historic opportunity in 2000, to create a coalition govt by settlement of the FL lawsuits; but the GOP has an "all or nothing" constituency, so it's no surprise that didn't float.

I said with less verbage.... they pay you lawyers by the syllable??? cause if they did, damn I bet your rich...