Do you want war with Iran?

Sgt. Sensible

I don't but it looks like it might happen. Nothing, except maybe a shortage of troops, can really stop the US from attacking anyway.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20061009/lindorff

As reports circulate of a sharp debate within the White House over possible US military action against Iran and its nuclear enrichment facilities, The Nation has learned that the Bush Administration and the Pentagon have moved up the deployment of a major "strike group" of ships, including the nuclear aircraft carrier Eisenhower as well as a cruiser, destroyer, frigate, submarine escort and supply ship, to head for the Persian Gulf, just off Iran's western coast. This information follows a report in the current issue of Time magazine, both online and in print, that a group of ships capable of mining harbors has received orders to be ready to sail for the Persian Gulf by October 1.

Manic Moran

Why in God's name would anyone want a war with Iran? Or with anyone, if it can be avoided?

NTM

cyrus the virus

Manic Moran wrote:

Why in God's name would anyone want a war with Iran? Or with anyone, if it can be avoided?

NTM

The Oil. You control the Oil you control the worlds economy. Remember Oil is bought in US dollars. The CIA play dirty. The have been operation in Iran since the 50s and payed locals to over throw the government. The can easily do it again. Hire a hit man to kill Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and thats there problem sorted. No need for a army. The reason why Bush invaded Iraq was Saddam was selling oil in Euros. . I also heard that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wants to invite company's to Iran to and sell Oil in Euros. Don't know if this is true but its very possible.

I heard that on a program on sky one, CIA Sects?

Sorry, I could have my Info ass ways.

Zebra3

Personally, I don't want war with Iran. Maybe the current American regime does, but if they do I think it'll lead to their own downfall.

A bridge too far....

Sgt. Sensible

Manic Moran wrote:

Why in God's name would anyone want a war with Iran?

"Iran aggressively pursues weapons [of mass destruction] and exports terror, while an unelected few repress the Iranian people's hopes from freedom." - GW. Bush, Axis Of Evil speech, 2002.

Or with anyone, if it can be avoided?

People enjoy it, and treat it like an exciting spectator sport.

A Dub in Glasgo

Wars are fantastic for business in so many ways. Just look at the arms industry, if there were no wars....

Akrasia

If america invades Iran, then the E.U. should apply trade sanctions against America and the American Government officials should be treated as war criminals if they try to set foot outside their own country.

We should also kick America off the Security council of the U.N.

Akrasia

oh, and they probably aren't considering a land invasion at this stage, merely a bloody and murderous Bombing campaign from the air (because that strategy worked so amazingly well against the Lebanese people a few weeks ago)

Pa ElGrande

There will be no invasion of Iran. The American people are weary of war and the Iranian public does not want it either after the iran/iraq war of the 80's.
Instead a solution will be found in time for the November elections, that allows a peace agreement. This is a charade that suits both the American and Iranian leadership to distract from from domestic political issues.

Akrasia

Pa ElGrande wrote:

There will be no invasion of Iran. The American people are weary of war and the Iranian public does not want it either after the iran/iraq war of the 80's.
Instead a solution will be found in time for the November elections, that allows a peace agreement. This is a charade that suits both the American and Iranian leadership to distract from from domestic political issues.

they're not suggesting an invasion. a massive bombing campaign is on the cards. although this could easily escalate into something much more serious in the aftermath

vodalink

I really cant see How America could get away with a war on Iran.

Bush has two years or so left, surely not enough time to wage a war.

Doesent Iran have a more capable air force than Iraq? I could be wrong but if they do there surely would be a greater loss of life onTHe American side which could force Bush out of Office.

And dosent Bush need Congress to vote with him shouls they decide to launch a attack?

I remember a quote from someone once saying that "World War 3 would start in the middle East", and another quote saying " I dont know how world war 3 would be battled, but I now World War 4 would be battled with Sticks and Stones"!

Akrasia

vodalink wrote:

I really cant see How America could get away with a war on Iran.

Bush has two years or so left, surely not enough time to wage a war.

Doesent Iran have a more capable air force than Iraq? I could be wrong but if they do there surely would be a greater loss of life onTHe American side which could force Bush out of Office.

And dosent Bush need Congress to vote with him shouls they decide to launch a attack?

I remember a quote from someone once saying that "World War 3 would start in the middle East", and another quote saying " I dont know how world war 3 would be battled, but I now World War 4 would be battled with Sticks and Stones"!

Bush can start as many wars as he likes, He doesn't ever seem to give a thought towards how he will finish them. Congress needs to approve a declaration of war, But they don't need to approve all military action, and Bush could start a bombing campaign against Iran without officially declaring war. Or at least he could pretend that he has a legal basis, and that is all he needs. Herfe's what they said about Iraq

What the White House Says: On Aug. 26, White House lawyers issued an opinion that President Bush could order a preemptive attack against Iraq without a vote of approval from Congress. The lawyers based their opinion on two factors:

* The president's constitutional authority as commander in chief of the military (Article II, Sec. 2)
* Terms of the 1991 Gulf War resolution they content remains in effect today
* Terms of the Sept. 14, 2001 congressional resolution approving military action against terrorism (S.J. Res 23)

According to White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, the president would consult with Congress regarding any military attack against Iraq. "In all cases, the president will consult with the Congress because Congress has an important role to play," he said.

Fleischer, however, stopped short of saying whether the president would seek congressional passage of a resolution approving military action, as his father did prior to the 1991 Gulf War.

"The president knows that any decision he makes on a hypothetical congressional vote will be guided by more than one factor, more than legal factors alone," Fleischer told reporters.

"The president would consider a variety of legal, policy, historical factors in making up his mind about this, if it again becomes a relevant matter. The president knows that in a democracy, it's vital to have the support of the public if he reaches any point where he makes decisions about military action," said Fleischer.

http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/weekly/aa082702a.htm

Pa ElGrande

Akrasia wrote:

they're not suggesting an invasion. a massive bombing campaign is on the cards. although this could easily escalate into something much more serious in the aftermath

That's not going to happen either. In Iraq there is a clear benefit to the US when they secure the second largest oil reserves in the world and deny them to the competition (China & India). They miscalculated Iraqi public opinion and the resources of the former Ba'ath part of Iraq and are working to extracate themselves from this mess. They don't care if Iran has nuclear weapons or not. since Pakistan, an even more unstable regime already has them. Look at North Korea, they don't have nuclear weapons, but are bankrupt and bluffing their way to get more money from the Americans to try keep the regime going.
Now look at the Iranian economy, this is a country that exports oil and yet has to import diesel and subsidise it...the high oil prices are hurting them since they've been forced to ration diesel since August. Its got a young population who are tired of the old ways and are also experiencing high youth unemployment. The mullahs are generally perceived as corrupt and there is open questioning of their governments funding for Hizb'allah instead of providing employment.
It makes sense in this context if you can use the threat of nuclear weapons development as leverage over the US to lift sanctions and open new markets for your country and improve the economy. It also means you can strike fear in an increasinly restless population and give them common cause to support you and thus maintain power.

Kaiser_Sma

cyrus the virus wrote:

The Oil. You control the Oil you control the worlds economy. Remember Oil is bought in US dollars.

Americans already control the worlds economy regardless of how much oil they control. It is however essential to the stability to the worlds economy that oil prices do not change rapidly, which they will if iran gains more power in the middle east (which heaven forbid, if it does aquire the bomb it will gain) and starts acting up or there is a prolonged war with iran.

The CIA play dirty. The have been operation in Iran since the 50s and payed locals to over throw the government. The can easily do it again. Hire a hit man to kill Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and thats there problem sorted.

Even if espionage like this still exsists then simply killing mahmoud won't solve any problems, any other leader could have nuclear enrichment on the brain.

No need for a army. The reason why Bush invaded Iraq was Saddam was selling oil in Euros. .

There where many reasons for the gulf war as i see it, but there were also two sets of only partially true coverstories 1. The ebelishments that the public where told about WMDs and 2. the ebelishments the share holders were told about oil prices. Neither turned out to be completly true.

I also heard that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wants to invite company's to Iran to and sell Oil in Euros. Don't know if this is true but its very possible.

It's not so much a reason in itself (converting oil prices to euros that is) for declaring war, it's more becasue it's seen as a direct attempt to anger the americans that it excites the situation i think.

Bob the Unlucky Octopus

Bush can start as many wars as he likes, He doesn't ever seem to give a thought towards how he will finish them

If that were true, we'd be at war with Syria, Iran, Hezbollah, North Korea, Yemen and half a dozen central Asian countries excluding Afghanistan. There are four major restrictions on the President at this current time that severely limits most forms of effective military action.

1) Iraq. It's draining our already deficit-ridden coffers, and has cost the lives of more servicemen than civilians on 9/11. That's a critically important psychological milestone, and it becomes harder and harder for the 9/11 drum to be thrashed every time our government needs a show of support for ongoing military ventures and misadventures.

The army is having a near-impossible time maintaining its recruitment drive despite a raft of new measures (expanding the GI bill, two pay-grade increases for all new enlisted men who've picked their MOS, a removal of stop-loss). Despite the raft of benefits and pay, people just aren't volunteering any more. Mid-level NCOs and junior officers are quitting at a faster rate since the fall of Saigon- the effects of our error of policy in Iraq will occupy the attention of our military long after the last boot leaves Iraqi soil. If Pat Tillman were still alive, even he probably wouldn't volunteer at this stage. With 18 of our infantry battalions in the field and in desperate need of rotation/relief every 6 months, it is inconceivable that another ground campaign could take place as much as the neocons and possibly even the President wished we could.

2) Strategic considerations. Attacking North Korea, a nuclear-capable nation with over a hundred batteries of artillery and rockets aimed at Seoul, is strategically unworkable. At the slightest hint of military action, our closest ally in NE Asia would summarily become toast, to say nothing of what Japan, China and Russia would do.

Attacking Iran will inflame the whole of Shia Islam, which now occupys a large crescent shape in the Middle East- stretching from Hezbollah in S. Lebanon, through Iraq, through Iran and as far as Afghanistan/W. Pakistan. Iran could make things damn near impossible for us and our allies in Iraq. The only thing that's stopping them from completely screwing us in Iraq are two big incentives- that Iraq will wind up a Shia state friendly to Iran, and that Iran can avoid pariah status by finding a peaceful way out of the nuclear connundrum. The latter being more important, they'd gladly sacrifice or dent the former for the sake of their security. The same goes for attacking Hezbollah, in addition to screwing Israel even further, our interests would hardly be served by the government of Iran passing along weapons-grade plutonium from their breeder reactors to Hezbollah's military arm.

3) Domestic political considerations. I've gone from being in an insignificant minority of 21% to a comfortable majority of 57% of Americans that think the Iraq war isn't worth fighting. I'd be extremely surprised if that doesn't affect the November mid-terms at all. If the Dems can wrest control of just one of the two Houses back, it'll mean subpoena power, and then it's all over. Just look at what a Republican Congress managed to use their subpoena power for with Clinton (Whitewater, Lewinskygate and Paula-gate) and imagine what that power would do to the raft of errors, miscalculations and misjudgements that this administration has tallied during its war on terror.

Fighting an unpopular war means that bland assurances of victory are no longer enough, oversight will ensure that the right policy will be forced down the throat of the executive. As bitter a pill as that would be for the White House, I very much doubt that any further military action will even be on the table- to say nothing of how it will affect ongoing interventions

4) Legal/international concerns.

The President is under huge domestic pressure over wiretapping, ghost detainees at Gitmo, and the questionable legality of the executive usurping the judicial function by remanding, trying and sentencing criminal offenders outside US soil. Extraordinary renditions will continue (they have always been part of every free nation's intelligence policy), but they will continue with FISA and Congressional oversight, not out of the backdoor thinktanks in the White House.

A huge overhaul of intelligence is also coming- the Department of Homeland Insecurity's failures during Katrina and subsequent alert periods means its days as an agency in its current form are numbered. During such a period of constant flux, it is inconceivable that the Pentagon would even broadly tolerate an increase in commitments

Internationally, the effect of the Iraq war has been well documented. It has radicalised a far larger number of people than would otherwise have been so affected and has distanced or alienated us from allied Islamic nations that will be essential to finally defeat terrorism. Even Pervez Musharraf, our own little pet dictator in Pakistan has started distancing himself from policy he once considered indispensable to his nation's global position. Inflaming the situation further would only make matters worse.

Akrasia wrote:

Congress needs to approve a declaration of war, But they don't need to approve all military action, and Bush could start a bombing campaign against Iran without officially declaring war.

Yes, the President can take military action for up to 90 days without Congressional authority. However, even assuming none of the above reasoning I've outlined is true, a sustained bombardment period of 90 days just simply wouldn't be enough to get the job done. Even if our bombers were refueled around the clock, it's doubtful we'd be able to find or contain all of the nuclear sites. Moreover, once the bombing begins, a threshold will have been crossed, one that will spell the end for any potential of repairing relations with Iran. Strategically, legally and politically, 90 days just doesn't give the President anything worth using it for.

Or at least he could pretend that he has a legal basis, and that is all he needs. Herfe's what they said about Iraq
http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/weekly/aa082702a.htm

Try telling that to Arlen Specter or the Senate Judiciary Committee. If they are utterly hostile to his plans for Gitmo, wiretapping and executive authority over a legal process, why do you think on the eve of a mid-term election they would blithely sign off executive authority for military action? The only bigger stick of dynamite Bush could drop is reinstating the draft.

So in summary- no, there won't be war with Iran, nor even a bombing campaign unless every single other option has been exhausted to its conclusion with Iran remaining defiant. It could happen, but it's about as likely as us winning the World Cup. The troop movements and rhetoric are just good old-fashioned sabre-rattling- the reality is that both the officials we're negotiating with and our own government know deep down that military action isn't on the cards, they're just playing to their respective publics. De facto, even the officials we're negotiating with are a cypher, so is Ahmedinejad. True power in Iran doesn't lie with the President, the Parliament, or even the Revolutionary Guard, it lies with the Supreme Islamic Council. So even the negotiations are being done through a non curat intermediary that can never speak with true authority, since it derives none save from the SIC.

mike65

This feels like a thread started for the sake of an argument.

Bob the Unlucky Octopus has put it well, not much to gain, an awful lot to loose.

Forgot to say No I dont want a war with Iran funnily enough.

Mike.

Akrasia

Bob the Unlucky Octopus wrote:

If that were true, we'd be at war with Syria, Iran, Hezbollah, North Korea, Yemen and half a dozen central Asian countries excluding Afghanistan. There are four major restrictions on the President at this current time that severely limits most forms of effective military action.

Priorities my good man. Iran is a much higher on Bush's wish list than even North Korea. Also, he only has a short window to attack Iran before they develop a nuclear capability (well, it's 10 years according to most estimates, but if the democrats win the next 2 elections then by the time the republicans get back in they could already have a credible deterrent)

1) Iraq. It's draining our already deficit-ridden coffers, and has cost the lives of more servicemen than civilians on 9/11. That's a critically important psychological milestone, and it becomes harder and harder for the 9/11 drum to be thrashed every time our government needs a show of support for ongoing military ventures and misadventures.

Bush is planning billions of dollers worth of tax cuts for the wealthiest 1%. He clearly doesn't think he is short of spending money. However, with the petro doller at risk from Iran's Euro oil Bourse, it could actually be cheaper for the U.S. economy to bomb them into submission than it would be to allow them kill their cash cow. http://www.energybulletin.net/12125.html

The army is having a near-impossible time maintaining its recruitment drive despite a raft of new measures (expanding the GI bill, two pay-grade increases for all new enlisted men who've picked their MOS, a removal of stop-loss). Despite the raft of benefits and pay, people just aren't volunteering any more.

That's where the 'No Child Left Behind act" comes in. They're increasing the 'poor draft' by making it impossible for disadvantaged kids to graduate highschool while at the same time making it manditory for all public schools to allow Army Recruiters unprecedented access to their students. http://www.motherjones.com/news/outfront/2002/11/ma_153_01.html

Mid-level NCOs and junior officers are quitting at a faster rate since the fall of Saigon- the effects of our error of policy in Iraq will occupy the attention of our military long after the last boot leaves Iraqi soil. If Pat Tillman were still alive, even he probably wouldn't volunteer at this stage. With 18 of our infantry battalions in the field and in desperate need of rotation/relief every 6 months, it is inconceivable that another ground campaign could take place as much as the neocons and possibly even the President wished we could.

That's why they're not planning a ground invasion. This is an administration world famous for it's lack of long term military planning. They are over optimistic about their military ability in the short term, and they can always rely on their last resort, the draft, if things get too hairy. Don't worry about bad PR, the U.S. media will play along as usual.

2) Strategic considerations. Attacking North Korea, a nuclear-capable nation with over a hundred batteries of artillery and rockets aimed at Seoul, is strategically unworkable. At the slightest hint of military action, our closest ally in NE Asia would summarily become toast, to say nothing of what Japan, China and Russia would do.

Attacking Iran will inflame the whole of Shia Islam, which now occupys a large crescent shape in the Middle East- stretching from Hezbollah in S. Lebanon, through Iraq, through Iran and as far as Afghanistan/W. Pakistan. Iran could make things damn near impossible for us and our allies in Iraq. The only thing that's stopping them from completely screwing us in Iraq are two big incentives- that Iraq will wind up a Shia state friendly to Iran, and that Iran can avoid pariah status by finding a peaceful way out of the nuclear connundrum. The latter being more important, they'd gladly sacrifice or dent the former for the sake of their security. The same goes for attacking Hezbollah, in addition to screwing Israel even further, our interests would hardly be served by the government of Iran passing along weapons-grade plutonium from their breeder reactors to Hezbollah's military arm.

I know that, You know that, every sane person in the military knows that, But the American government have been operating on the principle that they can control everything with violence for the last 6 years. They are gambling, with other people's lives, that the Iranian regime wouldn't escalate the war beyond it's own borders because to do so might invoke the nuclear wrath of Israel or the United States.

3) Domestic political considerations. I've gone from being in an insignificant minority of 21% to a comfortable majority of 57% of Americans that think the Iraq war isn't worth fighting. I'd be extremely surprised if that doesn't affect the November mid-terms at all. If the Dems can wrest control of just one of the two Houses back, it'll mean subpoena power, and then it's all over. Just look at what a Republican Congress managed to use their subpoena power for with Clinton (Whitewater, Lewinskygate and Paula-gate) and imagine what that power would do to the raft of errors, miscalculations and misjudgements that this administration has tallied during its war on terror.

Wag the dog. the American voting public are about as indoctrinated as any people in the world. As soon as the bombs start to fall the 'Support our troops' banners will begin to wave.
As it stands, the republicans are looking at losing control of the House anyway, so they have very little to lose. (by the way, in american politics, the re-election rate is consistantly above 90% for congress, and above 80% for senators.
So the individual politicians are unlikely to be too worried about their own jobs being put at risk.

Fighting an unpopular war means that bland assurances of victory are no longer enough, oversight will ensure that the right policy will be forced down the throat of the executive. As bitter a pill as that would be for the White House, I very much doubt that any further military action will even be on the table- to say nothing of how it will affect ongoing interventions

Are you sure a war against Iran would be unpopular from the start? In american politics, all wars start out as popular, and then most of them become unpopular when the truth starts to filter through to the public. Polls carried out this year indicated that 6 out of 10 americans favoured military intervention against Iran http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=HAS20060217&articleId=1998
And if the entire U.S. media were in support of an invasion, such public support would almost certainly be sustained. But even if the Public was against an attack, that wouldn't stop the government from proceeding. In the Iraq war, No member of the Coalition other than america or Israel had public support above 11% for participation.
4) Legal/international concerns.

Internationally, the effect of the Iraq war has been well documented. It has radicalised a far larger number of people than would otherwise have been so affected and has distanced or alienated us from allied Islamic nations that will be essential to finally defeat terrorism. Even Pervez Musharraf, our own little pet dictator in Pakistan has started distancing himself from policy he once considered indispensable to his nation's global position. Inflaming the situation further would only make matters worse.

That is why Internationally an American attack against Iran would be Extremely unpopular. But Bush doesn't care about what the international community thinks, and most American citizens don't know about international opinion or facts that have been accepted everywhere but in america.

Yes, the President can take military action for up to 90 days without Congressional authority. However, even assuming none of the above reasoning I've outlined is true, a sustained bombardment period of 90 days just simply wouldn't be enough to get the job done. Even if our bombers were refueled around the clock, it's doubtful we'd be able to find or contain all of the nuclear sites. Moreover, once the bombing begins, a threshold will have been crossed, one that will spell the end for any potential of repairing relations with Iran. Strategically, legally and politically, 90 days just doesn't give the President anything worth using it for.

Bush doesn't have to be finished in 90 days (although he would probably expect to be, 3 months is actually plenty of time to hit all of his identified targets from the air and with long range cruise missiles). If america is committed to a conflict then congress would probably believe they have no choice but to continue and 'stay the course'. It is unlikely Bush would have any workable exit strategy and Americans hate the idea of pulling out of anywhere unless they can claim comprehensive victory.

Try telling that to Arlen Specter or the Senate Judiciary Committee. If they are utterly hostile to his plans for Gitmo, wiretapping and executive authority over a legal process, why do you think on the eve of a mid-term election they would blithely sign off executive authority for military action? The only bigger stick of dynamite Bush could drop is reinstating the draft.

Try telling him what?
The senate judiciary committee are opposed to those Bush programs, but that opposition has done nothing to stop Bush from continuing with them. Bush is still supportive of torturing people even though the supreme court ruled it unconstitutional, and the so called 'Compromise' the international media were talking about last week still allows Bush to continue kidnapping terrorist suspects and using 'non traditional interrogation techniques = torture)
The draft would be a bombshell, but he would just have to follow Herman Goering's tried and trusted method of Declaring a national emergency and then criticising opponents for their lack of patriotism. The American people will allow it to happen. I have talked to many americans about this. they simply don't believe protesting works and they have already grown accustomed to state repression at political protests.

Hobbes

Bob said it best. To add to that Chavez has said any attack on Iran and the oil stops flowing to the US and anyone who sides with the US.

Also hitting Irans nuclear plants is out of the option. If you check them in google you will see they are near populated cities.

Akrasia

well, I hope you guys are right. But if you are, how do you explain this "Prepare to deploy Orders" Command?
And what does america need Minesweepers and aircraft carriers in the persian Gulf for?

Other official sources in the public affairs office of the Navy Department at the Pentagon confirm that this powerful armada is scheduled to arrive off the coast of Iran on or around October 21.

Sgt. Sensible

mike65 wrote:

This feels like a thread started for the sake of an argument.

Heaven forfend. An argument on a message board. How awful. Report bad post. Quick.

mike65 wrote:

Forgot to say No I dont want a war with Iran funnily enough.

Why not?

Hobbes wrote:

Also hitting Irans nuclear plants is out of the option. If you check them in google you will see they are near populated cities.

More proof of their evilness and all the more reason to hit them. At least that's the sort of stuff I'd expect to see in any pre-operation propaganda. I'm a little bit worried about a gulf of tonkin syle incident that would provide a pretext for an attack.

I dunno if there's any truth in this but it's been in the news now and then since last year.

US special forces 'inside Iran'

Iran says its military is prepared for a US strike on its nuclear sites
US commandos are operating inside Iran selecting sites for future air strikes, says the American investigative reporter Seymour Hersh.

In the New Yorker magazine, Hersh says intelligence officials have revealed that Iran is the Bush administration's "next strategic target".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4180087.stm

bonkey

Manic Moran wrote:

Why in God's name would anyone want a war with Iran? Or with anyone, if it can be avoided?

I really don't know, but "if it can be avoided" doesn't seem to have worked as a line of reasoning in recent history that I can see.

On a side note...

Hi Occy...been a while.

mike65

Why not?

I've just checked my armory and its empty. Bush etc may be feeling somewhat similair soon.

Mike.

philologos

No because Iran has done nothing wrong. Would be a waste of resources to do so

Bob the Unlucky Octopus

Wow, this post is going to be too long. Oh well, suck it up politics fans! :eek:

Akrasia wrote:

Priorities my good man. Iran is a much higher on Bush's wish list than even North Korea.

Not even close if you look at it carefully. Iran is a potential nuclear threat, North Korea is an existing one. Iran will be a VITAL partner in ensuring that Iraq's Shia-dominated government remains stable- they are already facing significant threats from a Sunni insurgency- it would be utter child's play for a nation with the resources, regional expertise and know-how of the Revolutionary Guard to tip the country into civil war. The only reason they haven't yet is because they also want certain things from us- eg, Iraq not to interfere in Iranian politics, a piece of our huge trade pie, defence concessions and freedom to operate in international waters near sensitive trade routes (denied to them since 1979). It is therefore HUGELY advantageous to both us and them that we sit down, negotiate, and talk this through.

Also, he only has a short window to attack Iran before they develop a nuclear capability (well, it's 10 years according to most estimates, but if the democrats win the next 2 elections then by the time the republicans get back in they could already have a credible deterrent)

I didn't make it clear in my original post, but Iran is going to get a deterrent of some kind, that is pretty much inevitable. They are not a cash-strapped North Korea that we can simply buy off one piece at a time, nor are they a nation in need of a good-will manouevre to disarm willingly (a la South Africa or Caucasus republics).

Consider things from an Iranian point of view for a moment. You have to the west, Israel with a nuclear deterrent. To the north, Turkey- for all intents and purposes a NATO country, from the Iranian position a European country and barely an Islamic one, sitting underneath NATO's nuclear defence shield (France, the UK, the USA). To the immediate west you have an occupied Iraq with WMD-capable warships, submarines and aircraft stationed there or thereabouts. To the east you have Afghanistan, also western-occupied with similar capabilities present. Further east you have Pakistan, a nuclear capable Sunni nation ruled by a unitary military dictatorship with a horribly suppressed Shia minority (and given the recent pogroms in Waziristan on behalf of the West to find bin Laden you could be forgiven for thinking, if you were an ayatollah that you could be next on Mad Musharraf's list). East of that still you have India, a majority Hindu nation, a secular power and also nuclear-capable on the border of Pakistan. The nearest ally to the east is China, an economic ally of convenience, only an ally because their economy somewhat depends on your oil which has to trickle out through tightly controlled trade routes by sea, or through occupied Afghanistan and its Caspian oil pipeline. To the west, the only thing that coudl be called an ally is Hezbollah, hardly a state power with much influence.

Seen that way, an Iranian nuclear deterrent seems not only inevitable, but from their point of view necessary. The main and over-riding challenge for us (mainly the US, but also the EU, Russia and China) is to convince the Iranians that their security can be provided without nuclear weapons and without humiliating concessions or a perception that they need us infidels to protect their Islamic Revolution's survival. If we can accomplish that, then we've done well, and as I said before, military action is the last thing we need to be contemplating when our government and theirs know that a nuclear-capable Iran is a virtual certainty- not exactly the best way to start off as friends is it?

Bush is planning billions of dollers worth of tax cuts for the wealthiest 1%. He clearly doesn't think he is short of spending money.

It doesn't matter what *he* thinks any more, Congress has to approve his next budget or his sum total of supplementaries this political season will be nil. If he can't even pass a budget, I very much doubt he'll avoid a Congressional veto over any military intervention he's planning for Iran. Remember why Carter lost his second term- he lost Congress first and that lead to him losing the people. On the cuts themselves, he's already made some of those ill-conceived tax cuts permanent, but I haven't seen any evidence that he's planning more.

However, with the petro doller at risk from Iran's Euro oil Bourse, it could actually be cheaper for the U.S. economy to bomb them into submission than it would be to allow them kill their cash cow.

You're not talking about simple military degradation here, you're talking about bombing a country the size of the MidWest into dust just to get at their oil. Now if history has taught us anything it's that you can't bomb people into submission. Everything from the RAF's sputtering Handley-Paige bi-planes bombing, you guessed it, Iraq, in 1920- all the way through the Blitz, to Dresden, Yokohama and perhaps best of all Hanoi/Vietnam; all of this tells us that bombing alone accomplishes little save uniting the population against you.

Plus, I very much doubt it would be "cheaper to bomb them into submission" either. A single week of sustained heavy bombing would be enough money to double our national reserve of crude. A month would be enough to *quadruple* our refined V6 gasoline stockpile. In other words, for less than a third of the cost a third of the time the President is allowed (90 days), we could achieve energy security without dropping a paperclip never mind an LGB. As an aside, even the Iraq war wasn't about oil. If we wanted Saddam's oil, all we had to do was promise to veto any and all resolutions and sanctions passed against him at the Security Council in exchange for him selling us cheap oil, or just giving it to us (which he offered to do, he made the same offer to France and Germany). For more information on the matter and how Saddam manipulated the oil for food programme to try and ensure he remained in power- it's worth checking this out: http://www.acepilots.com/unscam/archives/000744.html

That's where the 'No Child Left Behind act" comes in.

I'm not sure how much you've read or heard about "No Child Left Behind", but the bill essentially provides a system of unified national standards for schools, something European education systems have taken for granted for so long. In fact, that's one of the main reasons our public secondary education is amongst the worst on average in the developed world, because every school district does as it sees fit with only a shrug and a nod at county authorities, barely a wink at state authorities and without even a glance at federal authorities. The bill is a *good* thing, one of the few good things President Bush has done for our country. In fact if I had to name 3 things he's done to make the world a better place, it would be No Child Left Behind (because I'm sure the world is tired of us dumb unedjumacated Americans), the $15 billion AIDS rescue package for Africa (Clinton talked a good deal but never dug deep for more than pocket change), and being the first *EVER* President in the history of our nation to call for a sovreign Palestinian state free within its own discrete national boundaries.

They're increasing the 'poor draft' by making it impossible for disadvantaged kids to graduate highschool

I don't see how it's impossible for *anyone* to graduate highschool. Sure it's harder if you're disadvantaged, but that has nothing to do with the bill in question. If what you're trying to say is that it's mainly kids from a disadvantaged background who are recruited to the military, then that's the price you pay for a volunteer army. I challenge you to show me a SINGLE volunteer force in the world that is mostly made up of the privileged or middle-class. I support the idea of a volunteer army unreservedly- serving and protecting your country should be a matter of choice, commitment and duty- not coercion.

Speaking as an ex-serviceman and ex-infantryman, I can tell you from experience that the army takes kids from poor and disadvantaged backgrounds and gives them opportunities they might otherwise only dream of. College, a degree through the GI bill, traveling to other countries, a life of honor and dignity rather than rotting away in a suburb sniffing glue or eking out a life on minimum wage. Now it's easy to sit here at our computers and talk about "those poor exploited kids", but until you go to the suburbs of Detroit, or Huntsville, or Philly (I visited my mens' families a few times) and see the misery that these kids got themselves out of, I wouldn't be so quick to judge. Think of the number of poor and disadvantaged kids that might well have turned to crime if they hadn't put on the uniform, or the number of them that would have found jobs that weren't outsourced to a dime a day corporate shell call center- and it's a lot harder to think of them as exploited.

while at the same time making it manditory for all public schools to allow Army Recruiters unprecedented access to their students.

In a free society, why shouldn't I be allowed to advertise whatever I want provided it isn't racist or againt a social interest? The restrictions against any type of of recruitment on a public school campus also apply to religious clubs of any kind, and also to any and all employment solicitation. They don't apply however, to sporting scouts or even to the ROTC (reserve officer training corps) programmes.

So a kid can be scouted for a college team, have huge pressure heaped upon him to win a state championship, that same kid can join the ROTC programme and carry a rifle + hunt deer, join a political party, have junior membership of a trade union, but isn't allowed to even speak to an army recruiter on campus? That makes zero sense to me in a free society. Recruiters are allowed full access to schools in all European countries with a volunteer force. No one says much when British army recruiters from the Royal Irish Rangers walk into schools in Belfast during a career day for instance, yet the same thing is even proposed in the United States and people *overseas* get in a huff. You have to admit, from our point of view it does look a bit odd. Not to mention, your source for the ordo mandamus of recruiters in public schools is motherjones.com - hardly a newsworthy source I'm sure you'd agree? I hate questioning sources in good faith, but I'm sure you'd rightly put my a$s in the brig if I linked something from Fox News (aka Rupert Murdoch's "find a crowd and tell them what they want to hear" brand of news reporting).

That's why they're not planning a ground invasion. This is an administration world famous for it's lack of long term military planning.

Speaking now as a *cynical* ex-soldier, I'd be grateful if you could point me in the direction of an administration in our nation's *ENTIRE* history that was world famous for an *abundance* of long term military planning Sarcasm aside, to put it bluntly- despite the radical strategic failures at a DoD overseen by arguably the most incompetent SecDef we've had since Robert MacNamara, I'm assured by friends and former colleagues on the inside that it was no more than a blip. Bad apples, like great visionaries, only come along once in a while. I judge it next to impossible that Rumsfeld will be given anything like as much control over his department as he had pre-Iraq. You can see the marked difference in the way our forces are positioning in Iraq and with the levels of multi-lateral (albeit halting) involvement in Afghanistan.

They are over optimistic about their military ability in the short term, and they can always rely on their last resort, the draft, if things get too hairy.

You really don't know our country that well if you think any president would even think about mentioning the "D" word or that it's even on the table in all but the most dire of national survival emergencies. At a political level, it's dynamite. At a strategic level, it won't work- a coerced force will *never* fight as hard or as long as a well-trained volunteer army. Compare WWII and Vietnam- all the American GIs in WWII were volunteers. To this day the people they liberated speak with pride, joy and gratitude of the young men who volunteered to travel half-way around the world to fight against Axis oppression. Now look at Vietnam in comparison- a drafted volunteer force- ill-trained and under-equipped, and hamstrung politically/strategically, and the differences couldn't be clearer. I'm not talking about the success or failure of the war but the way in which it was fought and remembered. To this day, atrocities like Mai Lai, Agent Orange, mustard gas, napalm and the Phoenix programme are remembered with fear, aversion and for many Americans, lasting shame. A large part of the disaffection of those who lived through the Vietnam era and fought in it, stems from the fact that they were coerced to go and fight.

Don't worry about bad PR, the U.S. media will play along as usual.

You really think so? I was back home when the Abu Ghraib scandal broke. CBS's 60 minutes, the New Yorker's Seymour Hirsch and the Washington Post were fighting tooth and nail to get the story on the air and in print as quickly as possible. The post-9/11 honeymoon truly ended there- all news organizations were asked to suppress this and countless other scandalous stories- if they had complied, you can be sure we'd never have heard a peep about Abu Ghraib. Or indeed about domestic surveillance/wiretapping, or Harriet Myer's neat little stich-up for the Supreme Court nomination, or the whole Scooter Libby + Valerie Plame incident either. In all those cases our media have performed admirably well in exposing scandal and the truth, and the US media has a better history than any I can think of in terms of taking in whistle-blowers and being willing to print/broadcast what they say.

I know that, You know that, every sane person in the military knows that, But the American government have been operating on the principle that they can control everything with violence for the last 6 years.

Now you're going off the rails a bit. Iraq was sold as a quick, cheap and relatively painless way to rid ourselves of a tyrant that was a threat to us, with minimal loss of life and a minimal cost of reconstruction paid for by their own oil production. To say that our entire defence policy rests on controlling people through violence is just absurd. Our military spends more on humanitarian assistance than the next ten countries do COMBINED. When the tidal wives hit Aceh it was Marine Force Evac helicopters that took people to safety and brought in more than 2/3 of the vital supplies. It was US Army engineers that built shelters for more than 50,000 displaced persons in the region and US aid money that fed and clothed many of those affected. If we wanted to control the region with violence, what better opportunity would we have to establish bases, good forward operating bases in SouthEast Asia? It's been a holy grail of the PACFLT (our pacific fleet) ever since the Phillipines made us close Subic Bay and the Japanese told us to get out of Okinawa. Why pass up such a golden opportunity if as you say, our defence policy rests on controlling people through violence?

They are gambling, with other people's lives, that the Iranian regime wouldn't escalate the war beyond it's own borders because to do so might invoke the nuclear wrath of Israel or the United States.

The only thing that would provoke a nuclear response would be an attack in kind by WMDs. We, like the Israelis have a no first-use policy, the only two countries in the world to have put that policy in writing. If what you say is true then not only would we be completely scrapping our MidEast diplomatic protocols, but all of our strategic nuclear ones as well. That assertion is dangerously close to a conspiracy theory.

Wag the dog. the American voting public are about as indoctrinated as any people in the world. As soon as the bombs start to fall the 'Support our troops' banners will begin to wave.

Nothing wrong with supporting your troops, no matter how spotted the cause. Supporting your troops and supporting the policy or government that sent them are two hugely different things. 94% of the American public currently support our troops, yet only 31% support the cause they fight for. For an indoctrinated sheep-like public(of which I am a member), I think that those poll-figures show that remarkably, the much maligned American public have drawn a subtle distinction between the two. I very much doubt you'd find the same distinction let's say...for the UDF or IRA if you polled *their* supporters. If, heaven forbid, there was another attack and it was on Iran- then of course we'll support our troops- their duty forbids them from questioning their task and they will be acting in our name and risking their lives- the least we can do is support them. That's not to say the government would survive though.

As it stands, the republicans are looking at losing control of the House anyway, so they have very little to lose.

On the contrary, they have a hell of a lot to lose. Read my last post again- subpoena power is HUGE. The reason that we've heard so little about the inner workings of the failing policies we're talking about is because the Republican Congress is choosing NOT to subpoena documents or submissions that would undermine their party's president or make them look bad for putting their name to things such as Rumsfeld's pre-emptive strike doctrine, or Alberto Gonzales' torture memo. John McCain aside, no Republican senator has ever publicly commented about their position on these matters, but it's all been documented and sealed at the relevant civil departments. A Democratic Congress would surely subpoena the documents, files and persons in abundance to try and embarass the unholy hell out of the Republicans.

They don't just have a lot to lose, they have a HELL of a lot to lose. A sexual indiscretion and a moment of infidelity was nearly enough to get Clinton on the track to impeachment with subpoena power. What do you honestly think the Special Prosecutor's Office is going to do when presented with the CIA's PDB on Osama bin Laden, or the Scooter Libby leak, or the wiretapping memos, or the minuted meeting with the Saudi ambassador being informed of the Iraq invasion before SecState Colin Powell was ever informed? I'm not talking about a book being published, or leaked bits and pieces + speculation in the newspapers, I'm talking about hard documented evidence of all these events and their inevitable conclusions. Still think they have nothing to lose?

(by the way, in american politics, the re-election rate is consistantly above 90% for congress, and above 80% for senators. So the individual politicians are unlikely to be too worried about their own jobs being put at risk.

A handful of seats seperate the parties in the Senate, and an even smaller percentage seperate them in the House. Roughly a 2.5% swing in seats is needed to carry the House, and about 4% to carry the Senate. Even a 95% re-election rate would mean that Congress could easily change hands with a substantive majority

Are you sure a war against Iran would be unpopular from the start? In american politics, all wars start out as popular, and then most of them become unpopular when the truth starts to filter through to the public. Polls carried out this year indicated that 6 out of 10 americans favoured military intervention against Iran

I'm glad you mentioned that poll, because I was in LA at the time and I remember reading it in the LAT it quite clearly. The article you quote utterly misrepresents the LA Times/Bloomberg polling question. The question put to the American public was- "If Iran developed nuclear weapons, would you favour military intervention?" Given that only 57% said yes, I'd say that shows remarkable restraint. If a rogue state within easy range possessed WMD, I daresay you might just support military intervention also.

Again, the fact that the author of the article misrepresented the poll deliberately doesn't suprise me because of the source. A well known anti-globalization site, and an article written by an Egyptian national, Ghali Hassan who consults for Al-Jazeera television from Australia, also a well-documented apologist for Saddam Hussein. Moreover, the website itself is filled with bias and left-wing bile, not to mention conspiracy theories, some of which doubt Osama bin Laden's very involvement with Al Qaeda and 9/11 (despite the fact he's ADMITTED as much). Glance if you would at the left panel of the page, and you will see "US War Agenda" in the list of links. It reminded me of Fox News' "Terrorist Watch" button they had on their site a while back- even *they* had the decency to take that down when they realized you can only be so biased and sell your product.

And if the entire U.S. media were in support of an invasion, such public support would almost certainly be sustained. But even if the Public was against an attack, that wouldn't stop the government from proceeding. In the Iraq war, No member of the Coalition other than america or Israel had public support above 11% for participation.

If our media has been unflinching about Haditha, Abu Ghraib, Bagram Airbase and other stories that portray our troops (sometimes unfairly in that it gives the impression all soldiers behave this way)- then I very much dobut they'll go any easier if yet another conflict is initiated.

On the popularity question, it matters now because it's an election year. 2006 midterms, 2007 state elections, 2008 the presidential race. There's no escaping popular opinion during an election.

That is why Internationally an American attack against Iran would be Extremely unpopular. But Bush doesn't care about what the international community thinks, and most American citizens don't know about international opinion or facts that have been accepted everywhere but in america.

If we cared nothing for the opinion of the international community, we'd just de-fund the UN, the IMF, the World Bank, and any one of a half-dozen super-state structures that only run because we fund and host most of it. We spend more on international obligations and super-state structures than the entire EU government structure budget + the Council of Europe budget put together. I doubt we'd do any of it if our government truly cared nothing for what others thought. Some Americans do indeed think that this is a big fat waste of money. If billions of your taxpayer's money was being thrown at superstate structures and international aid while New Orleans drowned, you might occasionally wonder from time to time yourself! As it happens, a majority of Americans support the idea, and it doesn't look like we're going to be pulling the plug, despite the odd paradox like Katrina's aftermath.

Bush doesn't have to be finished in 90 days (although he would probably expect to be, 3 months is actually plenty of time to hit all of his identified targets from the air and with long range cruise missiles)

What's your source for this? Unless you used to be a BDA or TargSpec in a national airforce somewhere of course... That is wholly inaccurate. The sustained Desert Shield bombing campaign lasted over 60 days from start to finish, and that was just to degrade the military capability of Iraq. Iran is a larger, more densely populated country and it certainly wouldn't just be military targets being struck if the goal was to shut down the nation's power-grid. You're talking about every single oil-fired power-plant, every potential large power-structure capable of handling the load on multiple nuclear reactors, to say nothing of the risk of fall-out and all hell breaking loose. That's why all this "war with Iran" nonsense is just that- nonsense.

If america is committed to a conflict then congress would probably believe they have no choice but to continue and 'stay the course'.

If that were true you wouldn't have Joe Biden and Jack Murtha calling loudly for a pull-out or redeployment of our forces from Iraq. Biden heads the Foreign Relations committee, Murtha is the senior-most member of the House Armed Services Committee, arguably the most powerful defence commitee on the Hill. "Staying the course" is something we've honestly heard quite enough of, at least those of us old enough to remember having heard that crap before Iraq :P

It is unlikely Bush would have any workable exit strategy and Americans hate the idea of pulling out of anywhere unless they can claim comprehensive victory.

Even though this bombing idea is entirely theoretical, even if it did go ahead...Aerial bombardment by definition requires no exit strategy, that's the point of air power. So the need to "pull out" never arises. As for not pulling out of a place without being victorious, it's worth remembering that part of the reason Al Qaeda attacked us on 9/11 is that they believed that we were vulnerable and didn't have the stomach for a long fight. In one of their training manuals they cite Mogadishu and our withdrawal from there, in another they talked about our "feeble" responses to the attacks on the USS Cole and on our embassies in Africa. The bitter fact of the matter is that while pulling out or having an exit strategy is meaningless when talking about a bombing campaign, the stark truth is that retreat is not an option when dealing with true extremists of this type. It is imperative that we kill or capture their leadership and cut away their grass-roots support with hearts and minds. Part 1 is going excellently, our problem is part 2- ie, winning hearts and minds with ideas rather than physically removing them with cluster bombs.

Try telling him what?

Try telling him the President can simply invent legal reasons for military action and see what he says :P Bear in mind, most countries don't even require a vote in Parliament before declaring war. In the UK and Ireland, declaring war is a prerogative power exercised by the executive. In other words, Tony Blair's vote on the war was an utter sham, he could have done it anyway without even asking Parliament. The same is true of any country with elements of the Westminster model. No president has attempted to expand the powers of the executive this much in the last century, and Arlen Specter is no one's fool- he's famously said that as a lawyer he serves the Constitution first, the Senate second, and his party third.

The senate judiciary committee are opposed to those Bush programs, but that opposition has done nothing to stop Bush from continuing with them.

Of course the oppostion (Dems) haven't done anything Akrasia, they're not in power (yet). His own party however, have done a hell of a lot to hinder him- the recent detention bill was watered down to almost nothing because of rebellion within the Republican party, an organization known for its iron-clad discipline. That tells me that our system, however fraught, is slowly but surely getting the job done.

Bush is still supportive of torturing people even though the supreme court ruled it unconstitutional, and the so called 'Compromise' the international media were talking about last week still allows Bush to continue kidnapping terrorist suspects and using 'non traditional interrogation techniques = torture)

Whether or not he personally supports torture is of no consequence if the Supreme Court has ruled against it. More to the point, I haven't found a statement yet where he explicitly endorses torture. Granted, bellicose members of his cabinet have tried to find loopholes here and there, but nothing that would stand up in court. We are a nation of laws first and foremost, it is inconceivable that a President would contravene a Supreme Court ruling, I doubt I'll ever live to see it happen.

As for kidnapping terrorist suspects- if you truly believe our intelligence services are the only ones doing this, that's a naive point of view to take. The reality is that arrest and trial within a legal framework is impossible if you want to protect your sources and methods. This is why in the UK wiretap evidence is not admissible in court- not to protect the accused, but to protect the sources that put him in the dock. Intelligence services by and large, operate outside normal legal frameworks, much of their work is plausibly deniable or simply undetectable. Where I agree with you is that a due process of law needs to be adhered to, which is where this President has gone so badly wrong.

The draft would be a bombshell, but he would just have to follow Herman Goering's tried and trusted method of Declaring a national emergency and then criticising opponents for their lack of patriotism.

This isn't 1930s Germany, there hasn't been a fire in the Reichstag and we aren't on the brink of desolation or desperation. There is exploitation of fear to achieve wider political goals, but if you can find me a country whose government doesn't exploit the public's fears to expand its authority, let me know, I want to move there. As far as I know, such a place does not exist- the best we can do is to observe facts for ourselves and come to our own conclusions, and thank our lucky stars that we live in a free society where we are allowed to do so.

The American people will allow it to happen. I have talked to many americans about this. they simply don't believe protesting works and they have already grown accustomed to state repression at political protests.

Many Americans are filled with apathy, but that's no different to most other places. If you look at the numbers, we have larger turnout over our election cycles than all but a handful of European countries. Of course popular protest doesn't work unless it's on a huge scale. A couple hundred thugs throwing petrol bombs at an anti-globalization rally isn't going to halt globalization. If however, those self-same thugs got jobs, incomes and engaged in the political process, that's a kind of protest that *does* yield results. As for state repression at political protests, I've been to several, and the only "repression" I've seen is where the authorities have been forced to step in to control violent elements in the crowd. I'd be careful about using the phrase "state repression" too- the right to protest in public is better protected in constitutional law in the United States than in any other country, including the UK and Ireland.

The only relatively unfettered right protected by the European Convention of Human Rights are the rights to be free from torture and freedom of expression. Freedom of association and assembly are actually far more tightly controlled by legislation/common law in both the UK *and* Ireland. It's the reason why we still haven't been able to ban the American Nazi Party, the KKK or Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam, and the UK is able to ban groups like Combat 18, White Wolves and Al-Mujahirun. Granted some of our rights are eroding, but a temporary erosion of rights is the norm in times of crisis.

If however, you think we'll simply allow another war to happen, you couldn't be more wrong- it is strategically, politically and economically unworkable and we won't support it. A simple series of mistruths and political manipulation was enough for us to demand Nixon's resignation as head of state, government and of the armed services. I doubt you could find me a British sovreign or an Irish President that abdicated or resigned unless they were forced to by procedure rather than their people.

well, I hope you guys are right. But if you are, how do you explain this "Prepare to deploy Orders" Command? And what does america need Minesweepers and aircraft carriers in the persian Gulf for?

To conclude, all of this is just theoretical mumbo to be honest. We're rattling our sabers by repositioning a few troops, Ahmedinejad is mouthing off here and there, but that's all for show too. He has no real power in Iran, the political structure of Iran is largely a cypher- real power is wielded by a council of ayatollahs who broadly dictate the policy ground he occupies, he's just reading from the playbook he's been given. Which is to stall, negotiate and delay until he's negotiating from a position of greater strength. Our role simply seems to be trying to resolve this diplomatically, and when (not if) they go nuclear, we'll already have started a constructive dialogue and have ourselves positioned to deal the next hand in a game where Iran's joined the nuke club.

As for why we need forces in the region- if Iraq, the instability of the Middle East and other problems weren't reason enough, there simply isn't another nation that has the resources to provide a credible deterrent in the region. The last time we down-graded our fleet deployments, it emboldened Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait. The last time we did the same for PACFLT, North Korea tested a missile. The sad truth is, without a military presence capable of giving nations a moment of serious pause, the stability many regions enjoy would rapidly degrade.

Frederico

If there is such a thing as "winning" internet arguments, I think Bob would take the biscuit.. Bob that is some post, I couldn't make it all the way through, good points but dear god just too long.

Sand

If there is such a thing as "winning" internet arguments, I think Bob would take the biscuit.. Bob that is some post, I couldn't make it all the way through, good points but dear god just too long.

I read it, in summary Occys right and any point raised by Akrasia was pretty much demolished.

Memnoch

bob, I enjoyed reading your post, but there are a couple of points I'm still a bit unclear on.

You point out all the reasons why invading Iran seems to be implausible and woulnd't be accepted back home. But to me invading Iraq seemed equally implausible and still bush and the fox news spin network managed to pull it off.

You seem to think that Bush will act in the overall best interests of america. I don't think he did that when he invaded Iraq, and if his pay masters decide it's worth invading Iran i'm sure he will do that as well.

Also with regards to your point about the oil. I dont think weapons manufacturers care much if the money that pays for their weapons could be used to quadruple the crude oil reserves. Not to mention the multi-billion dollar contracts for "reconstruction."

Also you're right about America happily supporting international institutions such as the U.N. But so far as I can see the support is done primarily to the effect and limit of America's gain. The UN has become a tool for america to use when it sees fit and denounce when it doesn't. All it is is a forum for dialogue and international bullying.

Don't think anyone wants a war.

On the other hand, I don't want to see Ahmadinejad develop his country's nuclear capabilities.

If limited strikes on the sites themselves were possible, to decommision them or set the project back, then maybe it's something that should be considered. On the other hand, I guess firing rockets into a nuclear facility, particularly in light of the incredible inaccuracy of American 'smart bombs' in recent campaigns, might just lead to another Chernobyl and may not be feasible.

philologos

Nuclear capabilities = Nuclear power for his people, thats all this has amounted to.
the US and Israel should decommission nuclear weapons before they even discuss about decommissioning anyone else anyway. Although I'm confident Iran has no nuclear weapons, remember Iraq and the WMD's what did that ever amount to.

Manic Moran

Bravo, Bob. I have a couple of minor nit-picks, but generally, well done.

Despite the raft of benefits and pay, people just aren't volunteering any more. Mid-level NCOs and junior officers are quitting at a faster rate since the fall of Saigon- the effects of our error of policy in Iraq will occupy the attention of our military long after the last boot leaves Iraqi soil.

Yes, and no. The drain of junior officers and mid-grade NCOs predates the Iraq war. They were simply getting far better opportunities in the improved civilian economy. Why work your ass off in Ft Hood for a certain amount of money when you could earn as much (if not more) money working 9-5 at home? This is why those pay grades have had the largest hikes in pay for the last eight to ten years or so. Overall retention rates of troops coming back from deployment (particularly the combat arms) are remaining very high. It's recruiting to fill the slots left by that 'routine' number who get out/retire that's falling short, and that the military will be dealing with for years to come.

With 18 of our infantry battalions in the field and in desperate need of rotation/relief every 6 months

We do year-long tours, except the Marines who do 6-7 months. Even the peace-keeping tours like Kosovo and Sinai have been extended from 6 months to a year, I think it's to get the 'money's worth' out of the Guardsmen who are sent there.

There are a lot of misconceptions about the make-up of the US Military, "Ah, they're sending poor black kids to fight" or whatever, which are either wrong, or hypocritical, such as "recruiters should not go to schools": I remember two Irish Army Captains coming in to speak to us at my school in Rathgar to pitch the military as a job, I don't recall anyone saying anything against it.

But to me invading Iraq seemed equally implausible and still bush and the fox news spin network managed to pull it off.

IMO, the invasion was quite possible, what they failed to pull off/Ballsed-up was the occupation. It wouldn't have been hard to convince people that Iraq was easy/worthy, as the US had wiped the floor with them militarily only ten years prior, and Saddam was universally regarded as a bit of a bad egg of limited popularity with his people. Compare to Iran which has a generally popular government, and the US has not previously beaten handily, it becomes a much harder sell, even before the effects of dealing with Iraq right now are taken into account.

NTM

bonkey

Frederico wrote:

If there is such a thing as "winning" internet arguments, I think Bob would take the biscuit.. Bob that is some post, I couldn't make it all the way through, good points but dear god just too long.

And to make it worse, the Boards: The Gathering card has gone missing

Akrasia

Bob the Unlucky Octopus wrote:

Wow, this post is going to be too long. Oh well, suck it up politics fans! :eek:


Not even close if you look at it carefully. Iran is a potential nuclear threat, North Korea is an existing one.

You are assuming that defence is Bush's biggest priority. I don't think it is. N.K. might be a military threat (and they're actually not even that because they are not an externally beligerant nation) But Iran is an economic threat, and BushCo are more worried about dollers being lost than lives.

Iran will be a VITAL partner in ensuring that Iraq's Shia-dominated government remains stable- they are already facing significant threats from a Sunni insurgency- it would be utter child's play for a nation with the resources, regional expertise and know-how of the Revolutionary Guard to tip the country into civil war. The only reason they haven't yet is because they also want certain things from us- eg, Iraq not to interfere in Iranian politics, a piece of our huge trade pie, defence concessions and freedom to operate in international waters near sensitive trade routes (denied to them since 1979). It is therefore HUGELY advantageous to both us and them that we sit down, negotiate, and talk this through.

Yes it would. But that would mean america would have to make concessions, and Bush hasn't made a single concession to anyone since he took office. Bush invaded Iraq for several reasons, one of those was to secure a military base from which to influence other middle eastern countries.

Consider things from an Iranian point of view for a moment. You have to the west, Israel with a nuclear deterrent. To the north, Turkey- for all intents and purposes a NATO country, from the Iranian position a European country and barely an Islamic one, sitting underneath NATO's nuclear defence shield (France, the UK, the USA). To the immediate west you have an occupied Iraq with WMD-capable warships, submarines and aircraft stationed there or thereabouts. To the east you have Afghanistan, also western-occupied with similar capabilities present. Further east you have Pakistan, a nuclear capable Sunni nation ruled by a unitary military dictatorship with a horribly suppressed Shia minority (and given the recent pogroms in Waziristan on behalf of the West to find bin Laden you could be forgiven for thinking, if you were an ayatollah that you could be next on Mad Musharraf's list). East of that still you have India, a majority Hindu nation, a secular power and also nuclear-capable on the border of Pakistan. The nearest ally to the east is China, an economic ally of convenience, only an ally because their economy somewhat depends on your oil which has to trickle out through tightly controlled trade routes by sea, or through occupied Afghanistan and its Caspian oil pipeline. To the west, the only thing that coudl be called an ally is Hezbollah, hardly a state power with much influence.

agreed

Seen that way, an Iranian nuclear deterrent seems not only inevitable, but from their point of view necessary. The main and over-riding challenge for us (mainly the US, but also the EU, Russia and China) is to convince the Iranians that their security can be provided without nuclear weapons and without humiliating concessions or a perception that they need us infidels to protect their Islamic Revolution's survival. If we can accomplish that, then we've done well, and as I said before, military action is the last thing we need to be contemplating when our government and theirs know that a nuclear-capable Iran is a virtual certainty- not exactly the best way to start off as friends is it? [/quote]
Agreed, But that's not the point. America will not tolerate a Nuclear Armed Iran. They don't see things reasonably like the rest of the world do. If Iran gets Nuclear weapons, then Israel will lose their military advantage and america would face a much more dangerous opponent in any possible conflict into the future. They only have their limited window of opportunity to strike them while they are relatively weak, even if it's a politically inopportune moment

It doesn't matter what *he* thinks any more, Congress has to approve his next budget or his sum total of supplementaries this political season will be nil. If he can't even pass a budget, I very much doubt he'll avoid a Congressional veto over any military intervention he's planning for Iran. Remember why Carter lost his second term- he lost Congress first and that lead to him losing the people. On the cuts themselves, he's already made some of those ill-conceived tax cuts permanent, but I haven't seen any evidence that he's planning more.

If he can get this underway before he has to submit a budget then he can lock the United states into the conflict and then congress will have to vote to give resources to the military. It's a simple strategy, very much like the strategy used by General Jack D Ripper in Dr Strangelove. Go to the point of no return and then force everyone to roll in behind you.

You're not talking about simple military degradation here, you're talking about bombing a country the size of the MidWest into dust just to get at their oil. Now if history has taught us anything it's that you can't bomb people into submission. Everything from the RAF's sputtering Handley-Paige bi-planes bombing, you guessed it, Iraq, in 1920- all the way through the Blitz, to Dresden, Yokohama and perhaps best of all Hanoi/Vietnam; all of this tells us that bombing alone accomplishes little save uniting the population against you.

I know that, you know that, but do the nutjobs who are forcing the War on Terror know that? They claimed the People of Iraq would greet Americans as liberators. They don't live in the real world.

Plus, I very much doubt it would be "cheaper to bomb them into submission" either. A single week of sustained heavy bombing would be enough money to double our national reserve of crude. A month would be enough to *quadruple* our refined V6 gasoline stockpile. In other words, for less than a third of the cost a third of the time the President is allowed (90 days), we could achieve energy security without dropping a paperclip never mind an LGB. As an aside, even the Iraq war wasn't about oil. If we wanted Saddam's oil, all we had to do was promise to veto any and all resolutions and sanctions passed against him at the Security Council in exchange for him selling us cheap oil, or just giving it to us (which he offered to do, he made the same offer to France and Germany). For more information on the matter and how Saddam manipulated the oil for food programme to try and ensure he remained in power- it's worth checking this out: http://www.acepilots.com/unscam/archives/000744.html

I didn't say it was about cheap oil? It's not, It's about who gets the benefit from the Oil Economy. It's a massive massive transfer of wealth. The costs of the war are paid by the American and Global tax payers, and the profits are held by the richest 1%.
If you get a chance, read Greg palast's book, Armed Madhouse, there's a summary of his arguments here http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/4354269.stm

I'm not sure how much you've read or heard about "No Child Left Behind", but the bill essentially provides a system of unified national standards for schools, something European education systems have taken for granted for so long. In fact, that's one of the main reasons our public secondary education is amongst the worst on average in the developed world, because every school district does as it sees fit with only a shrug and a nod at county authorities, barely a wink at state authorities and without even a glance at federal authorities. The bill is a *good* thing, one of the few good things President Bush has done for our country. In fact if I had to name 3 things he's done to make the world a better place, it would be No Child Left Behind (because I'm sure the world is tired of us dumb unedjumacated Americans), the $15 billion AIDS rescue package for Africa (Clinton talked a good deal but never dug deep for more than pocket change), and being the first *EVER* President in the history of our nation to call for a sovreign Palestinian state free within its own discrete national boundaries.

No it's not! Do some more research please. The No Child Left Behind act is about categorising children into usefull members of the U.S. economy, and Potential cannon fodder. The Act didn't give a single penny in extra resources to help disadvantaged children, in fact, the costs of implimenting the standardised tests came out of each schools annual budget. Here's an exerpt from Greg Palast's book (it's a bit long but it's worth reading)

The President ordered testing and more testing to hunt down, identify and target millions of children too expensive, too heavy a burden, to educate. Here’s how No Child Left Behind works in the classrooms of Houston and Chicago and New York. Under the No Child Left law, millions of eight-year-olds are given lists of words and phrases. They try to read. Then they are graded like USDA beef: some prime, some OK, many (most in fact) failed. Once the eight-year-olds are stamped and sorted, the parents of children with the test mark of Cain await fulfillment of the President’s tantalizing promise, to “make sure they have better options.” But there are none. In the delicious doublespeak of class war, when the tests have winnowed out the chaff and kids stamped failed, No Child Left results in that child being left behind in the same grade to repeat the failure another year. And another year and another year. Hint: When decoding politicians’ babble, to get to the real agenda, don’t read their lips, read their budgets. And in his budget, our President couldn’t spare one thin dime for education, not ten cents. Mr. Big Spender provided for a derisory 8.4 cents on the dollar of the cost of primary and secondary schools. Congress appropriated a halfpenny of the nation’s income — just one-half of one percent of America’s twelve-trillion-dollar GDP — for primary and secondary education. President Bush actually requested less. While Congress succeeded in prying out an itty-bitty increase in voted funding, that doesn’t mean the cash is actually given to the schools. Fifteen states have sued the federal government on the grounds that the cost of new testing imposed on schools, $3.9 billion, eats up the entire new funding budgeted for No Child Left.

I can’t say that Mr. Bush doesn’t offer “better options” to the kids stamped “failed.” Under No Child Left, if enough kids flunk the tests, their school is marked a failure and its students win the right, under the law, to transfer to any successful school in their district. You can’t provide more opportunity than that. But Bush does not provide it, he promises it, without putting up a single penny to make it happen. In New York, in 2004, a third of a million students earned the right to transfer to better schools — in which there were only 8,000 places open. New York is typical. Nationwide, only one out of two hundred students eligible to transfer manage to do it. Well, there’s always the army. (That “option” did not go unnoticed: No Child has a special provision requiring schools to open their doors to military recruiters.) There’s not a lot of loot for schoolkids in the No Child Left law, but Barbara Bush’s kids made out just fine. Her youngest, Neil Bush, jumped into the No Child biz big time. A company he founded in 1999 in Texas, Ignite! (exclamation point included), promotes robo-teaching. Instead of teachers, kids are plunked in front of a TV screen and blasted with automated lessons. It’s cheap and, I’ll admit, quite effective for communicating rote information and preparing children for a world in which they cannot deviate from the orders coming from machines and screens. This may have been what attracted the education ministries of Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf to purchase the robot teaching system, though one wonders if the sheikdoms see non-educational bonuses in drop- ping a few petro-dollars in a Bush child’s pocket. Neil also found an education reform soulmate in exiled Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky, who met with Neil in Riga, Latvia, in September 2005. Berezovsky is advising Ignite! with a particular eye to the Russian market, where he himself cannot go because of some trouble with the law. (The meeting won’t be repeated, at least in Riga. When the meeting between the First Brother and the fugitive was disclosed, the Latvian government banned Berezovsky’s reentry.)

No Child Left does provide help to underfinanced schools in the form of Supplemental Educational Services (SES). In the old days, this was called “tutoring,” but that’s when we energized community volunteers. Today, it’s big business for millions. If several students in a school fail tests, the federal government requires schools to hire tutors from these for-profit outfits. Our President’s federal contribution to these “supplemental services”? Zero. So, how is it funded? A school must pay out 20% of their “Title 1″: fund, their tiny federal subsidy, to hire tutors from private companies. That is, schools must cut back their own teaching staff to pay for the contracts with private tutoring companies. And who are these tutors? By federal law, teachers must be credentialed, trained and tested — but not the tutors who replace them. Their qualifications are…well, there’s the handyman in my apartment building. He was hired by schools-for-profit operator Princeton Review to teach high school math. They contracted to give him the high school math job after he passed a fifth-grade arithmetic proficiency test. Handyman “Joe” (I promised not to use his real name) is quite a bright guy, who in fact knows geometry and trigonometry. But, he said of his fellow tutors, “Half of them about to be sent to high schools could barely handle it — the fifth grade arithmetic.” The Princeton crew gets 20 hours of training versus a minimum of 1,000 hours for the teachers they replace. But teaching isn’t the job. Selling is. “Joe” told us: Last night I accidentally showed up at a training for site directors who are supposed to be educational specialists acting as principals over their teacher-tutors. The site directors were being prepped for “Operation Rapid Deployment.” I **** you not. The Princeton Review now has two weeks to “sell” the “product” to as many “clients” as possible, which means all sorts of promises about one-on- one tutoring (that may or may not be forthcoming).

The imperative is to hire as many local kids and parents as possible, all who get paid per student signed. And the charge is taken out of the school budgets. The more failures, the more cash for the privateers. And the most cash is had when a school fails continuously for five years. Its “option” then is to fire all its teachers or to turn the school over to a private company. This privatization is a money tree for Edison. Not Thomas Edison, the light bulb guy, but Edison Schools, Inc., a company that lifted the brainy man’s name to put over their scheme to eliminate public education in favor of for-profit “charter” schooling for all. Edison Inc. claims their teach-for-the-money theories proved successful in Sherman, Texas, the full-takeover contract they landed in Gov. George Bush’s test run of privatization in 1995. The company advertised worldwide that it boosted the little Texans’ test scores by 5%. But I talked to Sherman’s superintendent of schools, who, the company fails to mention in its sales pitch, ran them out of town in 2000. The superintendent, Phillip Garrett, told me, “They were more about money than teaching.” A lot more money. Sherman schools had to pay an additional $4 million to cover Edison’s unpaid bills for local services. The promise of better education at no extra cost, the ultimate Free Lunch of the school privatizers, was bogus. And the “5%” improvement was called “dishonest”…by Edison’s own president, Benno Schmidt. (Schmidt, in an interview, told me that anyone who claims student improvement with less than five years’ experience is “dishonest” — not realizing he was commenting on his own company’s sales material.) And Sherman’s superintendent said Edison kids fell behind other Texans — no small feat. The President offers one more “option,” one more magic trick left for the rubes in front of their tubes to make them believe that the privileged will share the advantages of education with the rest of us:

http://www.gregpalast.com/no-childs-behind-left

Speaking as an ex-serviceman and ex-infantryman, I can tell you from experience that the army takes kids from poor and disadvantaged backgrounds and gives them opportunities they might otherwise only dream of.

I would call most of those opportunities Nightmares, not dreams.
56% of Gulf War veterans are now on Disability. Do you call that opportunity?
http://www.wagingpeace.org/articles/2004/08/15_bollyn_depleted-uranium-blamed-cancer.htm

In a free society, why shouldn't I be allowed to advertise whatever I want provided it isn't racist or againt a social interest? The restrictions against any type of of recruitment on a public school campus also apply to religious clubs of any kind, and also to any and all employment solicitation. They don't apply however, to sporting scouts or even to the ROTC (reserve officer training corps) programmes.

It's not advertising, it's harrassment. The No Child Left Behind Act mandates that the Names addresses and contact details of every public school student be given to army recruiters.They repeatedly approach people on the street, phone them up, send them letters.. That is harrassment, and it is illegal for any private corporation to do that in Ireland without the consent of the person being targetted. Also, there have been hundreds of cases of Army recruiters sexually harrassing female students (including dozens of cases of rape)

So a kid can be scouted for a college team, have huge pressure heaped upon him to win a state championship, that same kid can join the ROTC programme and carry a rifle + hunt deer, join a political party, have junior membership of a trade union, but isn't allowed to even speak to an army recruiter on campus? That makes zero sense to me in a free society. Recruiters are allowed full access to schools in all European countries with a volunteer force. No one says much when British army recruiters from the Royal Irish Rangers walk into schools in Belfast during a career day for instance, yet the same thing is even proposed in the United States and people *overseas* get in a huff. You have to admit, from our point of view it does look a bit odd. Not to mention, your source for the ordo mandamus of recruiters in public schools is motherjones.com - hardly a newsworthy source I'm sure you'd agree? I hate questioning sources in good faith, but I'm sure you'd rightly put my a$s in the brig if I linked something from Fox News (aka Rupert Murdoch's "find a crowd and tell them what they want to hear" brand of news reporting).

Having a stand at a careers day is completely different from sending full time recruiters out to harrass people 52 weeks of the year.

Speaking now as a *cynical* ex-soldier, I'd be grateful if you could point me in the direction of an administration in our nation's *ENTIRE* history that was world famous for an *abundance* of long term military planning Sarcasm aside, to put it bluntly- despite the radical strategic failures at a DoD overseen by arguably the most incompetent SecDef we've had since Robert MacNamara, I'm assured by friends and former colleagues on the inside that it was no more than a blip. Bad apples, like great visionaries, only come along once in a while. I judge it next to impossible that Rumsfeld will be given anything like as much control over his department as he had pre-Iraq. You can see the marked difference in the way our forces are positioning in Iraq and with the levels of multi-lateral (albeit halting) involvement in Afghanistan.

Rumsfeld is still the SecDef, Cheney is still the VP, Bush is still POTUS. Bush will not appoint a 'Dove' to replace rumsfeld if rumsfeld is pushed out. If anything, Bush has a policy of firing everyone who would disagree with his warped analysis and replacing them with political cronies. you've just proven my point. These guys pay no consideration to Long term strategic planning, and this is why they it is so plausible that they would attack Iran despite it being such an incredibly bad idea.

You really don't know our country that well if you think any president would even think about mentioning the "D" word or that it's even on the table in all but the most dire of national survival emergencies.

Bush wouldn't go in with the intention of needing the draft. He's delusional. He thinks he can achieve his aims with a Bombing Campaign.
Full scale war with Iran would constitute a Dire national security emergency.He wouldn't mention the D word until the Draft was completely necessary, and then it would be too late to object. This is purely Dr Strangelove stuff i know, but that movie was based on real events.

Sorry, I've run out of time. I'll address the rest later

Manic Moran

Akrasia wrote:

Bush invaded Iraq for several reasons, one of those was to secure a military base from which to influence other middle eastern countries.

Kuwait didn't count? I'd say Iraq was pretty influenced from there.

I don't think it is. N.K. might be a military threat (and they're actually not even that because they are not an externally beligerant nation)

You've not visted South Korea at all, have you? I've never seen such a heavily fortified place in my life, that includes the Inter-German border. The Japanese aren't too comfortable with the DPRK either. I'm sure that all the concern is over the DPRK's commitment to peace. (Fortunately, though belligerant, they have little power projection capability)

Agreed, But that's not the point. America will not tolerate a Nuclear Armed Iran. They don't see things reasonably like the rest of the world do.

How many reasonable rest-of-the-world countries have come out in support of a nuclear-armed Iran, out of interest? Barring, possibly, Venezuela. There may be little agreement between other countries and the US as to how best to try to prevent it, but the goal is pretty uncontroversial.

I didn't say it was about cheap oil? It's not, It's about who gets the benefit from the Oil Economy. It's a massive massive transfer of wealth. The costs of the war are paid by the American and Global tax payers, and the profits are held by the richest 1%.

Why don't you buy shares in Exxon or Shell then? That way when the oil profits roll in, you profit too! I really need to buy into some of the defense corporations as well, now I think of it. No reason I shouldn't profit together with the rest of the 1% just because I'm too lazy to buy the shares, eh?

Back later.. being dragged out to a Greyhound Rescue Meeting.

Sgt. Sensible

Bob the Unlucky Octopus wrote:

Many Americans are filled with apathy, but that's no different to most other places. If you look at the numbers, we have larger turnout over our election cycles than all but a handful of European countries.

I don't know if this is true or not. Is it?

Of course popular protest doesn't work unless it's on a huge scale.

Wrong there. According to wikipedia

The February 15, 2003 anti-war protest was a co-ordinated day of protests across the world against the imminent invasion of Iraq. Millions of people protested in approximately 800 cities around the world. According to BBC News, between six and ten million people took part in protests in up to sixty countries over the weekend of the 15th and 16th; other estimates range from eight million to thirty million.

[....]

Anti-war groups across the world organised public protests. According to the French academic Dominique Reynié between the 3rd of January and 12th of April 2003, 36 million people across the globe took part in almost 3,000 anti-war protests,the demonstrations on February 15, 2003 being the largest and most prolific.

The invasion of Iraq began on March 20, 2003.

The biggest protests took place in Europe. The protest in Rome involved around 3 million people, and is listed in the 2004 Guinness Book of World Records as the largest anti-war rally in history.

Of course those of us who opposed the war have been proved 100% right but ultimately the largest protests in the history of the world, while impressively symbolic were manifestly a waste of time and were of no practical use.

Why would similarly enormous protests have any effect on a decision to attack Iran? Any more bright ideas?

A couple hundred thugs throwing petrol bombs at an anti-globalization rally isn't going to halt globalization. If however, those self-same thugs got jobs, incomes and engaged in the political process, that's a kind of protest that *does* yield results.

I know a few of these thugs actually as I live in Berlin where people take stuff very seriously and yes they do have jobs, they tend to engage in voluntary community work and they're generally a lot more political and informed on many issues than someone (like me) who just votes in every election. Tired old cliches and stereotypes detract somewhat from your otherwise perfectly well reasoned post.

As for state repression at political protests, I've been to several, and the only "repression" I've seen is where the authorities have been forced to step in to control violent elements in the crowd. I'd be careful about using the phrase "state repression" too- the right to protest in public is better protected in constitutional law in the United States than in any other country, including the UK and Ireland.

What were you demonstrating about and how large were the protests? I can think of umpteen instances of police attacking peaceful protesters. You might want to read this article.

MIAMI, Aug. 10, 2006 — Call it unusual optimism, but Elizabeth Ritter counted herself lucky by day's end on Nov. 20, 2003.

On that day, the South Florida lawyer says, she was shot with rubber bullets at least four times by Miami-area law enforcement officers who were out in force to control protesters demonstrating against a free trade summit.

One bullet struck Ritter in the face.

[...]

The controversial tape of the officers laughing was shot by the Broward Sheriff's Office one day after Ritter was shot and was produced in response to a request by the civilian review board.

It shows a meeting of Broward Sheriff's deputies discussing their own response to the protests.

The Broward Sheriff's Office identified police Sgt. Michael Kallman as the officer who had discussed Ritter with the group of assembled deputies.

The tape shows no reprimand for the use of force as Ritter had hoped. Kallman and the deputies laugh about the incident.

"The lady in the red dress," Kallman says on the tape, to cheers and laughter. "I don't know who got her, but it went right through the sign and hit her smack dab in the middle of the head."

Another officer can be heard off-camera, asking, "Do I get a piece of her red dress?"

Victor

Pa ElGrande wrote:

Now look at the Iranian economy, this is a country that exports oil and yet has to import diesel and subsidise it...the high oil prices are hurting them since they've been forced to ration diesel since August.

This is largely down to a lack of Iranian refining capacity.

Manic Moran

OK, I'm back from the greyhound picnic. Interesting day.

Anyway, continuing on, and with reference to the No Child Left Behind Act:

I'm not going to worry too much about the academic success of the act, as it hasn't concerned me much (though the biggest problem they're finding here in California is a lot more stress is being put on the students to perform, particularly at an early age), but a comment on the military recruiter side, since we're off-topic anyway:

The No Child Left Behind Act mandates that the Names addresses and contact details of every public school student be given to army recruiters.They repeatedly approach people on the street, phone them up, send them letters.. That is harrassment, and it is illegal for any private corporation to do that in Ireland without the consent of the person being targetted.

It's not illegal for a private corporation to do that in the US. Believe me, I'm getting enough phone calls from telemarketers at my home in the evening to prove that. The only way I can get them to stop is if I specifically say "I want you to put my number on a 'do not call' list." And the amount of junk mail I get defies belief.

So, to the contentious legislation at hand:

SEC. 9528. ARMED FORCES RECRUITER ACCESS TO STUDENTS AND STUDENT RECRUITING INFORMATION.

(a) POLICY-

(1) ACCESS TO STUDENT RECRUITING INFORMATION- Notwithstanding section 444(a)(5)(B) of the General Education Provisions Act and except as provided in paragraph (2), each local educational agency receiving assistance under this Act shall provide, on a request made by military recruiters or an institution of higher education, access to secondary school students names, addresses, and telephone listings.

This is the bit that everyone's going ape over. All schools receiving federal money must provide recruiters the information for students so they can call them. People read that paragraph, and stop, needing to read no further before coming to their conclusions. But wait, what's that about an exception in Paragraph 2? Let's see.

(2) CONSENT- A secondary school student or the parent of the student may request that the student's name, address, and telephone listing described in paragraph (1) not be released without prior written parental consent, and the local educational agency or private school shall notify parents of the option to make a request and shall comply with any request.

So schools must give recruiters the information, unless that student, or the parents of that student tell them not to do it, and by the way, the school must tell them that they have the option of with-holding the information. Hmm.

Now, how about mandating allowing recruiters to go visit the kids at schools?

(3) SAME ACCESS TO STUDENTS- Each local educational agency receiving assistance under this Act shall provide military recruiters the same access to secondary school students as is provided generally to post secondary educational institutions or to prospective employers of those students.

Not particularly shocking. If the school in question does not allow recruiters from colleges or companies onto the school, there is no obligation for a school to allow military recruiters. This is unfair how, exactly?

Basically, this is one of the unfortunately rare (these days) cases of the government deciding that perhaps parents know better than the schools as to what's good for their kids. The problem was that schools were deciding on their own that various bodies (mainly businesses) were 'worthy' of receiving the student's information, and others (such as the military) were not, and these decisions were generally made on the basis of the political bent of the school board. The act removes that bias, nothing more. If a parent is worried about the Army calling home looking for Johnny, he just tells the school 'Don't give my son's information to the Army' and the school is legally obliged not to.

Now, where's the great military conspiracy in this?

NTM

Manic Moran

Sgt. Sensible wrote:

I don't know if this is true or not. Is it?

2004 US Elections, 55.3% of electorate.
2002 Irish election 62.7%
2005 UK: 61.6%
2002 France Presidential 72%

And so on, I did a fair bit of googling, on multiple countries, US voter turnout is generally amongst the lower half. To counter-act that, though, the US has national elections on many more times than pretty much any other country in the world. (almost twice the average). Since 1945 there have been 26, with only Japan and Colombia also in the twenties, at 21 and 20 respectively. So fewer people vote, but people vote more often.

Wrong there. According to wikipedia

[snip]

Of course those of us who opposed the war have been proved 100% right but ultimately the largest protests in the history of the world, while impressively symbolic were manifestly a waste of time and were of no practical use.

The protests in the US were a lot smaller. Even the Wiki article you quote says so. When Irish policy on anything is determined by protests in San Francisco, or any other country in the world outside Ireland, please let me know.

Why would similarly enormous protests have any effect on a decision to attack Iran? Any more bright ideas?

My guess is only if the protests were in the US, and a lot larger than the ones in 2003 which were pretty localised.

What were you demonstrating about and how large were the protests? I can think of umpteen instances of police attacking peaceful protesters. You might want to read this article.

From said article:
A civilian review board investigated law enforcement response to the protests and found no criminal misconduct.

(I'm assuming that they mean 'civilian' in the (incorrect) familiar usage of non-police). The main point of the article appears to be the bit about the cops laughing at the footage, not the bit about their actions on the day of the protests themselves. Of course, even Irish police have a reputation (deserved or not, I'm not sure) of being more than willing to apply truncheon to head.

NTM

Victor

Manic Moran wrote:

If a parent is worried about the Army calling home looking for Johnny, he just tells the school 'Don't give my son's information to the Army' and the school is legally obliged not to.

But the army will have their details at that point.

Manic Moran wrote:

Since 1945 there have been 26, with only Japan and Colombia also in the twenties, at 21 and 20 respectively. So fewer people vote, but people vote more often.

I'm not sure if thats valid seeing as most American elections only elect 50% of the relevant seats. Actually how do you calculate 26?

Manic Moran

I didn't, I just parroted the web page I found that had international comparisons. I think it's a couple of years old, the true figure right now is 28, I think. Basically everyone in the US gets to vote for their representatives at national level every two years.

NTM

Victor

Manic Moran wrote:

Basically everyone in the US gets to vote for their representatives at national level every two years.

Not quite, they get to vote for some of their representatives every 2 years. In essence it is a 4 year cycle => 13-14 elections. If someone go elected in 1960, he wouldn't need to face election until 1964.

Bob the Unlucky Octopus

Akrasia wrote:

You are assuming that defence is Bush's biggest priority. I don't think it is. N.K. might be a military threat (and they're actually not even that because they are not an externally beligerant nation)

Who told you that? I've served on the S. Korean border along the DMZ, the most heavily and densely mined region on the planet, and I've seen with my own eyes, DPRK soldiers shooting defectors trying to get across and fire artillery rounds to test their range on a monthly basis and keep the population across the 51st parallel frightened. As Manic Moran points out, South Korea is heavily fortified for a reason, and if there was no reason to, I doubt South Korea would spend as much as it did on defence.

The entire region has its security policy paralyzed because of North Korea, the only reason Iran is getting more news coverage is because it's perceived as a more exciting news story closer to the war on terror than an old has-been communist story. In terms of capability and sheer unpredictability, the DPRK is a far more significant threat than an Iran which we can count on to act in its own best interest (for the most part).

In contrast, the DPRK is content to let its people starve if it means being able to pose a significant enough threat to regional security for the regime to hold on to power. Breaking that deadlock is one of our greatest security challenges- just because the media doesn't focus on it as much doesn't mean the tactical picture is indeed skewed that way. A great example is Al Qaeda- how many of you had heard of the organization pre-9/11? Some I'm sure, but not many of you. Pre-Kenya and USS Cole I doubt anyone here had even heard the name Osama bin Laden. However for people in the military/intel community or with ties to them, it's a tale familiar as far back as the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

But Iran is an economic threat, and BushCo are more worried about dollers being lost than lives.

How is a nation with whom we have no trade relations, and which doesn't compete with us in ANY sense, in any market be an economic threat to us? They couldn't cut off our oil, we buy most of it from South America/Saudi Arabia anyway. They can't price us out of any market- they need the oil revenues themselves, quite desperately- even if they wanted to price us out, the Saudis and OPEC would do whatever it took to avoid a destabilized United States that wouldn't be able to keep their little tin-pot dictatorships in place.

I cannot conceive of any way in which Iran could seriously threaten an economy that bore the brunt of 9/11, Enron, Katrina, Afghanistan and Iraq, and is still fighting fit and creaing jobs. Compare that economic stability to that of much of Continental Europe and you have a very different picture. You mentioned that Iran was banking its black gold in euros- and that is truly significant.

Absented a real way to acquire influence with the United States, Iran is attempting to return from isolation by buying influence with Europe. Why is the EU even remotely involved with a bilateral dispute of a diplomatic nature between the United States and Iran? Why haven't they gone through the IAEA where they are represented? After all, they have no need to "normalize relations" with Iran, they already have- that's America's problem, not theirs. Iran have made it their problem, or at least a more significant problem- it's the same reason Russia and China are involved. On the face of it, it looks like Russia/China's involvement is because they're part of the permanent 5. Look more closely, and you'll see that energy/trade is a far bigger part of it- Russia is a top trade partner, and China is a big fat market for Iranian oil.

None of this however makes Iran an economic threat to the United States, it simply proves that they have centuries of experience in statecraft, and are using it to maximum effect for their interests. Absolutely *NOTHING* Iran could do short of a nuclear attack in the region would affect the US economy- and they're hardly about to do that are they.

Yes it would. But that would mean america would have to make concessions, and Bush hasn't made a single concession to anyone since he took office.

Not to be incisive...but are you high? He made several to the detention bill last week, to the immigration bill the week before, to the Russians on ballistic missile defence, and countless others. Politics is all about give and take, negotiation and yes, concessions. For example, in relation to trade barriers the United States under Bush has made enormous concessions, on free trade as well. Currently the US has far lower trade thresholds to African agrarian producers than the EU does. If you're wondering why that Nigerian farmer can't sell his yams for love or money anywhere in the EU, look at Europe's agricultural subsidies and trade barriers and compare them to that of the United States. That's arguably his biggest international concession, and one that Clinton never had the stones to make. There are a thousand and one things to criticize this president and his administration for, but a failure to make meaningful concessions certainly isn't one of them. In fact, I'd classify the declaration of a Palestinian state as a major concession in that it completely abandons half a century of American foreign policy on the matter.

Bush invaded Iraq for several reasons, one of those was to secure a military base from which to influence other middle eastern countries.

Another one? We have bases in Qatar, Kuwait and the Saudi bases will be relocated to either the UAE or Turkey. The truth is that starting a war to establish operating bases in the region is malarky- we had more than enough bases to begin with, and Kuwait is still very much a client state. If bases were all we went for, believe me, we'd have pulled out by now. A minimal strategic advantage (and it is minimal, all the surrounding countries give us nothing less for our bases than Iraq would)- such a minimal strategic advantage isn't worth losing thousands of lives for. If that was our only interest you can be damned sure we'd have pulled out by now and let the Iraqis have their civil war. The only thing keeping our troops there right now is that the country would fall apart without them- and it is that abiding sense of decency, coupled with our own serious interest in seeing Iraq succeed- that is why we're staying.

As for why we went in, that is actually a lot more complicated than buzz-words like "oil", "bases", "globalization" or "neo-colonialism". The truth is that it's none of those things, but it's a long story and I won't go into it in this post.

Agreed, But that's not the point. America will not tolerate a Nuclear Armed Iran. They don't see things reasonably like the rest of the world do.

Why the hell not? We don't really have much of a choice, that's the truth of it. People said we wouldn't tolerate a nuclear-armed Pakistan, and here we are, with Pakistan as a serious military ally. We're not only tolerating them, but we've taken our Cold War arrangement of convenience to new heights. Iran is pushing all these buttons because they saw how easily it allowed Pakistan, an avowed military dictatorship to re-enter the international field and taken a deal more seriously.

The reason we'd want to prevent nuclear proliferation in the region should be damn obvious however. Aside from the threats proliferation poses- the lack of secure facilites, terrorist access to nuclear material, all that usual stuff- there is another factor. It might well convince some of the other oil-rich Gulf states that the only way to balance the threat potential from Iran's "Shia bomb" would be for them to develop a "Sunni bomb". That's a risk worth avoiding, but as I said, it's pretty clear a nuclear Iran is inevitable, however much shadow-puppetry is going on, at the highest levels of government, we're already planning how a nuclear Iran will fit into the global picture. It's going to happen- we know it, they know it, there is a small to nil chance we'll prevent it, but in any event we can't do that through force of arms without completely screwing ourselves in all the ways I've mentioned.

If Iran gets Nuclear weapons, then Israel will lose their military advantage

What do Israel and Iran have to do with each other militarily? They don't share a border, they've never fought a war, beyond the general fiery Muslim/regional rhetoric about Israel, there is no sort of strategic connection between them at all save Hezbollah. That connection has more to do with the Shia living in South Lebanon than it does with Iran anyway. If you honestly think that Iran going nuclear gives them any kind of leverage with Israel, that's a mistake. Conventional force would still be the order of the day, nuclear arms are a defensive deterrent, not an offensive tool- and Israel has never and will never attack Iran. There is no need for Iran to gain anything beyond a positional advantage over Israel, strategically and tactically a nuke gives Iran very little more than they already have- they know that any overt state confrontation with Israel means dealing with the United States, and no state power wants to do that, not even now.

and america would face a much more dangerous opponent in any possible conflict into the future.

Nuclear arms have a history of preventing conflicts, not starting them. In fact, there are few better ways to deter conflict. The danger is that one side will miscalculate which is why limiting proliferation is a laudable goal.

They only have their limited window of opportunity to strike them while they are relatively weak, even if it's a politically inopportune moment

How is Iran relatively weak in this "small window of opportunity" exactly, I just don't see it. Our forces are over-committed, and they could have us over a barrel in Iraq in a heartbeat- if anything, they're in a position of relative strength which they'd quickly squander by provoking an attack.

If he can get this underway before he has to submit a budget then he can lock the United states into the conflict and then congress will have to vote to give resources to the military. It's a simple strategy, very much like the strategy used by General Jack D Ripper in Dr Strangelove. Go to the point of no return and then force everyone to roll in behind you.

If the real world resembled the black political satire of Kubrick's (admittedly brilliant) film then we wouldn't even be having this discussion. The plain and simple fact is that we simply don't have the resources, political capital or national will to undertake anything like this big before the next budget. Getting emergency funds for our troop's BODY ARMOUR is like pulling teeth right now, how easy do you think it'd be to get a war resolution on Iran passed? I'd need to hear a weather report from Hell reporting light snowfall before that'd even have the remotest chance of happening right now.

I know that, you know that, but do the nutjobs who are forcing the War on Terror know that? They claimed the People of Iraq would greet Americans as liberators. They don't live in the real world.

Which is why their voice on international affairs has been largely silenced. Wolfowitz has been shuffled off to the World Bank, Cheney hasn't made a policy statement on Iraq for any international audiences and has resigned his place on the Defence Policy Board. Richard Armitage is out, as is Francis Fukuyama, Richard Perle has also been forced out. Problem solved.

I didn't say it was about cheap oil? It's not, It's about who gets the benefit from the Oil Economy. It's a massive massive transfer of wealth. The costs of the war are paid by the American and Global tax payers, and the profits are held by the richest 1%.

The oil economy is a relatively small part of our national economy. Our energy security didn't require an invasion of Iraq, if anything Iraq made our energy security and economy *less* not more stable. As I said, Iraq has nothing to do with economic benefit, the costs both short and long-term have been deleterious to both our economy and energy security. Even that 1% of corporations were doing far better before Iraq, our energy revenues were better before Iraq, and the global oil market was a damn sight more stable and profitable before Iraq. The reasons for Iraq are complex and largely ideological in nature, and as mentioned above, I won't go into them here.

If you get a chance, read Greg palast's book, Armed Madhouse, there's a summary of his arguments here

Greg Palast's investigative journalistic work is outstanding, his books however, have the noxious stench of partisan conspiracy theory about them. He's claimed variously, amongst other things that Kerry won the election (false- there was never any basis for a legal claim), and has repeated much-discredited claims first made by Michael Moore about how federal investigations were killed off to "protect our Saudi allies". Not a grain of proof mind, that the Saudis had anything to do with 9/11, just suggestions, conjecture, misdirection, and playing on public fear and mistrust, exactly what they accuse the government of. More to the point, he fanatically supports whatever position the ACLU takes on an issue, and will distort issues to distraction if the groups he represents (trade unions, teaching unions and the progressive lefties at MoveOn.org) ask him to do so.

I have neither the time nor the inclination to listen to either Michael Moore, Al Franken or Greg Palast on the far left, or Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter or Tucker Carlson on the right. They're all as bad as each other, and none of them have the best interests of our country as ranking above the millions of dollars they make from book sales, special interests, and media options. I could rebut any one of Greg Palast's outlandish claims, but it'd take time. I could also just quote you reams of Ann Coulter or PNAC memos, but that'd be as much of a disservice to unbiased truth as quoting Greg Palast or Michael Moore.

No it's not! Do some more research please.

Aside from the fact that my uncle is on the Washington State Board of Education- I've done extensive research and reading into the purpose, history and funding (some say inadequate funding) of NCLB, from floor debates until the President signed the bill into law. The primary purpose of the Bill is as I stated.

The Act didn't give a single penny in extra resources to help disadvantaged children, in fact, the costs of implimenting the standardised tests came out of each schools annual budget.

Untrue. Federal funding for education has increased 59.8% from 2000 to 2003(source to follow). As for the costs coming out of the school's annual budget- that budget you're talking about is a *federal subsidy*. Again, that means that the money *IS* coming from the federal government. The fact that they're handing over control of how it's being spent to schools rather than controlling it themselves is why the programme is yielding results.

I would call most of those opportunities Nightmares, not dreams.

That's because you're leading a life of privilege compared to some of the men and women who've served under me. You truly don't understand what poor and desperate means. There was a black kid who grew up on the hard side of Harlem, his parents Caribbean immigrants- he was nearly stabbed to death twice as a teenager, and told he'd never amount to anything. The army gave him a way out, today he's retired SecState Colin Powell. If that's your definition of a nightmare, I'd take that every day of the week and twice on Sunday if I was that kid in Harlem.

You haven't the faintest idea what it means to escape an impossible situation, because you've never been in one. Not every kid tossing a pigskin around in the back yard gets to play in the NFL, and not every street-rapper gets a UStu record deal- for many of the people living below the poverty line or in gangland areas, or for struggling young farm hands trying to eke out a living on minimum wage- serving their country allows them to tap potential that they never even knew they had. I've seen first-hand the courage, resourcefulness and self-sacrifice they've displayed on and off the battlefield, the same kids no one wanted to give a chance to when they were struggling on skid row or BFE Idaho and it was the greatest honor of my life to command them.

56% of Gulf War veterans are now on Disability. Do you call that opportunity?

I call that being well looked after actually. In the United States, we have a far wider range of definitions, in medicine and in law for the term "disability" than is popularly used in Europe. Everything from ADHD to dyslexia counts as a disability. What that site failed to tell you is that of that 56%, more than 2/3 of them suffered from a disability of some sort to begin with. Heck, my company's 1st sergeant was an orphan partially autistic- after his service he got care from a VA hospital that his insurance would never have covered and he'd never have been able to afford. As for the obvious risks of the military- we all signed the dotted line and knew the price we might pay if the alternatives for some of these men was worse, then that gives one something to think about.

It's not advertising, it's harrassment. The No Child Left Behind Act mandates that the Names addresses and contact details of every public school student be given to army recruiters.

You fail to mention that any student or parent can opt out of having their information disclosed. Data protection laws are far more stringent in the United States than in much of Europe. If you want to read a balanced view of NCLB, and what the Act's purpose and scope is, here you go: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Child_Left_Behind

They repeatedly approach people on the street, phone them up, send them letters.. That is harrassment, and it is illegal for any private corporation to do that in Ireland without the consent of the person being targetted.

The same is true of army recruiters, all you have to do is tell them "Go away, stop bothering me," and they have to. Of course, if you're interested in what they're selling, that's part of living in a free society with a volunteer force.

Also, there have been hundreds of cases of Army recruiters sexually harrassing female students (including dozens of cases of rape)

There are literally thousands of documented cases of sexual harassment and rape in corporate offices in the United States and around the world- why should it be any different in a public body like the army? What matters is that these people are dealt with through the law- and I can tell you for a fact that the Uniform Code of Military Justice is far harsher with rapists than any other body of state or federal law I can think of.

Having a stand at a careers day is completely different from sending full time recruiters out to harrass people 52 weeks of the year.

Heh, even if the army had the manpower to spare to send recruiters around to schools 52 weeks a year, it'd hardly help its image if it was seen to be heavy-handed in recruitment. The fact is that a volunteer force needs to recruit- how that's done is something that will always cause controversy. To my mind, the upside is much larger than the downside.

Rumsfeld is still the SecDef, Cheney is still the VP, Bush is still POTUS. Bush will not appoint a 'Dove' to replace rumsfeld if rumsfeld is pushed out.

Bush is unable to replace his cabinet because that's as good as admiting that his policies have failed. Clinton never replaced his real allies either, nor has any president. All he can do is damage limitation and reduce the amount of control they have over policy. That has happened, and we're all better off for it.

If anything, Bush has a policy of firing everyone who would disagree with his warped analysis and replacing them with political cronies.

What would you call what Clinton did with his little purge of the Joint Chiefs? All politicians do it, Clinton was just more subtle and adept than Dubyah. Oh and Clinton would never have appointed someone to head FEMA with no better qualifications than "Former Head of the Arabian Horse Association"

you've just proven my point. These guys pay no consideration to Long term strategic planning, and this is why they it is so plausible that they would attack Iran despite it being such an incredibly bad idea.

What you fail to recognize is that the best information we had about Iraq lead many to believe it would be a cakewalk. Our best information about Iran is nowhere near as optimistic- and the Iraq experience has informed their judgement considerably.

Bush wouldn't go in with the intention of needing the draft. He's delusional. He thinks he can achieve his aims with a Bombing Campaign.
Full scale war with Iran would constitute a Dire national security emergency.He wouldn't mention the D word until the Draft was completely necessary, and then it would be too late to object. This is purely Dr Strangelove stuff i know, but that movie was based on real events.

"Based on real events" and "based on a true story" are taglines often associated with films and rarely give a full picture. Brinkmanship was only really attempted once during the Cuban missile crisis, memories of that are far too fresh for anything like that to happen in our structure for a good while I'd think.

Sgt. Sensible wrote:

I don't know if this is true or not. Is it?

For every country in Europe except those where voting is obligatory, the United States has a higher average electoral turnout.

Of course those of us who opposed the war have been proved 100% right but ultimately the largest protests in the history of the world

Bit of an exaggeration don't you think? The Vietnam protests were larger in scale per head of population, the same was true of the civil rights movement. In terms of raw numbers, conservative estimates put the figures at a little over a million different protestors in the US. Protests in other countries are largely irrelevant, our elected officials don't answer to them. More to the point, the protestors in all countries lacked a coherent message or an alternative message beyond a simple maintenance of the status quo.

These self same protestors were also noticeably absent for Saddam's numerous massacres, in particular Halabja and Qadinaya. The streets didn't exactly thrum with protest when Hezbollah was showering Israel with rockets or when terrorists were taking people hostage and beheading them on TV. Bizzarely, the focus of blame from these protestors appears to be the government of the United States, which didn't force civilian contractors to go to Iraq, didn't take them hostage, or behead them. Yet they're somehow to blame. It's this kind of hypocrisy and fuzzy logic that alienates the moral majority from a warped view of protest that largely lacks coherent argument.

I know a few of these thugs actually as I live in Berlin where people take stuff very seriously and yes they do have jobs, they tend to engage in voluntary community work and they're generally a lot more political and informed on many issues

Obviously not so well informed that they don't realise that throwing petrol bombs isn't a reasonable form of protest. On the serious point, how many of them do you know who've campaigned for a candidate or got one elected? How many of them have lobbied for funds for national issues beyond local action groups?

Speaking for myself, I've helped on Patty Murray's campaign (she's the senior senator for my state and on the powerful Appropriations committee). I've also campaigned for VA hospital funding, a cause dear to my heart, not by waving banners outside pharmaceutical corporations, but by engaging them in reasoned dialogue and persuading them that it's in their business interest for their company to help our nation's veterans get the best possible care, and that HMOs will buy more of their product if they are aware of the VA work that's being done.

Similarly, rather than making noise at rallies perhaps your friends would do better to join or form a lobby for their grievances and get behind a candidate that represents their interests. I don't just mean vote for them, but knock on doors, hand out leaflets, win hearts and minds. If there isn't a candidate to represent their interests, then nominate one or stand yourself- that's the beauty of a free society, nothing's stopping you or your friends from getting elected to office- there are legitimate and civilized ways to affect change. Sure it's a lot more work, effort and thought than just screaming slogans at a rally, but it'll get more results. I honestly can't think of a single major issue of state that's been solved by a protest of any kind, and I can't see how globalization is any different- all the protests do is undermine some of the legitimate arguments against globalization and make it that much harder for people trying to oppose it constructively to be taken seriously. Now if the system itself were broken, or the agencies within it break down, there's something worth protesting about.

Tired old cliches and stereotypes

I don't think it's cliche or a stereotype to call someone who throws petrol bombs at an anti-globalization rally a thug. What would you call those people, good citizens? Upstanding members of society? I'm certainly not a pacifist, but neither do I think that violent protest has any place in a political process. It may only be a small minority of troublemakers, but if soccer fans can police up their own hooligans by working with local police I don't see why the anti-globalization drum squad can't do the same. Unless of course their protests are so small in scale that the only way they'll make any headlines is if the protests get a little ugly and it suits them to tolerate a few bad eggs in their midst (more than one such protestor has told me this).

In the words of Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer in his seminal Melville v United States judgement-

"Freedom is rarely if ever an unconstrained right. All rights exist to be used responsibly or they lose their meaning. Even those rights that free societies take for granted are often constrained where there is a justifiable social utility in law to do so. The First Amendment's guarantee of free expression for example, does not protect a right to shout 'Fire!' in a crowded theater, the Fifth Amendment's right not to self-incriminate does not shield someone accused of corporate fraud from a court order to disclose relevant documentation and the Constitution's due process clause does not shield transitional detention states like protective custody or the status of enemy POWs."

What were you demonstrating about and how large were the protests?

The anti-confederate flag demonstration, the DC pro-choice rally, too many VA funding protests to mention, Veterans Against the Iraq War rallies at Ft Banning/Ft Hood, and a few besides. The smallest of these was a gathering of around 3-4 thousand people, around 280,000 people were at the DC pro-choice rally I was at.

As for the incident you mention, a single protester being hit with a few rubber bullets and being ridiculed- if that's the best example of an abuse of police power you can find, I'm disappointed. Isolated incidents like this, and worse do happen, but it's hardly a common occurrence. Exception, meet rule. The rights of the protesters need to be fairly balanced with the rights of ordinary people to go about their daily business as free from disruption as possible, and the rights of those being protested against to be free from harassment and emotional distress.

Sgt. Sensible

Bob the Unlucky Octopus wrote:

Protests in other countries are largely irrelevant, our elected officials don't answer to them.

I know the US admin doesn't care about world public opinion very much. That is rather obvious by now. I already said that the antiwar protests were symbolic, merely illustrative of the depth of feeling throughout the world on the matter. Arguably the US could not have invaded without the UK. However if the two million who marched in London had no effect at all on the UKs decision to help invade Iraq, what chance would similarly scaled protests in the US have?

Obviously not so well informed that they don't realise that throwing petrol bombs isn't a reasonable form of protest. On the serious point, how many of them do you know who've campaigned for a candidate or got one elected? How many of them have lobbied for funds for national issues beyond local action groups?

I used to think like you but have since asked myself this question: what's more appalling, someone lobbing a petrol bomb or a brick in self defence or in the name of a cause you fundamentally agree with and deem to be crucially important to the future of the planet? Or bombing people to bits for rather shaky reasons and causing an upsurge in international terrorism? Which is more dangerous? None of this is really relevant to Iran, however since you ask, most of the political type people I know here have been beaten up by the police at peaceful demos or while in the cells, including one for trying to get an old man through police lines and most have also been involved with the Greens and SPD, and with anti-nuclear and anti-nazi protests. Successful most of the time, although there is widespread disillusionment with the Greens and SPD. You probably just don't understand German history or the political landscape here very well but that's ok.

I honestly can't think of a single major issue of state that's been solved by a protest of any kind

And yet you think protests if large enough will stop an attack on Iran? (If it's absolutely certain there will be one). (I can think of loads by the way.)

As for the incident you mention, a single protester being hit with a few rubber bullets and being ridiculed- if that's the best example of an abuse of police power you can find, I'm disappointed. Isolated incidents like this, and worse do happen, but it's hardly a common occurrence. Exception, meet rule. The rights of the protesters need to be fairly balanced with the rights of ordinary people to go about their daily business as free from disruption as possible, and the rights of those being protested against to be free from harassment and emotional distress.

Well maybe if it was you getting shot in the head you might have a different view. The video is far more interesting but it appears to have disappeared. Where did I say it was the best example I could find? I'm not very interested in trying to argue with anyone who puts words in my mouth.

The way police in the US have handled antiwar protests in the US has already had plenty of criticism. See here. And how are people meant to deal with police spies as in this case in Oakland? When police are aggressive, violent and provocative, people are more likely to react and this in turn is used to justify tougher anti protest measures which discourage people from joining protests.

Just to make myself clear, mass protests can and do work but when you contrast the muted public response to dodgy wars and elections in the US with what happened in the Ukraine, Nepal, Hungary or with what's been going on in Mexico for the last couple of months, then one cannot seriously expect much real effective opposition to another absurd military offensive by the Bush admin.

Sgt. Sensible

Bob the Unlucky Octopus wrote:

For every country in Europe except those where voting is obligatory, the United States has a higher average electoral turnout.

Luxembourg, Greece and Belgium have compulsory voting afaik which bumps the US up a whopping 3 places on this list. If you have different information I'd like to see it but I think you're talking rubbish.

it'll be a while til I see this again, must work, soz

RedPlanet

Hold on, why would a school provide names to the military?
That seems just slightly dubious.
I'd be immediately worried over indoctrination a young person might be being subjected to.
I wonder do they also provide names to McDonalds and Marlborough?

Victor

RedPlanet wrote:

Hold on, why would a school provide names to the military? That seems just slightly dubious. I'd be immediately worried over indoctrination a young person might be being subjected to. I wonder do they also provide names to McDonalds and Marlborough?

He has a point.

Akrasia

Bob the Unlucky Octopus wrote:

You really think so? I was back home when the Abu Ghraib scandal broke. CBS's 60 minutes, the New Yorker's Seymour Hirsch and the Washington Post were fighting tooth and nail to get the story on the air and in print as quickly as possible. The post-9/11 honeymoon truly ended there- all news organizations were asked to suppress this and countless other scandalous stories- if they had complied, you can be sure we'd never have heard a peep about Abu Ghraib. Or indeed about domestic surveillance/wiretapping, or Harriet Myer's neat little stich-up for the Supreme Court nomination, or the whole Scooter Libby + Valerie Plame incident either. In all those cases our media have performed admirably well in exposing scandal and the truth, and the US media has a better history than any I can think of in terms of taking in whistle-blowers and being willing to print/broadcast what they say.

The U.S. media are very good at jumping on to a bandwagon when the horse has already bolted (to mix my metaphores) In the run up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan they were rarely capable of any legitimate criticism of Bush's claims, and any serious challenges were overwhelmingly drowned out by a chorus of jingioism from all the major media conglomorates.

Now you're going off the rails a bit. Iraq was sold as a quick, cheap and relatively painless way to rid ourselves of a tyrant that was a threat to us, with minimal loss of life and a minimal cost of reconstruction paid for by their own oil production. To say that our entire defence policy rests on controlling people through violence is just absurd.

I would suggest that using war as a quick and cheap way to remove an inconvenient regime is Absurd. The fact is, none of the alternatives were pursued by america. Weapons inspections were undermined at every opportunity, There was no effort made at diplomatic or peaceful settlement.

Our military spends more on humanitarian assistance than the next ten countries do COMBINED.

I would like to see a link for that. American foreign aid as a proportion of GDP is amongst the lowest in the developed world and most of that foreign aid comes in the form of 'Military Aid' which does much more harm than good. http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Debt/USAid.asp

When the tidal wives hit Aceh it was Marine Force Evac helicopters that took people to safety and brought in more than 2/3 of the vital supplies. It was US Army engineers that built shelters for more than 50,000 displaced persons in the region and US aid money that fed and clothed many of those affected. If we wanted to control the region with violence, what better opportunity would we have to establish bases, good forward operating bases in SouthEast Asia? It's been a holy grail of the PACFLT (our pacific fleet) ever since the Phillipines made us close Subic Bay and the Japanese told us to get out of Okinawa. Why pass up such a golden opportunity if as you say, our defence policy rests on controlling people through violence?

Fair play to you, but that has nothing to do with Iran or Iraq

The only thing that would provoke a nuclear response would be an attack in kind by WMDs. We, like the Israelis have a no first-use policy, the only two countries in the world to have put that policy in writing. If what you say is true then not only would we be completely scrapping our MidEast diplomatic protocols, but all of our strategic nuclear ones as well. That assertion is dangerously close to a conspiracy theory.

You used to have a No first strike policy, but not anymore
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/03/16/politics/main1409079.shtml

Nothing wrong with supporting your troops, no matter how spotted the cause. Supporting your troops and supporting the policy or government that sent them are two hugely different things. 94% of the American public currently support our troops, yet only 31% support the cause they fight for. For an indoctrinated sheep-like public(of which I am a member), I think that those poll-figures show that remarkably, the much maligned American public have drawn a subtle distinction between the two. I very much doubt you'd find the same distinction let's say...for the UDF or IRA if you polled *their* supporters. If, heaven forbid, there was another attack and it was on Iran- then of course we'll support our troops- their duty forbids them from questioning their task and they will be acting in our name and risking their lives- the least we can do is support them. That's not to say the government would survive though.

The best way to support your troops is to bring them home out of harms way. 'Support our troops' is a euphamism used by the Right and the Media for support our war.

A handful of seats seperate the parties in the Senate, and an even smaller percentage seperate them in the House. Roughly a 2.5% swing in seats is needed to carry the House, and about 4% to carry the Senate. Even a 95% re-election rate would mean that Congress could easily change hands with a substantive majority

Yeah, but they already stand to lose control of the house, even if they don't invade Iran. so they don't have anything to lose really.

I'm glad you mentioned that poll, because I was in LA at the time and I remember reading it in the LAT it quite clearly. The article you quote utterly misrepresents the LA Times/Bloomberg polling question. The question put to the American public was- "If Iran developed nuclear weapons, would you favour military intervention?" Given that only 57% said yes, I'd say that shows remarkable restraint. If a rogue state within easy range possessed WMD, I daresay you might just support military intervention also.

So all Bush has to do is claim that Irazn has developed Nuclear weapons. The buildup is already underway. They are claiming that N.K. is providing Fissile material to Iran. They are preparing the ground for an imminent threat defence

If our media has been unflinching about Haditha, Abu Ghraib, Bagram Airbase and other stories that portray our troops (sometimes unfairly in that it gives the impression all soldiers behave this way)- then I very much dobut they'll go any easier if yet another conflict is initiated.

They report those instances but they spin it into 'A few Bad Eggs' when it should be a story that goes all the way to the Commander In Chief

On the popularity question, it matters now because it's an election year. 2006 midterms, 2007 state elections, 2008 the presidential race. There's no escaping popular opinion during an election.

there is when you rig elections.

If we cared nothing for the opinion of the international community, we'd just de-fund the UN, the IMF, the World Bank, and any one of a half-dozen super-state structures that only run because we fund and host most of it. We spend more on international obligations and super-state structures than the entire EU government structure budget + the Council of Europe budget put together. I doubt we'd do any of it if our government truly cared nothing for what others thought. Some Americans do indeed think that this is a big fat waste of money. If billions of your taxpayer's money was being thrown at superstate structures and international aid while New Orleans drowned, you might occasionally wonder from time to time yourself! As it happens, a majority of Americans support the idea, and it doesn't look like we're going to be pulling the plug, despite the odd paradox like Katrina's aftermath.

Why would you defund those organisations, they're useful tools of U.S. foreign policy. The IMF and World Bank have been pushing U.S. interests since their inception.

Even though this bombing idea is entirely theoretical, even if it did go ahead...Aerial bombardment by definition requires no exit strategy, that's the point of air power. So the need to "pull out" never arises.

That is the logic Bush would use, while completely ignoring the possible contingencies that might arise as a result of the bombing.

Try telling him the President can simply invent legal reasons for military action and see what he says :P Bear in mind, most countries don't even require a vote in Parliament before declaring war. In the UK and Ireland, declaring war is a prerogative power exercised by the executive. In other words, Tony Blair's vote on the war was an utter sham, he could have done it anyway without even asking Parliament. The same is true of any country with elements of the Westminster model. No president has attempted to expand the powers of the executive this much in the last century, and Arlen Specter is no one's fool- he's famously said that as a lawyer he serves the Constitution first, the Senate second, and his party third.

I never said Bush would declare war. America doesn't like official declarations of war, they carry with them too many legal obligations.

Whether or not he personally supports torture is of no consequence if the Supreme Court has ruled against it. More to the point, I haven't found a statement yet where he explicitly endorses torture. Granted, bellicose members of his cabinet have tried to find loopholes here and there, but nothing that would stand up in court. We are a nation of laws first and foremost, it is inconceivable that a President would contravene a Supreme Court ruling, I doubt I'll ever live to see it happen.

He will claim he is obeying the supreme court by redefining torture so that any methods he does decide to use will fall below the level of official torture. He has already said Torture is only a level of pain consistant with the pain experienced when one is about to die. That can mean anything and nothing. He ignores all internationally accepted descriptions of torture.

As for kidnapping terrorist suspects- if you truly believe our intelligence services are the only ones doing this, that's a naive point of view to take. The reality is that arrest and trial within a legal framework is impossible if you want to protect your sources and methods. This is why in the UK wiretap evidence is not admissible in court- not to protect the accused, but to protect the sources that put him in the dock. Intelligence services by and large, operate outside normal legal frameworks, much of their work is plausibly deniable or simply undetectable. Where I agree with you is that a due process of law needs to be adhered to, which is where this President has gone so badly wrong.

It doesn't matter what other countries do. You are responsible for your own actions.

This isn't 1930s Germany, there hasn't been a fire in the Reichstag and we aren't on the brink of desolation or desperation. There is exploitation of fear to achieve wider political goals, but if you can find me a country whose government doesn't exploit the public's fears to expand its authority, let me know, I want to move there. As far as I know, such a place does not exist- the best we can do is to observe facts for ourselves and come to our own conclusions, and thank our lucky stars that we live in a free society where we are allowed to do so.

The fall of the twin towers compares very closely to the Fall of the twin towers. 9/11 has been used to erode freedom and to increase state repression.

Many Americans are filled with apathy, but that's no different to most other places. If you look at the numbers, we have larger turnout over our election cycles than all but a handful of European countries. Of course popular protest doesn't work unless it's on a huge scale. A couple hundred thugs throwing petrol bombs at an anti-globalization rally isn't going to halt globalization. If however, those self-same thugs got jobs, incomes and engaged in the political process, that's a kind of protest that *does* yield results. As for state repression at political protests, I've been to several, and the only "repression" I've seen is where the authorities have been forced to step in to control violent elements in the crowd. I'd be careful about using the phrase "state repression" too- the right to protest in public is better protected in constitutional law in the United States than in any other country, including the UK and Ireland.

I don't agree with that at all. 'Freedom of speech zones' are not in the spirit of free speech.

The only relatively unfettered right protected by the European Convention of Human Rights are the rights to be free from torture and freedom of expression. Freedom of association and assembly are actually far more tightly controlled by legislation/common law in both the UK *and* Ireland. It's the reason why we still haven't been able to ban the American Nazi Party, the KKK or Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam, and the UK is able to ban groups like Combat 18, White Wolves and Al-Mujahirun. Granted some of our rights are eroding, but a temporary erosion of rights is the norm in times of crisis.

The war on terror was never meant to be a temporary crisis. There is no possible way it can ever be won, just like the war on drugs.

Hobbes

Bob the Unlucky Octopus wrote:

I've seen with my own eyes, DPRK soldiers shooting defectors trying to get across and fire artillery rounds to test their range on a monthly basis and keep the population across the 51st parallel frightened.

Thought the majority of the population around the 51st Parallel where Americans? While I certainly believe what you are saying, most North Koreans can leave the country easily and do so, they flood into China via that border as its no where near the level of being maintained by military (and not mined either).

In contrast, the DPRK is content to let its people starve if it means being able to pose a significant enough threat to regional security for the regime to hold on to power.

It goes well beyond Kim holding onto power. The pure proproganda fed to the population of the country means there are people there who hate the west with a vengence and believe that North Korea is the best country in the world.

Its not as bad as it once was but its certainly still there. It is far from being any kind of military solution to North Korea. But it suits the US to be there. S.Koreans aren't overly happy with Americans being there but mainly due to the fact they have laws in place that protects any solider from ever being charged of any crime in S.Korea.

How is a nation with whom we have no trade relations, and which doesn't compete with us in ANY sense, in any market be an economic threat to us? They couldn't cut off our oil, we buy most of it from South America/Saudi Arabia anyway.

Venezuela have said that if there is any attack on Iran then they will cut off all oil supplies to the US and to any country that aids the US. Iran have said the same (of course not to the US).

So yes they can hurt the US by having other countries bring to bare on the US. A lot of trade is tied up in the US and other countries, it would be crippling itself if that trade was stopped because the EU for example couldn't get oil or suddenly finds oil prices are x2 what they are.

In fact just shutting off Irans supply alone would raise the price of oil to $130 a barrell. Your looking at senarios in the US similar to the 1970's.

Add to that any attack on Iran will further destabilize the middle east it has is likely to have reprocussions in other middle east. Moreso if Israel gets involved. Can you imagine the level of warfare in Iraq being spread across Iran it would then spread to other middle eastern countries.

The US would be in a mess it couldn't control. In Iran they would not be seen as liberators and if they bomb the nuclear stations the possible fallout on the nearby cities is going to have people joining the terrorists for generations.

As for desperately need the money. Thats quite subjective. Have you looked at Iran? I mean actually looked at it. It isn't Afghanistan at all, it looks a lot like America. Skyscrapers, etc. It is far from being a tinpot dictatorship.

I cannot conceive of any way in which Iran could seriously threaten an economy that bore the brunt of 9/11, Enron, Katrina, Afghanistan and Iraq, and is still fighting fit and creaing jobs.

If it changes to Euros when dealing in oil it can have serious reprocussions for the US.

I don't know how you can say the US is fighting fit. It is in debt at a level never seen before in its history and is still going further into debt. Home sales in the US has dropped and consumer spending is way down too.

But the biggest way to stop US is that Iran is 3rd biggest supplier to China. China owes a lot of debts the US has. Anything happened that would fuk up China and they only need to call in thier debt and your looking at total currency collapse. Completly fuks up the world but you asked how could Iran hurt the US?

uberpixie

Nice to see a clean debate for a change :-)

I think we can all agree that a war with Iran is not very good idea and would be very costly in American and Iranian lives and no doubt increase terrorist attacks.

But....

http://www.counterpunch.org/close08262006.html

Have a look here, just a little article in counterpunch where the author lists the reasons as to why he believes Bush will attack Iran at some stage.

Brings up some interesting points and some food for thought.

Personally I think Bush + cabinet is more than capable of starting a war with Iran.
(don't know if they will and hope they don't)

Iraq was never a good idea, no matter how people tried to dress it up before it started. But they still started it and knowingly lied about it to the world to justify it.

However this debate will be settled one way or another: we will all see one way or another over the next few years what happens...

As to why Iraq happened we prob will never know.

Personally I think a combination of:

1:The petrodollar
Very important to world economy stabilty and American wealth, worldwide recession was cause in the late 70's due to mis managing it according to the IMF and others. Not to be underestimated.


2:Continuation of thw War on terror, in order to keep Republicans popular and in power . Any of the opinon polls over the last few years in the states suggest that people think Republicans will handle the war better than Democrats.

3: Oil/civil/defense contracts after the war going to US companies. Nice little earner for those close to the US government and no doubt those polititians who have shares in those companies
(or their family members who have shares )

I don't believe it was because Sadam was "a bad man".

There are plenty of evil tin pot dictators in the world, must of em don't have oil, a lot of them are/were US sponsered.

The US, as any other country, has dodgy dealings with some of the worst examples of humanity. Why Sadam? Why not someone else equally just as bad?

There are plenty in the world to go round after all ......

All in all interesting times. :rolleyes:

Manic Moran

Victor wrote:

Not quite, they get to vote for some of their representatives every 2 years. In essence it is a 4 year cycle => 13-14 elections. If someone go elected in 1960, he wouldn't need to face election until 1964.

This is true, but the every-two-year cycle means that the electorate can change the makeup of the leglislature twice as often as most other countries: They don't need to wait four years before giving control of the House to the other party. This also means that a 'true' opinion is sounded every two years, as opposed to just relying on polls.

I know the US admin doesn't care about world public opinion very much. That is rather obvious by now. I already said that the antiwar protests were symbolic, merely illustrative of the depth of feeling throughout the world on the matter. Arguably the US could not have invaded without the UK. However if the two million who marched in London had no effect at all on the UKs decision to help invade Iraq, what chance would similarly scaled protests in the US have?

How many countries truly do care about world public opinion when formulating their policies? Any elected government answers to their own people: Protestors in Italy don't get a vote in the next French elections. I can't help you on the last question,the British and US political scenes are rather different.

Our military spends more on humanitarian assistance than the next ten countries do COMBINED.

I would like to see a link for that.

Whilst I've not seen the figures, I wouldn't be surprised if it's true. Note he said 'military.' The same crowd that spends all the money bombing people also spends a heck of a lot of money saving others. Dispatching ships, helicopters and transport aircraft takes money.

The way police in the US have handled antiwar protests in the US has already had plenty of criticism. See here.

What, that some of the protestors have launched civil suits against NYPD for their arrests? I could launch a civil suit against the Highway Patrol for delaying my trip into work this morning when they closed a lane of the motorway. Doesn't mean I'm right or I'll win. What was the result of the suit?
As for Oakland, probably a combination of cops using a little too much initiative in result of the fact that the previous set of protests turned violent and it looked bad in the newspapers. Even when justified, use of force by police has a negative image, and the local papers are not above hammering police for doing their job. SFPD's association finally let loose a full broadside on the media for such coverage a couple of months ago on an unrelated issue.

I live in the San Francisco area, which had some of the largest demonstrations in 2003, and I'll tell you straight out that the law enforcement response to those protests was extremely restrained, despite the lawlessness that was associated with them. Not all protestors were lawless, indeed probably only a small minority were. (Though watching a private commuter's SUV ram a protestor's roadblock on TV was entertaining!) Yet despite this, and the fact that the police could have broken up the protests on their own by use of force, they just sat back for over a week, resulting in serious police overtime expense, and also running the cops so ragged that SFPD had to hand over to other forces, who themselves were just about to hand over to the National Guard as they couldn't sustain it any more either.

Hold on, why would a school provide names to the military?
That seems just slightly dubious.
I'd be immediately worried over indoctrination a young person might be being subjected to.
I wonder do they also provide names to McDonalds and Marlborough?

Where else does one find a list of 17-year-olds and their locations? As for McDonald's and Marlborough, I've no idea. Have McDonalds or Marlborough asked for the names?

Fair play to you, but that has nothing to do with Iran or Iraq

Well, Iran did get a fair bit of aid from the US after the Qum earthquake, if that counts for anything.

The best way to support your troops is to bring them home out of harms way. 'Support our troops' is a euphamism used by the Right and the Media for support our war.

Come visit my humble city in the SF Bay Area. Home of Berkeley, Santa Cruz, San Francisco. So left-wing that the Green party got twice as many votes as Bush did, at least in my district. See how many cars around here are sporting 'support the troops' stickers. Many of them do believe that the best way to support the troops is to get them home. That does not mean that they are not capable of distinguishing the policies from those who are instructed to carry them out.

there is when you rig elections.

Strong words. Consider that even the Democratic Party's own report (entitled Democracy at Risk) after the 2004 election says: "The statistical study of precinct-level data does not suggest the occurrence of widespread fraud that systematically misallocated votes from Kerry to Bush."

NTM

Victor

Manic Moran wrote:

This is true, but the every-two-year cycle means that the electorate can change the makeup of the leglislature twice as often as most other countries: They don't need to wait four years before giving control of the House to the other party. This also means that a 'true' opinion is sounded every two years, as opposed to just relying on polls.

But this is a part of the process that perpetuates the two-party system. It only means you can choose Republican or Democrat. Nigh on 98-99% of congress is either Republican or Democrat. Its almost a one party state.

If you only vote for half the seats at a time, there is little opportunity for a dissenting candidate to be elected. In a two seat constituency it means one of the minor parties needs to come first, as opposed to first or second.

Manic Moran

Victor wrote:

But this is a part of the process that perpetuates the two-party system. It only means you can choose Republican or Democrat. Nigh on 98-99% of congress is either Republican or Democrat. Its almost a one party state.

That's nothing to do with the two-year-cycle, it's just the nature of the American political beast. It sucks, but even if it were everybody every four years, you'd still be generally stuck between one of the two major parties.

If you only vote for half the seats at a time, there is little opportunity for a dissenting candidate to be elected. In a two seat constituency it means one of the minor parties needs to come first, as opposed to first or second.

OK, I see where you're coming from. I honestly don't think it would make a difference. Even if you could elect two persons, you know that the top two candidates are going to be one Republican and one Democrat as the system here is so blatantly polarised.

NTM