.

Israel can hardly wait for Iran to attack first.

They won’t.

Article has stink quality from here.

And we will be lead into war by President Hussein.

Democrats are responsible for more wars than Republicans.

The major difference between McCain and Obama is that McCain would shoot first in retaliation while Obama would not.

I think American Jews that vote Democrat simply want to disavow their heritage. Israel is an ally to the US but too many American Jews are all too willing to sell her out.

“And we will be lead into war by President Hussein.”

On Iran’s side?

It was really thoughtful of the Iranians to wait until the US and Israel had more fully developed laser missile defense systems to contemplate an attack. The US is nearly ready to deploy the Airborne Laser System and follow on variants of the Tactical High Energy Laser system are quite nearly operational too. Dang nice of them Iranians, I would say.

Democrats are responsible for more wars than Republicans.

Bingo - in spades. WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, count 'em up. Every one had a D@mocrat in the White House. Adding insult to injury was LBJ sneaking into office, claiming Goldwater was a warmonger. And who got us into Vietnam?

“And we will be lead into war by President Hussein.”

On Iran’s side?

That gave me a chuckle. Then my laughter turned to fear as I realized how accurate this might be.

"Then my laughter turned to fear as I realized how accurate this might be."

Kinda scary ain't it?

And who got us into Vietnam?

Actually, it was JFK.

Importantly, despite the rhetoric, Israel might be one of the *last* targets of Iran, for an odd reason.

Throughout the Middle East, for decades it has been “common knowledge” that Israel *only* exists because it receives massive economic and military support from the US. Even among the educated, the assumption is that half, literally, of US defense dollars go to support the Israeli military.

This die hard, and utterly ridiculous belief, is used to justify anti-Americanism, because “If only America would stop supporting Israel, than Israel would cease to exist, almost overnight.”

But this lunacy is part and parcel to the Iranian strategy. They believe if they can just get the United States to leave the Middle East, Israel will not only cease to exist, but Iran will dominate the entire region.

Therefore, Iran’s complete focus of aggression is *not* directed at Israel, but at *American* targets in the Middle East.

To start with, by far their #1 targets are the US aircraft carriers in the area. They believe that if they can wipe out one or even two US aircraft carriers, the US military in the Middle East will have been neutralized.

They imagine that the US forces in Iraq, and the US and NATO forces in Afghanistan will have to leave if they do not have carrier support, by whatever means they can.

The secondary targets are then the US airbases in Iraq and Afghanistan, and possibly even the US naval base at Naples, Italy.

Next, the Iranians fully intend to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, knowing full well that shipping companies are easy to bully. This also happened during Gulf War I, and the US had to go to terribly expensive extremes to guarantee shipping. But with a concerted effort, the Iranian believe they could make this impossible.

This would go hand in hand with international diplomatic efforts to have the major oil dependent powers put enormous pressure on the US to not fight Iran. Their ally, Russia, especially, will go to great lengths in this way, as well as China, and possibly even Europe.

Pausing for a moment, of course this is an idiotic strategy, and the US has spent years planning to counter any number of Iranian tactics. But the Iranian leadership has a strong streak of self-deception.

Thanks to President W. Bush, well over 300 Pac-3 anti-missiles now exist in the region, along with other layered anti-missile defenses. This also includes the THAAD system, and Israel’s Arrow system.

Iran also has an interesting predicament. They certainly do not want to start a war while Bush remains POTUS. If H. Obama were to be elected, they would have struck gold, and their plans will go full steam, figuring him to be sympathetic to Islam at best, and utterly spineless at worst.

However, if McCain is elected, they well know that he would have absolutely no problem in responding to, or even initiating a major conflagration with Iran.

But the one thing curiously absent in all of this is Israel. For while they are certainly motivated to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, they might be “low man on the totem pole”, as far as what Iran thinks of as a target.

Unless Israel attacks first.

So brinkmanship all around.

Re: And who got us into Vietnam?

Actually, it was JFK.

Sorry, but as I recall... JFK did enlarge the military commitment there, but history says Truman pegged Ho Chi Minh as a Commie (He was a nationalists first, some in the OSS said...) just after WW2 ended and gave support to France moving back in to Indochina. Ike was the first to send in troops to police the DMZ during the so-called mid-1950s elections that never were in both North and South Vietnam as agreed. Afterwards, Eisenhower sent Ngô Đình Diệm combat advisers and increased military support.

Afterwards, Eisenhower sent Ngô Đình Diệm combat advisers and increased military support.

As I recall Eisenhower, said he would never get involved in a land war in SouthEast Asia, hinting at a Nuclear response, he kept our involvement very minor, then came Kennedy.

The question is whether or not those wars were justfied. Considering all of them were for freedom and those that were lost for injustice I would say that it’s not D or R it’s populace cowardisce that’s patheic.

Iran’s Ballistic Missiles

Perhaps most worrisome of the threats in the region is Iran’s increasing ability to quickly launch ballistic missiles in an attempt to overwhelm Israel’s organic defensive systems. This is, in my opinion, by far the most likely employment of ballistic missiles in the world today, and it demands our immediate attention in the event of a need for a U.S. or NATO response. This unpredictable adversary could be provoked by an isolated, and perhaps seemingly unimportant, event. Deploying land-based defensive assets is a necessary option, but it is costly and time-consuming. Meanwhile, sea-based missile defense has proved its capability, flexibility, and responsiveness in this arena. While U.S. Navy missile-defense capability need not be on-station all the time, it needs to be present in the theater conducting other missions, ready to respond quickly as needed. It would be wise for several of our very capable European partners to consider achieving this capability as well for their own defense against this threat.

Interdicting illegal or terrorist activity in this complex environment not only requires the presence of forces; it is utterly dependent on Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA)-a comprehensive understanding of the vessels, people, and cargo that occupy the maritime commons and the ability to detect what is going wrong.9 Substantial progress in this area is aligned around several key elements, including:

* Unclassified data and information sharing, which is widespread and growing
* Development of regional, cross-regional, and interagency partnerships
* Building MDA capability and capacity among our partners
* Agility and economy in development of linked software tools
* Fusion of data and information across security domains
* Forceful integration of intelligence and operations in the headquarters

Regarding the last item, wherever we integrate operations and intelligence we get an enormous payoff in improved effectiveness. We should acknowledge that locating theater maritime intelligence efforts away from the center of gravity of maritime operations does not work. Rather, these disciplines should be fully integrated at the maritime component commander’s headquarters, while at the same time we continue to strengthen our reach back to national centers in the continental United States.

While our capable and highly valued maritime partners are present in the Mediterranean on a daily basis, there is a broad disparity among them regarding the threshold for action before or during a crisis. However, farther south lies an area with great promise for coalition maritime action.

http://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/story.asp?STORY_ID=1523

I should elaborate that this the section on Iran from the Proceedings article "Maritime Strategy in an Age of Blood and Belief".

Ngô Đình Diệm

Gesundheit!

Yup. And a country that doesn’t have nukes (The Maldives) is ready to launch an assault on a country that does have nukes (ummm lemmee guess, France).

Makes perfect sense.

Don’t get me wrong.
I am not saying Israel is not facing hostilities (because they are).
I am not saying the Arabs are not facing hostilities (because they are).

What I am saying is it makes no sense for an Arab country to attack Israel, and they know it.

If Israel were attacked, they WOULD use nukes.

And in a month or less, 250 million po’d Arabs would take a trip to Tel Aviv.

I’m just sayin it like it is.

If he thinks hes hastening the coming of the last Imam it makes sense to him.

That would be a very big mistake for them to make.

It wouldn’t be their first mistake.

Another day another opinion

Democrats are responsible for more wars than Republicans

... including Afghanistan & Iraq: the wars that Clinton didn't prevent and that Dubya had to fight.

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High Volume. Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking on the Topic or Keyword Israel. or WOT [War on Terror]

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In all fairness had we supported Ho Chi Minh at first and told France to get out of Vietnam, I don’t we would have been involved there and a lot of American lives would have been spared.. From what I understand was the Ho Chi Minh was a Commie in name only..

Re: From what I understand was the Ho Chi Minh was a Commie in name only...

That canard was floated by some in the OSS, but a look at the early life of Ho, you will find he embraced Communism, through his friend Marcel Cachin, in 1919 France. From there on Ho was a dedicated Communist. While Ho did play his 'Nationalist Only' card with some OSS east coast elitists to get support, he was a full blown Communist in Nationalist clothing.

Otherwise, why didn't Ho adopt a democratic form of government in the North instead of the Communist type Peoples Republic that had a Stalinist style land reform in which hundreds of thousands of people accused of being landlords were summarily executed or tortured and starved in prison?

If you truly believe that Ho was just a peaceful homeboy that was forced by the evil United States to look to the also peace loving Communist Party for help and support, you have bought the liberal revisionist history that also claims Ernesto 'Che' Guevara was a saint, Hugo Chavez a great man standing up to the devil Yankees and nObama will in due course finally win the cold war for the guys in red hats.

Ok, my mistake then.. Then he was a Nationalist in name only..

Um, Ho Chi Minh was a founding member of the French Communist Pary. After helping to form the PCF, he sepent time in Moscow receiving further training and was tapped as the Comintern's man in Asia. Even though the Viet Minh did start as a broad-based anti-colonial organisation, Ho and Vo Nguyen Giap quickly rose to leadership positions and steered it to the uber left. Heck, after WWII, Ho turned-in many of the nationalist leaders of the Viet Minh to the French auhorities. He also, infiltrated the truly nationalist VNQDD (Việt Nam Quốc Dân Đảng) and his agents either killed or turned-in members of the VNQDD to the French authorities.

I made a mistake.. See previous post..

Ok. De nada.

Any new Mars ice info?

Nothing new yet.. Once there is news it would be posted..

Absolutely. The Communists always peg their side as reasonable and our side as reactionary. The logic that they (and their enablers) use always comes down to this point: if we had surrendered faster, things would have been better.