The weird lack of compassion in some of the letters posted on this subject is deeply disturbing. In case folks have forgotten, nuclear war is not a videogame. There are children, women and men that will die that had no connection with whatever scheme Ahmademijad cooks up. There will be extreme environmental effects from any ground burst used to dig up the facility in Natanz. There will be consequences, and literal fallout for everyone around the world-- along with the potential of spreading nuclear catastrophe across the Middle East, with its densely populated cities and rich cultures. There may even be a city in our own country that perishes because of nuclear fire because of the resolve steeled by this.

We are facing a situation with our own government where they have become so complicit in impeachable crimes, they now realize that if there is any accountability leveled on them, they are gone. Such is a very dangerous situation with fingers placed on nuclear buttons. There is, however, something all folks in states with Republican senators must do-- they must call out their senators this week on this issue.

Things are getting very serious-- action must be taken by the citizenry, through our senators. It is time for us to act.

To start, I am an American, born here, and lived here my entire life. My father, however, is Iranian, and was a political organizer under Mossadegh. It gives me a unique perspective to understand this article-- in the context of the character of the Iranian people, as well as from an opposing local political viewpoint.

As the news spins up around the current government, I'm starting to hear from Joe Conason, whom I think is usually right on target, and the Left that the Iranian army is well-disciplined and trained and attacking them could lead to a rout in Iraq-- especially in the south. Equally, from the Right, we hear that the A-man is a madman, with everyone behind him, and hell-bent on nuking Israel and everyone else.

Both are B.S. Iranians have 3000 years of culture behind them showing that a.) they're lousy soldiers, and b.) while on the surface, they might be prone to florid displays of religious fervor, most have only a passing interest in martyrdom-- mostly as a spectator sport.

No one in the Iranian diaspora would argue that Ahmadenijad isn't a real kook. The prospect of him getting nuclear weapons is indeed scary.

But anyone that has any contact with Iranian culture simply can't buy into the prospect that Iranians as a whole are capable of the type of military lockstep that the author proposes, or Ahmadenijad might like. The culture doesn't work that way. Any spin to that effect IS identical to the historical steps ended us up in Iraq.

What is more likely to happen if we attack Iran is to end up in another quagmire of urban street-fighting similar to the situation in Iraq. Because U.S. battleplans inevitably call for taking out a country's civilian infrastructure (electrical, water, etc.) we'll reduce Tehran to anarchy, split between Revolutionary Guards, more secular parts of society, and our own troops. We'll drag another culture that, in time (probably a short time) would throw Ahmadenijad out, down into an abyss that will take 100 years to recover, and sow instability across the Middle East.

The problem with U.S. policy toward Iran is that if you look at our goals and our actions, we typically largely succeed. First and foremost among those goals 50 years ago was destroying the Left in Iran, and with that, we've largely succeeded. The problem is this: the only organized ones left over are the kooks. We might think about the unexpected consequences of our actions BEFORE we pursue our goals so vigorously-- we might find that when the gods want to punish us, they grant us our wishes.

I enjoyed Andrew Leonard's post, and take exception to only one historical aspect. The snail darter won at the Supreme Court, and the dam was indeed exempted as described. However, the notion of "economic progress" is part of the vernacular that gives the Rs the strength that they need.

In this case, when the enviros sued, and enjoined construction, the dam was 90% completed-- but the dam was still, even with 90% built, in a position of having a negative cost-benefit situation. That is, 10% of the construction cost was still greater than the ostensible benefit.

The dam did go ahead, tragically, flooding an ancient Cherokee town, that had been on an upstream island for some couple-thousand years.

Things are even more Humpty-Dumpty than people realize-- so much of what happens is driven by our culture and its acceptance of the notion that environmental destruction actually benefits us, even in the short run. The reality is, that increasingly environmental destruction hurts us both in the short and long term.