I commend the Salon editorial staff for sticking to its prudent position: when it comes to intelligence analysis concerning WMD development by sworn national enemies with a 30-year history of indirectly waging war on our country by sponsoring terrorist attacks, such as the embassy hostage-taking and Beirut Marine barracks bombing, always presume them innocent until proven guilty beyond any and all doubt. May you be among the first to base jump sans parachute on the the next 9/11.

A very thoughtful comment, AJ. Nice one. I had one response to this:

Not to mention it has very little to do with whether or not the US ought to go kill some Iranians in order to make a few Zionist extremists feel better. No, I don't think this is a good argument. Try something else, please.

You're right: supposed anti-semitism at UCI has absolutely zero to do with whether or not we should bomb Iran. For anonymous, the connection must be that because Jews may or may not have suffered some indignities at UCI (an arguable point at best), it means that we need to kill a million Iranians so that Anonymous will feel better about the whole thing.

As for finding a better argument, that's not going to happen. The fact that these idiots are relying wholly on the "support Israel in even the most extreme circumstances or we'll call you an anti-semite" means that they've completely run out of valid arguments. This is it. In the same way, when you go to the store and only find a few cartons of UHT milk, it generally means they've run out of the real stuff.

Strawman much?

Salon's position, which I assume is in concurrence with Blix's, is very prudent: keep an eye on the Iranians, who may decide to try developing nukes sometime in the future. However, for now they are no threat, and military action makes no sense.

Exactly how is that not prudent?

Are you saying it would be more prudent to start a war against the Iranians, even though it's extremely likely that if we were to do so, we would get to Teheran and discover what we also discovered in Iraq: that we just invaded a country that was of no threat to us?

As for the notion that Iran has been at war with us for 30 years, you're on thin ice with that one. That means that your hero President Reagan sold weapons to our enemy in a time of war. Was that what you meant? If so, there are a lot of history books that need changing, to read "Ronald Reagan was the worst traitor to the US since Benedict Arnold." If this is not your point, please clarify.

George Bush and the far right in Israel, have taken complex ME issues and boiled them down into simplistic solutions that aren't really solutions at all. If Iran were to be bombed in order to prevent them from getting a nuclear weapons capability, do they really belive that all their problems would be solved? As with the Iraq war, which was supposed to turn all ME dictatorships into American style democracies, the plan to neutralize iran is fraught with unintended consequences.

Without a reasonable settlement that the Palestians can live with, nothing will come of any attempts to protect Israel. Until they start dealing with their neighbors in a constructive way, they will be perpetually insecure and under the threat of attack.

Remember how the recent invasion of Lebanon was supposed to be the cure-all? It actually made things worse, for everyone involved, including the Israeli's.

Yes let's toss non proliferation out the window because....because....because.... well because the Jews have the Bomb. Yes yes better we should heavily arm the whole world to protect us from those people. That will make everything better. Uh OK there's a rational PoV.

If anything, recent history should show that Arab, Persian, Islamic states non-use of atomic weapons is largely a matter of ability not intent. So let's review

Egypt - frequent us of chemical weapons against military and civilian populations in Yemen and Saudi Arabia in their war in the early-mid '60's.

Libya - Use of chemical weapons in Chad during the closing weeks of their war with Chad

Tunisia - Use of chemical weapons in Western Sahara against the popular uprising there

Iraq - well that's pretty well documented

I'm sure there are other instances. I'd have to pull down my old CSIS papers on the subject. In either case they seem to be hindered by their physical ability to use WMD's not their seemingly non existant moral horror at using them.

So yeah - I'd feel fine with an atomic Iran. Maybe they can build another blood red fountain in Tehran like they have for the 1 million dead they sent against Iraq, mostly children, typically unarmed. Yeah they're rational moral actors and I bet, I just bet they'd refuse to unleash the Bomb JUST because you might think them nasty people for doing so. Yes I'm sure of it. So let's not only let them have nukes, let's flush non proliferation down the toilet completely. That way they will love us again.

Huzzah !! Huzzah !!

Clearly the U.S "Will and Power" is very bored by now especially a decade or so after the fall of the Iron Curtain.

Today, it is Iran, tomorrow it could be Pakistan and depending on the stupidty level in the white house, there is no end in sight.

Since 9/11 Bush and Co. have attacked Afganistan, colonized Iraq, and clearly they can't have enough failures, so they are messing with Iran. Needless to mention that the Jewish Lobby is very active in keeping Bush on the offensive.

Bush and Co. have become warlords, and are committing crimes on a daily basis in Iraq, yet they are not staisfied and want to go all the way to make the 21st American might a reality by shedding blood and calling for peace between Palestine,Israel and the Arabs, who must obey, or else!!!