Ron Paul For President in 2008

[N-Syte]

@ damikira

The US was right to be “bellicose toward Iran”. You may not have noticed, but Iran has been quite bellicose itself in recent years. A good portion of the Middle East was concerned about the Iranian threat, not just the West. Egypt and Saudi Arabia seriously discussed starting their own nuclear program as a counter to Iran. Why did the Europeans invest so much time and energy in talks with Iran if it was obvious they were not a threat?

As suspicious as you are about intelligence gathering, it’s ironic to see how quickly you grasp on to intelligence suggesting they have dismantled the whole thing. Believe all positive news, but disregard anything negative?

If you want to throw people behind bars for making decisions based on bad information, it’s your prerogative. To me it comes across as hysterics with very little grounded in reality.

When I talked about regional arms races, the sole concern was not whether it would lead to a proliferation of long-ranged missiles, but rather to an increased number of “hot spots” across the planet. Do we really need more India-Pakistan nuclear stand-offs. Arms races invariably lead to such confrontations. If this still seems irrelevant to you, keep in mind global wars have been started over small conflicts in otherwise insignificant parts of the world.

Besides, in this day and age, as easily as technology can be exported from one part of the globe to another, the only real resources limiting a country’s ability to build a dangerous arsenal is cash and connections.

You scoff at the North Koreans, but they did aid Pakistan’s nuclear ambitions and stretched there arm to Syria and Iran.

It would be nice if the only options in Pakistan were not a dictatorship versus a fanatical theocracy, but that’s the hand that has been dealt. Who do you align yourself with? The side cooperating in routing terrorist cells or the side sympathetic to their ambitions?

My questioning the motivation of those who supposedly gave up their weapons programs is not tangential. I presume you welcome the outcome. What if it were a result of that bellicose rhetoric you abhor (bring on the cowboy analogies)? Seems funny that during the reign of this diabolical administration and its republican henchmen, we witnessed Lybia fall back in line, the Syrians leave Lebanon (notwithstanding the meddling of their Hezbollah proxies), Iran and North Korea supposedly giving up their nuclear ambitions, and Iraqis (Sunnis, Shi’ites and Kurds) helping US forces route local Al Queda. Sure it’s still a mess and the whole thing could backfire, but for you to just dismiss those achievements is disingenuous. It’s hardly a well thought position if your assumption is: everything bad is due to Bush incompetence/deceit while everything good is luck of the draw or would have happen anyway.