Interesting article, thanks jkade! I always love hearing JM speak or write. It's hard to disagree when he speaks.

I really love this line: "Isn't that playground stuff? Shouldn't we have outgrown that by now?"
I've sort of gotten the feeling that Iran is doing this just to piss off America. The idea that a radically different nation chooses to defy our sanctions almost seems blatant mockery, although it's truly a reasonable desire for a nation to want security, especially one that is so famously militarized. Of course, this is probably not the case, but it's funny to think of seeing how badly it's bunched our panties.

The sad part of this is that it is much more serious. No one needs more bombs. But even if Iran is pursuing them with their nuclear prowess or not, I too feel that the US is leading our people into a self-fulfilling prophecy. The situation is so (purposely) cloudy that we will likely not know before we react. I can bet we will invade or attack "preemptively." And it's a no-brainer with how deeply we have our hands in the collective skivvies of Israel and Saudi Arabia. Not to mention the figurative gold-mine of both securing the oil fields and removing a troublesome regime simultaneously that seems irresistible to US/Israel.

Thanks, JM, for that wonderful bit of commentary. Appropriate to begin with the disclaimer about musicians pining in about politics, but in the end the content either stands or fails on its own merits, regardless of the speaker, and that post was outstanding.

I'd like to point out something that has very much gotten lost in the recent discussions about Iran. If you were to tune in sort of halfway, as most people do, you'd have the impression that Iran has a nuclear program, are paying scientists to develop a weapon, has facilities, and so forth. Based on information of this type, one would reasonably think that Iran is perhaps a year away from having a nuclear weapon. I read recently a quite astounding fact: apparently according to the most reliable Western intelligence, the best guess is that Iran has not yet made a decision whether to pursue nuclear weapons or not.

I'll say that again: according to the best intelligence, the most likely current status is that Iran is in the stage where they have not yet made a decision about whether or not to set up a nuclear weapons program.

That's something to keep in mind when we talk about the crazy mullahs and the intolerable threat Iran poses to Israel. They haven't started building a weapon yet.

Oh, thanks for posting that -- I knew I had seen it somewhere, I just couldn't remember where.