I agree that our options with Iran are limited. They are just stringing us (and the EU) along diplomatically. The negotiations have taken on a circular form, always ending up in the same place. The Iranians won’t stop enriching uranium, and we won’t commit to any deal until they do. We can’t get any real sanctions regime working against them, because Russia (and China) will nix anything with real teeth in it. That leaves internal regime change, which doesn’t seem to be happening (with or without any help that may be unseen), and external military pressure.

We can stop their nuclear program, it’s just a matter of how much it hurts us in the short run to do so. That is a matter of great uncertainty, and there are a lot of bad things that have a good probability of happening in the event of military action against them.

No, Chris, that’s not a fact, that’s your assessment. And, for the record, I think our options with Iran are extremely limited, so I don’t think anyone is really “choosing” to “allow” Iran to develop nuclear weapons.

Or do you have a proposal up your sleeve that will stop Iran from producing nuclear weapons (which they may or may not be doing)?

Couple that with their consistently belligerent rhetoric against the U.S. and Israel, and you have a major problem. You may wish to gamble that the Iranians can be deterred, that their rhetoric is just that, that they really don’t want to wipe Israel out, that they won’t give WMD to their Hezbollah proxies. I don’t.

Chris, what’s the “fact”? That Iran may arm itself with nuclear weapons? That’s a possibility, maybe even a probability, but not a fact.

Others, however, wish to see the options of the Bush administration strictly limited in the case of Iran. Undoubtedly this is because the thought of Iranian nukes scares them less than George W. Bush.

Bush would not have the political support necessary for such a move.

If he fabricates a case that Iran has attacked US troops, though, he wouldn’t need political support. The terms of the War Powers Act give him the authority to attack. He repeatedly claims that he doesn’t care about his legacy, and I think that’s one of the few things he’s not lying about. So if he thinks an unprovoked attack on Iran would cause some more of that constructive chaos that was so efficiently brought about by the Iraq, I don’t doubt he’d attack.

The administration very openly insisted they had no intentions to invade Iraq, either, Gaius — at a time when they were already fully committed, privately, to invading. For at least a year before the invasion, the Bush administration said publicly that there were no plans to invade Iraq, and all that time the plans to invade were ongoing and active. The first time they lied, with Iraq, shame on them. If Bush does invade Iran, that will be the second time, and the shame will be on you, and everyone who believes everything Bush says, with the faith of a child.

Remember Josh’s scoop about Cheney’s theory that the Vice President is really a fourth branch of government, so that any constraints on “the executive” don’t apply? 10 to 1 they’re applying that here, and in a context, Iraq, where literally billions of loose cash is just floating around….

I would not buy a dog under Seymour’s circumstance.