Saturday, February 25, 2012

Why are we Paying a $20 Neocon Tax on Each Tank of Gasoline?

U.S. Agencies See No Move by Iran to Build a Bomb
By JAMES RISEN and MARK MAZZETTI
Published: February 24, 2012

NY TIMES

WASHINGTON — Even as the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog said in a new report Friday that Iran had accelerated its uranium enrichment program, American intelligence analysts continue to believe that there is no hard evidence that Iran has decided to build a nuclear bomb.

Recent assessments by American spy agencies are broadly consistent with a 2007 intelligence finding that concluded that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program years earlier, according to current and former American officials. The officials said that assessment was largely reaffirmed in a 2010 National Intelligence Estimate, and that it remains the consensus view of America’s 16 intelligence agencies.

At the center of the debate is the murky question of the ultimate ambitions of the leaders in Tehran. There is no dispute among American, Israeli and European intelligence officials that Iran has been enriching nuclear fuel and developing some necessary infrastructure to become a nuclear power. But the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies believe that Iran has yet to decide whether to resume a parallel program to design a nuclear warhead — a program they believe was essentially halted in 2003 and which would be necessary for Iran to build a nuclear bomb. Iranian officials maintain that their nuclear program is for civilian purposes.

In Senate testimony on Jan. 31, James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, stated explicitly that American officials believe that Iran is preserving its options for a nuclear weapon, but said there was no evidence that it had made a decision on making a concerted push to build a weapon. David H. Petraeus, the C.I.A. director, concurred with that view at the same hearing. Other senior United States officials, including Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have made similar statements in recent television appearances.

“They are certainly moving on that path, but we don’t believe they have actually made the decision to go ahead with a nuclear weapon,” Mr. Clapper told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Critics of the American assessment in Jerusalem and some European capitals point out that Iran has made great strides in the most difficult step toward building a nuclear weapon, enriching uranium. That has also been the conclusion of a series of reports by the International Atomic Energy Agency’s inspectors, who on Friday presented new evidence that the Iranians have begun enriching uranium in an underground facility.

Once Iran takes further steps to actually enrich weapons grade fuel — a feat that the United States does not believe Iran has yet accomplished — the critics believe that it would be relatively easy for Iran to engineer a warhead and then have a bomb in short order. They also criticize the C.I.A. for being overly cautious in its assessments of Iran, suggesting that it is perhaps overcompensating for its faulty intelligence assessments in 2002 about Iraq’s purported weapons programs, which turned out not to exist. In addition, Israeli officials have challenged the very premise of the 2007 intelligence assessment, saying they do not believe that Iran ever fully halted its work on a weapons program.

Yet some intelligence officials and outside analysts believe there is another possible explanation for Iran’s enrichment activity, besides a headlong race to build a bomb as quickly as possible. They say that Iran could be seeking to enhance its influence in the region by creating what some analysts call “strategic ambiguity.” Rather than building a bomb now, Iran may want to increase its power by sowing doubt among other nations about its nuclear ambitions. Some point to the examples of Pakistan and India, both of which had clandestine nuclear weapons programs for decades before they actually decided to build bombs and test their weapons in 1998.

“I think the Iranians want the capability, but not a stockpile,” said Kenneth C. Brill, a former United States ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency who also served as director of the intelligence community’s National Counterproliferation Center from 2005 until 2009. Added a former intelligence official: “The Indians were a screwdriver turn away from having a bomb for many years. The Iranians are not that close.”

To be sure, American analysts acknowledge that understanding the intentions of Iran’s leadership is extremely difficult, and that their assessments are based on limited information. David A. Kay, who was head of the C.I.A.’s team that searched for Iraq’s weapons programs after the United States invasion, was cautious about the quality of the intelligence underlying the current American assessment.

“They don’t have evidence that Iran has made a decision to build a bomb, and that reflects a real gap in the intelligence,” Mr. Kay said. “It’s true the evidence hasn’t changed very much” since 2007, he added. “But that reflects a lack of access and a lack of intelligence as much as anything.”

Divining the intentions of closed societies is one of the most difficult tasks for American intelligence analysts, and the C.I.A. for decades has had little success penetrating regimes like Iran and North Korea to learn how their leaders make decisions.

Amid the ugly aftermath of the botched Iraq intelligence assessments, American spy agencies in 2006 put new analytical procedures in place to avoid repeating the failures. Analysts now have access to raw information about the sources behind intelligence reports, to help better determine the credibility of the sources and prevent another episode like the one in which the C.I.A. based much of its conclusions about Iraq’s purported biological weapons on an Iraqi exile who turned out to be lying.

Analysts are also required to include in their reports more information about the chain of logic that has led them to their conclusions, and differing judgments are featured prominently in classified reports, rather than buried in footnotes.

When an unclassified summary of the 2007 intelligence estimate on Iran’s nuclear program was made public, stating that it had abandoned work on a bomb, it stunned the Bush administration and the world. It represented a sharp reversal from the intelligence community’s 2005 estimate, and drew criticism of the C.I.A. from European and Israeli officials, as well as conservative pundits. They argued that it was part of a larger effort by the C.I.A. to prevent American military action against Iran.

The report was so controversial that many outside analysts expected that the intelligence community would be forced to revise and repudiate the estimate after new evidence emerged about Iran’s program, notably from the United Nations’ inspectors. Yet analysts now say that while there has been mounting evidence of Iranian work on enrichment facilities, there has been far less clear evidence of a weapons program.

Still, Iran’s enrichment activities have raised suspicions, even among skeptics.

“What has been driving the discussion has been the enrichment activity,” said one former intelligence official. “That’s made everybody nervous. So the Iranians continue to contribute to the suspicions about what they are trying to do.”

Iran’s efforts to hide its nuclear facilities and to deceive the West about its activities have also intensified doubts. But some American analysts warn that such behavior is not necessarily proof of a weapons program. They say that one mistake the C.I.A. made before the war in Iraq was to assume that because Saddam Hussein resisted weapons inspections — acting as if he were hiding something — it meant that he had a weapons program.

As Mr. Kay explained, “The amount of evidence that you were willing to go with in 2002 is not the same evidence you are willing to accept today.”

29 comments:

  1. Obama and the Republicans are trading jabs at each other over high gasoline prices. They are equally guilty. The sanctions and turmoil in the Middle East directly affect the price of oil. The premium over the price that would exist without the needless war in Iraq and the calling for war with Iran is a tax on the US economy.

    The neo-hysteria over WMD weapons that do no exist is a tax on the American consumer. It is wasting and debilitating savings and the economic welfare of ordinary Americans, the same families that provide the recruiting pool for the military is being burdened with an economic repression because of a political theory that has no basis in fact.

    The real security base of any society is economic security. Everything flows from that. The mindless acceptance of the propaganda coming from the merchants of myth is costing US households grotesquely more than the nonexistent nuclear threat from Iran.

    Those that want to drag the US into war are temporarily winning the argument. They will not be so self-satisfied when the American public learns the truth about the non-nuclear threat from Iran as they did about the lies and deception that got us into Iraq.

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  2. Iran: drumbeat of war has a familiar sound

    The drumbeat of war with Iran grows steadily more intense. Each day brings more defiant rhetoric from Tehran, another failed UN nuclear inspection, reports of western military preparations, an assassination, a missile test, or a dire warning that, once again, the world is sliding towards catastrophe. If this all feels familiar, that's because it is. For Iran, read Iraq in the countdown to the 2003 invasion.

    A decisive moment may arrive when Barack Obama meets Israel's prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, in Washington on 5 March. "The meeting … will be definitive," said Ari Shavit in Haaretz. "If the US president wants to prevent a disaster, he must give Netanyahu iron-clad guarantees the US will stop Iran in any way necessary and at any price after the 2012 [US] elections. If Obama doesn't do this, he will obligate Netanyahu to act before the 2012 elections."

    If accurate, this is not much of a choice. It suggests military action by the US or Israel or both is unavoidable, the only question being one of timing. Objectively speaking, this is not actually the position. All concerned still have choices. The case against Iran's nuclear programme is far from proven. It is widely agreed that limited military strikes will not work; a more extensive, longer-lasting campaign would be required. And Obama in particular, having striven to end the Iraq and Afghan wars, is loath to start another.

    But as with Iraq in 2003, the sense that war is inevitable and unstoppable is being energetically encouraged by political hardliners and their media accomplices on all sides, producing a momentum that even the un-bellicose Obama may find hard to resist.

    A recent analysis of US public opinion revealed deeply ambivalent attitudes on Iran, with the majority of Americans apparently favouring diplomatic solutions. Yet as Republican presidential candidates exploit the issue, as the Israelis lobby America, and as Iranian factions manoeuvre ahead of parliamentary polls, the likelihood grows that doves and doubters will again be either converted or ignored.

    In some key respects, the Iran crisis is distinctly different from that over Iraq in 2002-03. As matters stand, similarly strident warmongering surrounding Iran is thus hard to understand or explain – unless the ultimate, unstated objective is not to curb Iran's nuclear programme but, as in Iraq, to overthrow its rulers.


    {…}

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  3. {…}

    Bogeymen

    George Bush and Tony Blair claimed a moral imperative in toppling the "monstrous" dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. But the much vilified Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's president, is no Saddam, and neither is the country's bumbling Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The Iranian regime is repressive and sporadically brutal, but so too are many developing world governments. Unlike Saddam's Ba'athists, it has significant democratic and ideological underpinning. As a bogeyman whose depredations might justify international intervention, Ahmadinejad is a flop.

    Weapons of Mass Destruction

    Saddam, notoriously, had no deployable or usable WMD, but his overthrow was primarily justified by the mistaken belief that he did. The present western consensus is that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons capability, but does not have an atomic bomb and is not currently trying to build one. Khamenei said this week that nuclear weapons were "useless and harmful" and that possessing them was sinful . Netanyahu's belief that Israel faces an imminent, existential threat is visceral rather than fact-based. Israel's refusal to acknowledge its own nuclear arsenal, let alone contemplate its reduction, further undermines the case for action.

    Terrorism

    Plenty of evidence exists that Iran supports, or has supported, armed militants, jihadis, and anti-Israeli and anti-western armed groups in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, providing financial and political backing, arms and training. In this respect, its behaviour is more threatening to western interests than was that of Saddam's secular regime, no friend to Islamists. But limited or even protracted attacks on Iran's nuclear and/or military facilities would not end these links, unless there was a shift of political direction in Tehran.

    Strategic power-games

    Iraq was considered important for its strategic position at the heart of the Arab Middle East and its economic potential, especially its oil reserves. Similarly, there can be no doubt the US and Britain would like to see energy-rich Iran return to the western camp, as in the pre-revolution days of the Shah. Conversely, Iran's military is more powerful and more committed to the defence of the status quo, from which it benefits greatly, than was Iraq's. The potential disruption to oil supplies and western economies, not to mention the impact of asymmetric Iranian counter-attacks, makes a resort to war contingent on producing lasting dividends.

    Political imperatives

    In contrast to the splits over Iraq, the main western powers are united in their determination to bring Iran to heel. As well as Netanyahu, David Cameron, Nicolas Sarkozy and Barack Obama have all declared an Iranian bomb unacceptable. Their inflexibility thus makes war more rather than less likely should Iran refuse to back down. "Having made the case for urgency and concerted action, it would be difficult for Obama to tell the world 'never mind' and shift to a strategy that accepts Iranian membership in the nuclear club," said Michael Gerson in the Washington Post.

    In short, the Iranian crisis differs from that over Iraq in 2003 in key respects. But the current impetus towards war can only be explained in terms of a western desire for Iraq-style regime change – because only regime change may achieve the de-nuclearisation the west insists upon.

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  4. There is one Middle East "nation" that has, in fact, several hundred nuclear weapons along with the missiles to fire them, yet the media silence with regards to Israel's nuclear arsenal is deafening.

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  5. Pakistan is a far less stable and more dangerous member of the nuclear club than Iran would be, and that Western powers are hypocritical in their tacit acceptance of Israel’s nuclear weapons. Iran, they say, has not launched a war since the 19th century; Israel has never been completely at peace.

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  6. "...when the American public learns the truth about the non-nuclear threat from Iran..."

    You don't know that for a fact.

    Based on Iranian actions and words, it would be the height of irresponsibility to be unprepared for a nuclear armed Iran.

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  7. An attack on Iran's nuclear facilities is not an exitential threat to America's economy.

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  8. I'm skeptical about the value of drawing parallels between Saddam Hussein and the Mullahs.

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  9. Quirk,

    re. you ruminations on Socrates:

    Isn't there quite a debate as to whether he existed at all? That he was merely a literary device to employ the dialectic expressing Plato's philosophy?

    and you contention that all other philosophers since didn't cut-it - nonsense (to borrow a phrase). Plato's proposition that knowledge is like seeing what casts the shadows on the walls of the cave is mistaken. There is no reason to suspect that truth lie beyond; metaphysical tripe much like religion.

    :)

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  10. Obama will be meeting Netanyahu on March 5th. I hope he has the balls, like an Eisenhower, to tell him no. Not with our money, not in our name , not with our weapons and not with the expectation that we will get involved regardless of how badly it goes for Netanyahu should he be so foolish and so corrupt as to attack Iran. I hope he would tell Netanyahu to spare us the rhetorical fabrication from some hack finance minister, who with a straight face, tells us that with a nuclear weapon, Iran will commit suicide by attacking the US.

    Unfortunately, Netanyahu, who lived in the US knows how utterly ignorant most Americans are about the World and more unfortunately Netanyahu has no idea about how quickly American opinion will turn when they learn the truth about the deceptions being used to drag us into war.

    Americans do understand about the price of a tank of gasoline. That understanding will become known sooner rather than later, I hope.

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  11. Jubal Early: Based on Iranian actions and words, it would be the height of irresponsibility to be unprepared for a nuclear armed Iran.

    We are well prepared. It's called the nuclear triad, and consists of land-based Minutemen III's, SLBMs launched from boomers out of Kingston GA and Bangor WA, and B-2s out of Alabama.

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  12. Jubal Early: I'm skeptical about the value of drawing parallels between Saddam Hussein and the Mullahs.

    Here's one. The war in Iraq was to prevent Saddam Hussein from acquiring weapons of mass destruction. If McCain was President we'd already have boots on the ground in Iran.

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  13. Nationwide average this morning: $3.67/gal.

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  14. Obama: "Let me be clear, give me one million dollars I will give you ten Government Motors Volts."

    A senior Pentagon official apologized Friday to Washington-area Muslims for burning of Korans at military base in Afghan, as Obama embarked on his second World Apology Tour.

    Pakistan's capital is fighting a hairy invader: the wild boar, which has taken over Islamabad in ever increasing numbers.

    The wild pigs, which feast on rubbish outside homes and restaurants, are said to be a major cause of traffic accidents, and will charge if frightened or injured. The animals can weigh up to 220 pounds, have sharp teeth, and adult males have tusks.

    The Associated Press reported that city authorities are using poison and allowing free hunting permits to try and cut down on the wild boar population, but few Pakistanis are interested.

    "Hunters are wary of getting arrested by the police, or even worse — getting mistaken for a terrorist," the AP reported.


    Allahu Oinkbar.

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  15. It gets worse. It is over for us in Afghanistan

    Stupidity, cultural ignorance and a gross breach of training and leadership has given the Taliban a means to get the US and NATO out of Afghanistan. The US military command was slow to see the consequences and thought an apology would work. It is so bizarre , I would almost expect that the burned Korans were a Taliban plant. These murdered officers is an indication that the US military command did not appreciate the trouble that they were in. They do now:


    Kabul (CNN) -- At least two American officers were killed inside the interior ministry in Kabul, a senior Afghan police official said Saturday.
    According to the International Security Assistance Force, initial reports indicated that "an individual" turned his weapon against NATO service members.
    The agency did not provide the nationalities of the victims, but the Afghan police official confirmed they were American.
    The Americans killed were a colonel and a major, the official said.
    "They were part of the advisory mission there," the official said. "At this stage we can't say why they were killed.”

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  16. I'm not convinced there's as much of an "Iran Premium" built into the price of oil/gasoline as some are claiming.

    Obama is certain to dip into the "Strategic" Reserves this Spring, whether Iran goes South, or not, and they're still, somewhat successfully, selling the idea that S. Arabia can step in and make up for any missing Iranian oil.

    The idea that Saudi Arabia could do that is silly, of course, but people believe what they want to believe.

    This is, basically, just what the world looks like when Global production is stagnant, and Demand is Rising.

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  17. It is just another example of why we should not be in the nation building business in the Middle East and the unexpected consequences of all wars, and yet we will shortly hear from the crowd that is ready for the US to engage in another absurd war. Not to be fought by them or their kin, of course.

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  18. SWIFT, the world's biggest electronic banking system, is ready to block Iran's Central Bank from transferring funds, according to a US congressional aide who was at a briefing by the Belgium-based group earlier this week.

    The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication had said last week that it was likely to cut off Tehran to comply with European Union and US sanctions.

    Expelling the Central Bank, which acts as the clearinghouse for Tehran's oil revenues, would halt Iran's most powerful vehicle to move funds electronically.

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  19. Oil is priced by the last barrel sold. You are correct that supply is very tight but that makes the price volatility greater. You know more about oil than anyone else that posts here but I cannot believe that there is no relationship between the rising price of oil and the rising tensions in the Middle east.

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  20. What does Gingrich reccommend that we do?

    SPOKANE, Wash. -- Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said President Obama "surrendered" Thursday when he apologized to the Afghan government for the burning of several Qurans at an American military base near Kabul.

    Referring to the burning of "radical Islamic material" that included the Qurans, the former House speaker said the situation had been "blown into a huge incident by various fanatics in Afghanistan." He told a crowd gathered at a campaign rally at the Bing Crosby Theater that while the president had apologized for the burning, he had not called on the Afghan government to issue an apology for the deaths of two NATO soldiers who were killed by a man wearing an Afghan army uniform during increasingly violent protests of the desecration of the Muslim holy book.

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  21. Don’t think for a moment that Iranian agents are not actively involved in Afghanistan and are trying to do to us what we did to the Russians.

    Putin must be very pleased.

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  22. It has always been a military tradition that the Commander is responsible for his troops. What else need be said?

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  23. I'm looking at current "Spot" Prices. This is what the actual Buyers, and Sellers are agreeing upon for oil delivered "Today."

    Spot Prices are running ahead of "Futures" Prices (those numbers you see on CNBC every morning.) This tells me that oil is in short supply "in the here and now."

    An ex. is Louisiana Light Sweet (approx. the same oil as WTI) that closed at $130.00/bbl, yesterday.

    Another dead giveaway is that we've closed 700,000 bbl of oil/day in refining capacity in the last couple of months.

    Global oil production has been stuck at 74 million bbl/day for the last seven years, "Exports" have been Falling since approx. 2006, and Demand from China, India, the rest of Asia, and the oil exporters, themselves is steadily, and substantively rising.

    "Above Ground" factors such as Libya, Iran, Sudan, etc just aggravate the naturally bad situation.

    It's called, "Peak Oil."

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  24. Afghanistan is known, for good reason, as the graveyard of empires.
    Indeed, much as many people like to give Reagan credit for the downfall of the Soviet empire, the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan was really what did them in (abetted by Reagan's support of the mujahedeen).
    Maybe our allies haven't followed us into the Afghan abyss because they're smarter than the neocons who led us there.
    So we have a choice. We can stay there indefinitely, making no real progress, wasting blood and treasure. Or we can get smart and get out, as fast as we can.
    Listen, there isn't much Obama has done that I've liked in the last four years. But what he's doing in Afghanistan makes sense to me. I just wish he'd get us out faster.

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  25. .

    Quirk,

    re. you ruminations on Socrates:

    Isn't there quite a debate as to whether he existed at all? That he was merely a literary device to employ the dialectic expressing Plato's philosophy?

    and you contention that all other philosophers since didn't cut-it - nonsense (to borrow a phrase). Plato's proposition that knowledge is like seeing what casts the shadows on the walls of the cave is mistaken. There is no reason to suspect that truth lie beyond; metaphysical tripe much like religion.

    :)



    While it’s true we know little of the specifics of Socrates life, the answer is no, there isn’t quite a debate about whether he existed. It wasn’t just Plato that talked of Socrates. Xenephon, Aechines, etc. spoke of him. Bob mentioned The Clouds in which he played a featured role. Aristophenes was his contemporary. As far as I know, there are no serious authorities that doubt he lived. No doubt there are wig jobs somewhere who would argue that view, just as there are those that would argue that Shakespeare didn’t actually write his plays or that there is no historical Jesus.

    and you contention that all other philosophers since didn't cut-it - nonsense (to borrow a phrase)

    In truth, Socrates wasn’t really much of a philosopher but more a seeker of truth. The Socratic Method was attributed to him. He demanded preciseness from those who would offer up an opinion. Many argued that he demanded much while giving little. And in fact, the only two philosophical questions he tried to answer were “What is virtue?” and “What is the best state?” If you followed the thought behind my first post, you would see I brought him up in the context of him being an agnostic, something I admire.

    Perhaps, I indulged in a little hyperbole with regard to other philosophers. But I think the point I made about their philosophies being driven by their own circumstances and their own times is a valid one. There are numerous examples. I have to believe that the idealism of Kant and the skepticism of Schopenhauer were to a significant degree influenced by the times in which they lived. However, again my comments were in the context of comparing agnosticism to faith or atheism. You have philosophers through the ages who profess to know “The Truth” when in fact what they offer us is informed speculation, opinions. Which one do you choose? Which one offers you the answers you need, or want? Or are you just impressed by the words? Which one can prove to you he has the answers to all the big questions?


    Inquiring minds want to know, Ash.

    Plato's proposition that knowledge is like seeing what casts the shadows on the walls of the cave is mistaken. There is no reason to suspect that truth lie beyond; metaphysical tripe much like religion.

    I thought we were talking about Socrates. If it’s the Socratic Method you are talking about then what you complain about is, in fact, the essence of the scientific method. Perhaps I am reading you wrong.

    Like Sgt. Shultz, Socrates’ value was in pointing out that he, like most men, knew nothing. But he also believed that knowledge was attainable if humbly pursued. The unexamined life is not worth living. Admitting you don’t know the truth doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pursue it.

    .

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  26. Deuce said...
    Obama will be meeting Netanyahu on March 5th. I hope he has the balls, like an Eisenhower, to tell him no. Not with our money, not in our name , not with our weapons and not with the expectation that we will get involved regardless of how badly it goes for Netanyahu should he be so foolish and so corrupt as to attack Iran



    Nicely said for someone without a clue as to the real risks of an Iranian nuke.

    I hope Bibi has the balls to look in Obama's eyes and tell him that regardless of blowback Iran will not get the ability to put a nuke together to commit genocide.

    After all America has stood with it[s hands in it's pockets many times when genocide was being and committed and just shrugs it's shoulders.

    Sometimes, like in the case of Rwanda? It would have been as simple as a few hundred armed soldiers, even Bill Clinton admitted it...

    So as for an aggressive Iran? That has supplied 100's of thousands of rockets to proxy armies? That has spent 10 billion in funding hezbollah, hamas and others in terrorists training and logistics?

    Ms T says "boo"

    Deuce says "Netanyahu should he be so foolish and so corrupt"

    Dr who now is Anon says "Iran, they say, has not launched a war since the 19th century"

    The fact that Iran HAS murdered a thousand US soldiers in Iraq, supported Syria's murder of it's own civilians and on and on is proof that Iran is a threat.

    Ignore it at your own peril.

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  27. Deuce said...
    Oil is priced by the last barrel sold. You are correct that supply is very tight but that makes the price volatility greater. You know more about oil than anyone else that posts here but I cannot believe that there is no relationship between the rising price of oil and the rising tensions in the Middle east.


    bullshit, the "war" price for oil was applied and never removed when we started the gulf war 1.

    the reason oil prices are as high as they are?

    1. an american slamming shut of oil production in the gulf and other areas that obama has shut down

    2. the fed printing 6-10 TRILLION (we dont know exactly) in useless dollars in the qe1,2,3,4 programs

    3. the feeling around the world that america is over, that it is incapable of anything, thanks to obama...

    want to drive the price of oil down?

    easy.

    stop printing money

    announce the fast track of american oil drilling

    announce the switching of american trucks and buses to natural gas

    announce the expansion of the SOR

    do those 4 things?

    oil will drop $30 a barrel in a day.

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