David G

How do you win a game of chicken?

In one form of the game two contestants drive cars towards each other at high speed. The first one to swerve is chicken.

So here's one strategy.

You arrive at the game clutching a Smirnoff vodka bottle. You appear to be in an advanced state of inebriation. You are singing hymns on the theme of "Jesus loves me."

You explain to your opponent that earlier you had discovered your wife had been on the point of committing a great sin that would have condemned her and your children to the eternal fires of hell. You just could not let that happen. Now they are all safe in the arms of Jesus and soon you will be joining them.

Taking a final swig of the clear liquid in the bottle, and still singing hymns, you climb shakily into your car.

This works unless the other guy is a genuine nutso.

Steven, you haven't answered David's question. Veering off on obscure metaphors is no substitute for rational analysis.

There have been at least three reputable polls of Arab opinion, I.e. ordinary men and women, not the despotic elites. They are remarkably consistent. By overwhelming margins ordinary Arabs nominate the US and Israel as the greatest threats to peace in their region. By a smaller margin but still a comfortable majority, they would welcome Iran having nuclear weapons as reducing the Israeli threat.

Have a look at post 1948 history. List the countries who have attacked their neighbors in the Middle East. You will not find Iran in that list. On the contrary it has been the victim. The overthrow of the secular-inclined Mossadegh government in 1953 is a good start. Then the US supported attack by Iraq in the 1980s that killed more than a million Iranians. Currently they are under attack by Jinallah fanatics from Pakistan and. MEK fanatics from within Iraq, in both cases financed and armed by the US. That is just a sample.

There is no evidence that Iran is trying to build a nuclear bomb but given their recent history who would reasonably blame them if they did?

James O'Neill

I answered David G on another thread.

See:

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=13911

For a country that is not trying to acquire nukes Iran is spending an awful lot on building uranium enrichment facilities that go far beyond what is needed for civilian reactors. There's the direct cost of the facilities, the cost of putting them underground and the indirect cost of suffering sanctions. That says a lot more to me than any so-called NIE.

The only reasonable inference I can draw is that Iran is intent on acquiring nukes. That's certainly the basis on which most of the people concerned are operating. Nothing else makes sense. In fact, given the sheer scale of the Iranian effort, it takes a wilful determination not to connect the dots to avoid drawing the obvious conclusion.

But you raise an interesting point about why's and wherefore's of Iran's nuclear program. Iran exists in a dangerous neighbourhood and the danger does not emanate from Israel.

On one side it has nuclear armed Pakistan, its strategic rival in Afghanistan. And it is ironic that it acquired some of its nuclear technology from Pakistan's AQ Khan network.

On the other it had Saddam's Iraq. As we now know Saddam's nuclear program did not come to an end with the bombing of the Osirak reactor. I think the prospect of nuclear Saddam spooked the Iranians more than anything.

But once the program got going it acquired a momentum of its own as these things do.

There is another factor here.

I don’t think the Americans, the Europeans or even Israel's neighbours feels especially threatened by Israel's nukes. They know Israel will only use them if its very existence is threatened.

But a nuclear arms race between Iran and Saudi Arabia scares the living daylights out of everybody who does not suffer from Israel Obsession Disorder.

And, yes, I think there is an actual psychological disorder that can best be described as Israel Obsession Disorder or IOD.

It has been a litany of lies and hypocracy.Iran has yet to get one nuke but its OK for the Saudis to buy a few as protection.No mention of Israels hundreds of nukes.

See Prof Michel Chossudovsky's article "Globalisation of war. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?contex=va&aid=28254
Rememeber "All the ay with LBJ". We now know that the Gulf of Tonkin incident which gave the US the green light to attack Nth Vietnam ,did not happen.We know that Iraq was invaded on a lie.

Zibigniew Brezezinski 1998,"What we need is a truely massive and widely percived direct external threat."That threat was contrived terrorism. In the shadow of their project for a "New American Century" we are seeing the imperialists pushing for their,"New World Order" in which we will all be slaves to a world Govt owned and controlled by corpoate elites.

When is Australia going to make a decision based on our national interest instead of being a lap dog for corporate imperialism?

New (ish) Syria Blog "The Land Destroyer Report"
http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com.au/
How can any person with two brain cells to rub together be taken in by the SAME lies and SAME disinformation from the SAME people who brought you Yugoslavia. Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan, Libya and now Syria.

Steven, I know there is a disorder called Severe Religious Derangement Psychosis (SRDP) and I believe that the most extreme example of it occurs in Israel.

Over there, racist, deluded people actually believe that some mythical God has chosen them as his special people and that they, and they alone, will share in this mythical God's treasure and protection. Can you believe this happening in a world where we have space travel and nuclear bombs?

Driven by SRDP, these fanatics think they have rights that no other race has and can do whatever they want. They care nothing for world opinion or International Laws and have illegally armed themselves with nukes.

SRDP sufferers are a threat to themselves and to the rest of the world! They need urgent psychiatric therapy!