“The recipe for perpetual ignorance is: Be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge.” Elbert Hubbard

“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than a sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.

“He must be very ignorant for he answers every question he is asked”
Voltaire

“The greatest ignorance is to reject something you know nothing about"

“The recipe for perpetual ignorance is: Be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge.” Elbert Hubbard

Is that why when the evidence to the contrary, Bush and co repeatedly revert to what "they believe"?

“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than a sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” Martin Luther King, Jr.

Sums up the right wing evangelicals who, lo and behold, vote right wing.

“He must be very ignorant for he answers every question he is asked” Voltaire

You mean like Richard Perle and the neocons who pose a question and answer it in the same sentence ie. does anyone believe blah blah blah....I don't think so.

“The greatest ignorance is to reject something you know nothing about"

Like insisting that Iraq had WMD and AQ connections or insisting that Iran has nukes in spite of 16 intelligence agencies arguing tot eh contrary?

You my friend have been conned. Would you be interested in buying a bridge?

The debate is over, I have won and you have lost. Now it is time for you to return to fantasy land.

I see you've taken to Bush's Bizzaro world of faith based reality where up is down, war is peace, torture is liberation and people get propmoted for failure.

Based on those rules, I can see why you believe you have won. Good for you.

Hmm, looks like Neolefty made up a little porky, right on the spot: "Like insisting that Iraq had WMD and AQ connections or insisting that Iran has nukes in spite of 16 intelligence agencies arguing tot eh contrary?"

All the western intelligence agencies were in agreement that Iraq had WMD, [the MI-6 had hard evidence that Iraq was arranging the transfer of yellow cake from Niger] and no one says that Iran has nukes, but everyone, including the UN and Russia are extremely concerned that Iran is within a year or two of having nuclear weapons capability. With 6,000 centrifuges spinning, they will be producing enough enriched uranium to produce one bomb about every two months by the end of that 12 - 24 months. The only counter was a couple of lefties in our intelligence service who wrote that the Iranians had given up their effort to build a bomb back in 2003 - then carefully leaked that estimate to the MSM to undercut the Administration. No one dares to say that once they have enough enriched uranium that they won't go ahead and build their bomb.

Does Neolefty honestly believe that those idiots in Iran might not be tempted to use one or two of them on Israel? If not, on what basis does he think so - if he thinks at all. If the Iranians did use one or two of their bombs on Israel, that would certainly wipe out the civilian population of Israel. But Israel would then use its 150 - 240 nuclear weapons - ALL of them - on the West Bank, Gaza, Syria, Iran and any other country that it feels responsible for its national death. I suppose Neolefty would accept no responsibility for the consequences of his idiocy should his policies become the guiding force of our foreign policy.

It's vastly more important to elect a cream puff Socialist as President, than make hard choices (and making some mistakes), fight hard against a ruthless and relentless enemy and try to keep Western Civilization alive for another generation or two.

I'm sure Neolefty will claim he is a "Neolefty" because he used to be a Republican who "simply couldn't stand how George W lied to us all and got us into a nasty, awful, terrible war against an innocent and benevolent soul like Sadaam Hussein that caused thousands of deaths of innocent people," so he became a Neolefty. Phonies like this...

At least Christopher Hitchens has the honesty and integrity to admit that he - as a left- wing Marxist "liberal" was wrong. It's refreshing as hell, but you won't get that kind of honesty from half-baked liberals like our Neolefty.

You haven't got a clue what you are talking about Constantius.

All the western intelligence agencies were in agreement that Iraq had WMD,

Wrong. They agreed that Iraq had not met all their reporting obligations to satisfy the UJ REsolutions, but they did not agree that Iraq had WMD (ie. nukes). Furthermore, both the IAEA and UNSCOM disagreed entirely with everything POwell presented to the UNSC.

MI-6's "hard evidence" was so flimsy that the CIA warned the Bush administration on multiple occsasions not to

No one says that Iran has nukes, but everyone, including the UN and Russia are extremely concerned that Iran is within a year or two of having nuclear weapons capability.

Rubbish. The only parties making the claim that except for Israel. Stay way from subjects you know nothign about. I am a former nuclear engineer, so take it from me. Iran are not only signatories to the NPT, but their entire enrichment program is undre 24 hour surveilance. For them to start enriching to nuclear wepoans grade U235, they would have to withdraw from the NPT and expell the IAEA from Iran before even starting.

When North Korea conducted their nuclear test 18 months ago, the experts said that even with a successful test, NK were yearsw way from making a useable nuclear weapon. Iran hasn't even tried to coinduct a detonation.

With 6,000 centrifuges spinning, they will be producing enough enriched uranium to produce one bomb about every two months by the end of that 12 - 24 months.

A bsilute rubbish. More cen trifuges does not equal higher enrichment. See above.

The only counter was a couple of lefties in our intelligence service who wrote that the Iranians had given up their effort to build a bomb back in 2003

Again abosulute rubbish, 16 intelligence agencies are not a couple of lefties. In fact, even the suggestion that Iran had a weapons program up until 2003 was based entirely on the seizure of a so called stoken laptop provided by the MEK, the terrorist group who is trying to overthrow the Iranian government,.

then carefully leaked that estimate to the MSM to undercut the Administration.

By that stage, the NIE was over a year old and Cheney had it frozen for over 21 months. The adminstration has been lying and the NIE contradicted them.

No one dares to say that once they have enough enriched uranium that they won't go ahead and build their bomb.

That's because as I have explained to you, enriching to 2-3% is a far cry from enriching to 90%. The IAEA has Iran's enrichment facilities under 24 hour surveilance and to this day, they can state with certainty that there is no evidence Iran is doing anything to violate the NPT.

Does Neolefty honestly believe that those idiots in Iran might not be tempted to use one or two of them on Israel?

I don;t give a crap about what anyone believes. Only the facts., BTW. Iran has never threatened Israel and knows that any attack on Israel would results in their annihilation, and given that there is no evidence Iran's leaders are hell bent on suicide, the only cioncludion woudl be that no, Iran will never be tempted to use one or two of them on Israel.

But Israel would then use its 150 - 240 nuclear weapons - ALL of them - on the West Bank, Gaza, Syria, Iran and any other country that it feels responsible for its national death.

Precisely why Iran wouldn't dare use them, even if it had them, which it doesn't.

I suppose Neolefty would accept no responsibility for the consequences of his idiocy should his policies become the guiding force of our foreign policy.

Our foreign policy has been a disaster and continues to be. DO you want to accept responsibility for the 4 thousand dead Americans from Iraq, the million dead Iraqis and the 3 trillion that we have incurred?

Of course, your ad hominems reveal how weak and pathetic your position is. I never said Saddam was innocent, but I don;t believe Saddam was worth the life of one American solderis, let alone more than 4000. You obviously take greaat pleasure in the dead and wounded we have suffered right? Enjoy.

At least Christopher Hitchens has the honesty and integrity to admit that he - as a left- wing Marxist "liberal" was wrong.

Yet Hitchens continues to lie through his teeth. Given that you supoprt as administration that also opperates this way, i't slittle woinder that you are happy thatg you were lied and conned into this war.

Neolefty: tell us that you actually used to be a God-fearing, tax-paying Republican Nuclear Engineer - with a real, govenment-issued security clearance - before W lied to us all and dragged us into a needless and illegal war that, tragically and unintentionally, stopped our old buddy and ally Sadaam from killing tens, if not hundreds of thousands, of his own people each year to ensure his continued plundering of Iraq. We all want to know why you are only a Neolefty. Where does the "Neo" part come from? It was Dubya, wasnt' it? He made you do it.

Neolefty: NONE of us here will win this argument because our positions are grounded in ideology - what you believe - rather than unspun and untwisted facts - unless you, unlike trhe rest of us, have direct access to CIA, DIA and NSA files as well as MI-6, DGSE and the Bundesnachrictendienst, SVR (Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki), Mossad, Chinese, Egyptian, Jordanian, Israeli and Saudi intelligence - and even if you did, "facts" must be analysed, interpreted and weight given, which is where spin inevitably comes into play. There is no such thing as unspun facts. Those who have to make the decisions never know all the facts and nothing but the facts before they decide. And if they did, they'd spin those facts to fit their ideology and then decide to act, or not to act.

1. As a citizen who happens not to be a nuclear engineer, I have enormous concerns about the Iranian nuclear program and the real intent of the religious fanatics who control that country. The airy dismissal of their public statements of their intent reminds me too starkly of the airy dismissal of the Nazi programs laid out in Mein Kampf. Sometimes it pays to believe what your enemy tells you, and to take precautions. I would find a massive nuclear war in the Middle East, to be both inconvenient and preventable.

2. As a lawyer I have taken part in too many "battles of the experts" to know that I could easily hire an eminent professor of nuclear engineering with a two-inch thick CV to shred your opinions regarding Iranian nuclear capabilities - based only on published and available reports - to the satisfaction of a jury. In my experience, most experts have the morals of a whore. Ask any other trial lawyer and he'll tell you the same thing.

3. As a former Army MI agent, my training warns me to take the nascent Iranian threat very seriously. From all indications they are methodically working on each piece of the puzzle. They are smart, well-funded, and if the Pakistanis could do it, i.e. create a nuclear weapon, weaponize it, provide it with a delivery system, so could the Persians. If not, why not? We are watching them undertaking their own Manhattan Project. It is only a matter of time. How will we use it?

You grant them a sense of responsibility and rationality not to set in motion a massive nuclear war - I don't. It comes down to our different world outlooks. I find yours to be suicidal of our national interests, as you find mine to be uninformed warmongering.

Predictably, if we do nothing, there will be at a minimum a nuclear arms race in the least stable part of the world. You might be packing your bags for a fabulous, interesting and hugely well-paid job in Saudi Arabia, assuming you actually have the qualifications. Maybe good for you.

As an aside from this very tedious debate: Who do you think Obama will choose as his VP, and if McCain wins, would Lieberman be a good choice as Secretary of State or Defense? I know, it doesn't matter, but what do you think? Who do you honestly believe will win in November? The rest of us want to know.

excellent point Constantius...the problem is NeoLefty and his ilk are too ignorant to even engage in debate. they don't understand the dangers this world faces and they are not willing to admit when they are wrong. to NeoLefty it is impossible to be wrong, therefore it is a waste of time debating people like this. I truly enjoy just making them mad. haha.

Go Bush! GO USA! Go McCain!

that'll piss 'em off

Thanks, Oldeschool. By the way, do you believe the part about Neolefty being a Neo? I sure don't.

Most of his points - including the insults with which he prefaces most of his "points" - come right out of info sheets put out by Democratic Underground and Daily Kos. I don't think you make them mad, they feed on your stuff to spew out more of their DU and DK talking points.

The things they won't ever grapple with is that we are there, the invasion is a done deal, Iraq is being reconstituted post-Sadaam, and we have absolutely vital interests in the area. Where do we go from that set of facts?

If we leave posthaste there will be a power vacuum filled by people who certainly don't have our best interests at heart. What do we do to ensure our national interests, or do we just abandon those interests and stick our collective heads up our collective arses? That seems to be the liberal answer, but I'm afraid that's too smelly a program for me to follow.

The history of the Late Roman Empire in the West teaches us what happens to a putative all-powerful nation that fails to make an immediate, sustained, maximum effort to wipe out barbarian challenges as soon as they arise. Neolefty might benefit by reading Peter Heather's "Fall of the Roman Empire" to learn those lessons.

Keep the faith,

Constantius

Listen to you two little cheers leaders, pom poms in and, made from used and discredited shredded talking points.

No Constantius, none of my talking points come from the Democratic Underground and Daily Kos. I have no time for the drivel on those web sites, but it''s interesting to note that when your facile and left over arguments from LGF arguments were presented, they were so easily dispelled.

In the end, you both reveal yourselves to be not the least bit interested in the arguments you pretend to care about, but are merely obsessed and consumed with who get's into the WH,

It clearly hasn't occured to you Constantius that Iraq doesn't belng to us, but you admit that you are both perfectly happy with the US behaving like an interntional thug and treating the world like it belongs to us alone.

Yes I have read Heather's book. If you had you might have walked away with some fundamental lessons, which explain why the US formula will fail.

For your benefit, let me explain some points which you appear unable to grasp (as I did in my previous post)

When Roman legionnaires went conquering, at least they came back with some loot, which they would distribute to the populace whilst keeping some for themselves: however, here in Bizarro Rome, it's we who are being looted. Not that I'm suggesting the Iraqis ought to pay the costs of their own occupation, but only to point out the irony of our predicament.

The war will const us at least 3 trillion if we were to pull out today. The whole war wasn funded on debt, as unlike previous wars, this war concided with tax cuts. We don't have 3 trillion and the Iraqi's certinaly won't be giving that to us either, so we are pretty much screwed.

As for our vital interests, and power vaccums, here's somthign to think about. Iraq's government is suported by us and the Iranians. In fact, we have already handed all of Iraq over to the Iranians on a silver plate and they haven't so much as spent one dollar or fired a bullet to achiev that.

So enjoy this moment, safe in the knowlegde that we just gave Iran a prize they could never have hoped to achiev on their own.

BTW. I noticed that you didn't bother to rebut any of the WMD/Iranian nuke arguments I made. At least you learned something.

Dude you're losing it...probably foaming at the mouth by now. Constantius totally shredded your arguement...now be a good little neolib and crawl back in your hole. Or perhaps you might want to blog somewhere you might actually have something to offer...perhaps A Hate Spewers Blog, LIARS Et Al Blog, Nuclear Experts who didn't graduate from grammer school Blog, etc...this is fun! Thanks for endless laughter and entertainment Neo.

Like you. Constantius ran way with his tail between his legs, and resorted to the only thing you wingnuts know how to do, throw mud when your facile arguments are exposed.

Sad really.

No one has run off, you are simply wrong on every point you've made and it's extremely entertaining to see you implode under the weight of your ego and false claims. I know you're sad...it's OK....don't do anything rash now...put the razor blades down and get a warm glass of milk and turn on the Lifetime channel.

PS I dare you

It's clear you have no argument, so instead you resort to basic invective and verbal diatribes.

Go back and read every point I made. Every one of his arguments has been debunked by the main stream media.

The guy makes fundamental mistakes about what uranium enrichment means. Hell, he still believes that the forced documents linking Iraq to Niger uranium is solid evidence. Even the Bushies admit it's BS, but you and your fellow flat earther are hanging on for dear lfe and insisting it's true. Talk about scraping the barrel.

So let's put the trash talk aside and debate the facts. Are you up for it, or do you feel more at home rolling around in your own excrement?

Oldeschool, I admit that I am not a former nuclear engineer like our friend, Neolefty claims to be. Nevertheless, like a lot of lawyers and many other non-nuclear engineers as well, I can do Internet research. There is a long and informative article put out by the Arms Control Association (ACA) in November 2007, almost a year ago, that discusses how close Iran is to having a bomb. I have included the URL as reference.

The conclusion I reach after scanning through the article is that my points and concerns are shared by the Arms Control Association. The article gets a bit technical and points out that Iran is running into problems with sustaining its enrichment program, but that it had already produced about 350 kg of 4% enriched uranium 235 (LEU). To me, one of the key passages is as follows:

"A key milestone will be reached when Iran accumulates enough LEU to break out and relatively quickly produce weapons-grade uranium. An accumulation of approximately 700-800 kilograms of 4 percent enriched LEU would unquestionably provide it with enough LEU for a breakout capability whereby in a few months it could produce 20-25 kilograms of weapons-grade uranium, enough for a nuclear weapon. There would be little time for the international community to respond diplomatically, even though the IAEA would likely quickly detect any significant diversion of LEU." (my emphasis supplied)

Since the article was published, Iran has doubled the number of centrifuges. Whether that translates into double the production, I don't think anyone can say with certainty who is not also involved in Iran's program. The article points out that Iran is being monitored under an older, more limited 1976 protocol and that a) it could throw out the IAEA if it wanted to face possible sanctions, and b) it may have clandestine facilities that are not being monitored at all.

Of course, Neolefty will likely say I'm full of shit for being concerned about all this and that the Arms Control Association is a bunch of Bush Administration flunkies. But Wikipedia identifies the ACA as a non-partison membership group founded in 1971 out of concern for nuclear proliferation. Its funding comes from such sources as the Ford Foundation, the Ploughshares Fund (Neo probably knows about that outfit) and the US Institute for Peace, a group established and funded by the US Congress.

The usual Leftist approach when their argument crumbles is to attack the opponent and say he doesn't know what he's talking about, he should stay away from things he knows nothing about, he is full of shit, a racist, or a child-molesting pervert or something - but not to address the issues raised.

Oldeschool, I don't say stuff like that about Neolefty, only that he is either a failed Republican, or that he was never a Neolefty at all, just a common garden Lefty.

But I digress. Neolefty's implication that there is a huge leap from 4% LEU to the 25 kg of HEU needed for weapons grade and production of a bomb is demolished in the ACA paragraph cited above. When our little Iranian buddies get to 700 kg (and they may be there within my previously stated 12 - 24 months) they are only "a few months" away from a bomb. Should they choose to make one; and I don't think they will ask Neolefty's permission, either.

The President of Iran has made statements on a number of occasions that were originally translated as calling for Israel being wiped off the map. When the storm of condemnation hit, we were told that the statement had been mistranslated and that he really only meant that Israel's Zionist regime needs to be removed, not that he contemplated wiping out the population of Israel.

But this guy also talks about an apocolypse in the region that will be like our Christian second coming - he welcomes it and that is why he might pull the trigger on Israel if he has the opportunity. He may not be deterred by the possibility that Iran would also be wiped out. And hey, maybe Israel doesn't have a bomb anyway. It's never admitted that it does. Where's the proof?

Some of the mullahs over there have become fabulously rich, with mansions in Dubai and Swiss bank accounts, so cooler heads may well ensure that Ahmadenijad conveniently dies before the worst happens and they get cindered. Let's hope.

The real question is what, if anything we can do to prevent the possiblilty arising. The URL includes a section that warns we can't attack with any great probability of success and shouldn't try. Maybe our friend Neolefty has some ideas other than watchful waiting and getting out of there.

Oh, one other thing before I forget. I don't think Maliki - who just neutralized Iran's man in Iraq and forced the disbanding of the Mahdi Army, is turning out to be an Iranian puppet. I think he's a nationalist who want to rule Iraq his way. And under the status of forces agreement we just negotiated, puppethood won't be happening - part of that agreement is intended to address the fears of the Sunnis and Kurds. No, I have conceded nothing to Neolefty.

Sorry this was so long. Here is the URL: <link>

Constantius