A classified National Intelligence Estimate on North Korea, which was circulated among senior officials earlier this year, concluded that the North had probably fabricated the fuel for more than a half-dozen nuclear weapons since the beginning of Mr. Bush's administration and was continuing to produce roughly a bomb's worth of new plutonium each year.

when are we going to start looking at censure and impeachment? Fed Up Yet?

But you don't understand...anything that even remotely makes Bush look bad is HUGE news on the left.

They have plans for attacking probably every country in the world, each to varying degrees of detail.

Suppose we found Iran has a plan to attack Iraq or Afghanistan. Wouldn't it be wise to be prepared?

I think it's safe to assume the Pentagon has contingency plans for every country, including our current allies. I don't see the harm in wargaming, being prepared and such.

The usual spineless dems who dont stand for anything. Cant make their corporate pimps angry!

we can't be saved by what we can accomplish, because if we did, we'd fall into despair.

Focus on what you do this day: don't give in to cynicism, because then you are defeated.

To get up and carry out an act that may seem not only insignificant but absurd gives you a sense of worth and meaning, and allows you to participate in an act (however small) of resistance.

I think the cumulative effect of taking a moral stance, over time, is slow and hard and frustrating.

Sustain yourself through community and try not to become too focused on what you can accomplish, because it may very well be that, by the time we're gone, the world will be a worse place. But we have to validate our own existence, our own morality, our own life. And that comes by taking a stance, by standing up and remaining human. And there are times when remaining human is the only resistance possible.

And the liberal press...showing nothing but death..and as much anti-Bush, anti-USA stuff they can, while announcing everything we do to the world has nothing to do with that?

In wartime the press is always part of the problem. This has been true since the Crimean War, when William Howard Russell wrote his account of the charge of the Light Brigade and invented the profession of the modern war correspondent. When the nation goes to war, the press goes to war with it. The blather on CNN or Fox or MSNBC is part of a long and sad tradition.

The coverage of war by the press has one consistent and pernicious theme--the worship of our weapons and our military might. Retired officers, breathless reporters, somber news anchors, can barely hold back their excitement, which is perverse and--frankly, to those who do not delight in watching us obliterate other human beings--disgusting. We are folding in on ourselves, losing touch with the outside world, shredding our own humanity and turning war into entertainment and a way to empower ourselves as a nation and individuals. And none of us are untainted. It is the dirty thrill people used to get from watching a public execution. We are hangmen. And the excitement we feel is in direct proportion to the rage and anger we generate around the globe. We will pay for every bomb we drop on Iraq. "The first casualty when war comes," Senator Hiram Johnson said in 1917, "is truth."

At least there is no argument of whether Iran is building WMD this time around.

Iranian "mistrust" of the US does not explain (much less excuse) the "wipe Israel off the map" rhetoric.

But the actual quote, which comes from an old speech of Khomeini, does not imply military action, or killing anyone at all. The second reason is that it is just an inexact translation. The phrase is almost metaphysical. He quoted Khomeini that "the occupation regime over Jerusalem should vanish from the page of time." It is in fact probably a reference to some phrase in a medieval Persian poem. It is not about tanks.

It's worth noting here that our own democratic revolution took more than a decade.

Posted by Ernesto Del Mundo May 18, 2006 01:21 PM wile, strawman? How so? Who invaded Iraq? Who is talking about bombing Iran? Hint: it ain't the crazy Islamofascists.

the Islamofascists are talking about bombing the U.S.

Human rights groups are raising alarms over a new law passed by the Iranian parliament that would require the country's Jews and Christians to wear coloured badges to identify them and other religious minorities as non-Muslims.

Human rights groups are raising alarms over a new law passed by the Iranian parliament that would require the country's Jews and Christians to wear coloured badges to identify them and other religious minorities as non-Muslims.

WASHINGTON, May 26 -- The Bush administration is beginning to debate whether to set aside a longstanding policy taboo and open direct talks with Iran, to help avert a crisis over Tehran's suspected nuclear weapons program, European officials and Americans close to the administration said Friday. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, in a recent column in The Washington Post, raised the possibility that the recent rambling letter from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to President Bush -- dismissed by Ms. Rice as an offensive tirade-- could be seen as an opportunity to open contacts. Both Richard N. Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former top aide to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, and Richard L. Armitage, the former deputy secretary of state under Mr. Powell, have also advocated talks with Iran.

Russia's defence minister has confirmed that Moscow intends to honour a controversial deal to supply Iran with surface-to-air missiles. The $700m (£380m) deal, signed last year, has been condemned by the US.