The previous reply was from today's perspective. Let's take another perspective. Let's return to what I said back when. I did not believe a smoking gun yet existed. I worried that not enough people had yet died. Clinton knew better. If I remember correctly, he made that decision on 21 July 1996. History confirms how correct he was. A major victory achieved with near zero military action. Clinton and his people were masters of this.

Because the Iranians have shown that they favor supporting terrorism, over several decades, now. The oil is important, with the Straits of Hormuz right in the Persian Gulf, and so easy to disrupt. With nuclear bombs and delivery systems, the belief is we'd be dragged into a nuclear war by Iran, within decades. Probably because they would try to wipe out Israel, but other Mid-Eastern countries (like Saudi Arabia), would be targets, as well.

We've seen that spending trillions of dollars on Green energy, has gotten us next to nothing for an adequate power supply. Truth is, wind and solar just don't have the "oomph!" that we need for our power supply. Windmills may look quite impressive, but their actual power output per windmill, averaged over a year, is much too small to serve our needs.

Same with solar. It's nice on a sunny day, but just not adequate by a long shot. And no, adding them together is not NEARLY enough. A drop in the bucket x 2 is not near enough.

What was the smoking gun in Bosnia?

Adak, your statements about the amount of money spent on clean energy, and the amount of power it can produce, are as wrong as your one-sided views of the middle east.

I don't mind.

But for the love of all that is decent, stop using apostrophes with plurals.

Please, think of the children.

And we need them because of those damn Canadians? :haha:

Well that, and sinking the USS Liberty, killing 8 of our sailors. :mad:

Yeah, a bad habit I've picked up somewhere along the way. Careful about becoming a grammar Nazi, however!

We've put a huge amount of money into green energy projects. Our national green energy output as a percentage, has increased by about 2-3 %, over a space of a decade.

What really ticks me off about the liberals on this, is that when we DO have a great solar energy project ready to go, they instantly sue to have it stopped, because (in this case), it might impact the desert tortoise!

First, if you can't put a solar energy farm in the Mojave desert (which is practically devoid of wildlife), then WHERE are we going to put them? It is one of the sunniest area's in the entire country.

Second, there is no confirmation that the area proposed even has ONE desert tortoise in it. :mad:

Third, the desert tortoise is not an endangered animal, and might benefit from having some shade, under the solar arrays. This is unknown.

But we know the solar project, is stopped! Hooray for the liberals. :mad:

Since I haven't yet expressed my views on much of the Middle East, it is impossible for you to say that they are one-sided.
I believe you'll be surprised at how "un one-sided", they really are, once you read them.

The Liberty was impossible to accept as an accident, but I do believe it was criminal on our part to send in a "spy" ship so close to another country, without anything protecting it. We had another intelligence ship seized off the coast of North Korea. Same problem! Stupid Admiral/President, somewhere in Washington. I hope they learned something from these incidents.

Bosnia was a difficult one to understand, for me. They have a LONG history between cultures and religious groups, there. If you don't have a good grasp of the history of the area, going back several hundred years, then you don't know enough to really understand the problem/s.

As an outsider, and not up on all that history, it seemed the leaders lead their groups toward intolerance and violence. Once THAT train of thought got rolling, it gained a lot of momentum. It's a great shame that it lead to war, and to the targeted killing of unarmed civilians.

Moving down the path, nations sometimes take a mis-step and wind up in the ditch on the side of the road. Integration of cultural/racial/religious groups within the nation, has always been a difficult task for countries to complete, without a civil war.

First, you are making the assumption that Iran will use the nuclear weapon on Israel. While there is a chance, both the intelligence agencies of the US and Israel do not believe they will.

Second, you are assuming we can eliminate Iran's nuclear program. We can't without a ground war.

Third, you are not addressing the consequences of attacking Iran. What will they, and the international community, do in response. If we attack on a highly speculative reason, we will get blamed for Iran's response. This is not good for US interests.

What about Pakistan?


The same thing was said about shale gas/oil extraction ten years ago. Technology improves rapidly and can completely change the energy scenario in a short amount of time. I know people researching on both and the fields are moving very quickly.

Realistically, wind and solar are not good macro-energy sources. They take up too much space compared to coal, oil, gas, and nuclear. However, they are very good micro-energy sources. This is the future I see with wind and solar.

How the fuck do you turn the turtle issue with the government into a "liberal" problem?
I agree this turtle thing is overblown, and not where our priority should be.
Sigh, and you were doing so well.:(
You're right, not endangered. Both sides knew they were there and negotiated how to work around that from the gitgo, as the dune buggys had already been chased out. It turned out there is a shitload more of them than anyone thought, but a bunch have been run over by trucks and killed by bulldozers.
[Reagan] Now there you go again[/reagan] It ain't liberals, son, get your facts straight.

Would you suggest that our "James Bonds" each take a platoon of Marines with them on missions?
A freighter, clearly flagged American, in international waters, is not fair game. They are no better than the Somali pirates. I've read testimony that they knew it was American, saying so over the radio, at least very shortly after the first attack, but continued to attack, concentrating on the communications antennae.

No, this was a blatant and deliberate attack on the USA, but we still give them $Billions every year, put up with their military/industrial espionage/theft,
and them acting like petulant teenagers. I think they need a time out.

And Ireland?

1) When Iran says that they'll sweep Israel off the map, I never ACTUALLY thought they'd use a broom to do it. :p:

I don't believe anyone can say just WHAT Iran might do with nuclear weapons. We aren't even sure that they WILL make them.

2) Obviously, there would be a substantial ground component to a war with Iran. The enrichment facilities are below ground, and our "bunker buster" bombs may not be enough to destroy them. I'm sure they will have added military security around and at those sites, to help fend off any attack, and protect their big investment in those sites.

3) From history, we can be certain that the Iranian leadership would propagandize any attack on their country. All political leaders will do that - and set the stage for more hatred for whomever the attackers are.

Since the real (their dollar), lost a lot of value today on the monetary markets, it's possible that the sanctions will, at last, have the effect we wanted.

Let's stick with Iran in this thread. Yak about Pakistan in another thread.

Unfortunately, generators are a well-researched piece of equipment. We've improved them, (and windmills for sure), but not nearly enough to bring them into the forefront of our nation's energy supply.

The hard core conservation groups are NOT far-left liberal groups? They haven't been anything BUT far left liberal groups, for decades. They didn't start out that way, but they have attracted the hard core lefties, and now they own them.
[quote]
You're right, not endangered. Both sides knew they were there and negotiated how to work around that from the gitgo, as the dune buggys had already been chased out. It turned out there is a shitload more of them than anyone thought, but a bunch have been run over by trucks and killed by bulldozers.

[Reagan] Now there you go again[/reagan] It ain't liberals, son, get your facts straight.

Well son, it's damn sure not the conservatives, stopping a much needed multi-million dollar project to bring in more electrical power!

I know our spy friends will disagree, but I believe we do NOT need to have close in signal analysis done for Israel, especially when it is on a war footing.

I also don't believe we need to have close in signal analysis done by "freighters", unprotected. Marines? No, I was thinking a cruiser, a sub, and a couple of destroyers, should do the trick.

Ships are closely tracked, and that includes freighters. The idea that a "freighter", will be able to work covertly, is laughable.

If it has a great cover story, like the old Glomar Explorer did when it grabbed part of a sunken Russian sub in a CIA op, then MAYBE if it stays far from the coast, and most of the work is done beneath the waves.

Cultural Jews are typically petulant, imo. It is a strength and a bit of a curse, of their culture. If they're complaining, but not too loudly, then you know everything is A-OK. :cool:

I purposely didn't make an absolute statement about Iranian intentions. We don't know what they are thinking but we can infer it through how they act on other issues.

After Afghanistan and Iran? I really don't think there is a ground plan to our (possible) attack against Iran. Foreign policy circles seem to believe it would be limited to bombing, computer viruses, and containment. I don't think any US politician could convince the US of a ground attack against Iran. We would certainly lose too many soldiers.

This is true but not what I was getting at. We don't know the Iranian response but they could possibly attack oil lanes and step up their support of terrorism against Israel and the US. We need to take these consequences into consideration before attacking a country solely on speculation.

That is my hope. The country is really hurting and it seems that many Iranians are blaming their regime.

I disagree. You initially stated that we should care about Iran getting the bomb because of their support of terrorism. Iran does support terrorism but so does Pakistan, arguably to an even greater degree. However, Pakistan would never gives their nuclear weapons to the terrorists the ISI trains. I don't see any reason that Iran would act any differently. It isn't in their interests.

However, it should be noted that Pakistan's nuclear weapon gives them an umbrella for their support of terrorism and there have been cases where Pakistani nuclear scientists were selling information to other countries (Libya). This is one reason why it is against US interests for Iran to get the bomb.


You are arguing against a delusional belief that wind and solar are silver bullets for our energy problem, not the reality of its potential. I don't believe that wind and solar will ever make up more than 50% of our energy sector but I do see a very positive use for them. Solar power is currently being used on the microscale with a decent degree of success. This will expand exponentially as technology improves.

To summarize, just because wind and solar will not completely solve our energy problem doesn't mean they can't be effective tools in a larger, multi-pronged solution for our energy problem.

All power that isn't geothermal or nuclear is solar (well, ALL power is solar, or rather stellar - we are star stuff!) (tidal energy and hydroelectric dams are more about gravity and lunar cycles, but it's the sun's energy powering the water cycle that creates the rivers...). It's just that plants harness that power so efficiently and well, that digging up ancient plants (and ancient animals that ate them and the animals that ate them) and burning them is actually more efficient than trying to harness solar energy ourselves.

In theory, there should be some way to harness solar power more effectively than trying to dig up dead stuff to burn. We might get there eventually. But not if we give up on it, and not if we don't keep working harder and harder to use what we have effectively and to research even more efficient ways to use it.

I agree with you hawkeye, except the improvements we will see in wind power, will not be large. Quite small, actually.

The Iranian leaders have already threatened to close/attack the oil tankers in the Gulf of Persia. No mystery or disagreement there.

Already, almost every tanker serving the area, has been re-flagged by it's owner, as an American ship, to allow the US Navy to protect it.
We can't protect other ships, to the same degree, by law.

Soldiers would be needed to set charges in the underground facilities, if the bunker buster bombs couldn't handle it. It wouldn't be a huge ground force like the invasion of Iraq, but it might take a few hundred and LOTS of support from the air, before they went in.

Your note about the probable increase in nuclear weapon proliferation, is well taken. I can't imagine that countries near Iran, would not feel compelled to have them, "since Iran does". Especially the countries that are largely Suni, and traditionally disliked by the Shiite Muslims .