re: #210 Political Atheist

What I refer to is undue reluctance by some to see or admit the nuclear weapon potential Iran represents because we were so wrong about Iraq the second time around.

What undue reluctance, though? Our intelligence agencies have said they’re not trying to develop a nuke right now. I’ve always been more concerned about them just buying one, anyhow.

And we weren’t wrong about Iraq. There was a long, concerted campaign by people who were convinced by ideology (and some by personal interest), rather than evidence, that an attack on Iraq would be a good thing. The problems with the story were pointed out at each and every point, but were unfortunately ignored.

Again: We’re not going to be able to keep people from nukes, long-term. We couldn’t keep broke-ass-incredibly-crazy-North-Korea from getting them, or always-about-to-fall-Islamic-Chaos-Pakistan, or I-can’t-think-of-anything-snappy-India. If our plan is “Stop unstable or hostile countries from getting nukes” we are already failing badly and sober assessment says that plan can only fail in the future.