But climate exacerbates the problems with resources. Remember that the Syrian civil war started in part due to the drought and lack of food.

There have always been droughts and there will probably always be droughts. Climate changes constantly. If man is having any effect on the climate, then all this does is potentially change some of the winners and the losers.

The Syrian war started when a group of teenagers painted slogans on a school wall. They were arrested and tortured. This prompted a protest, where the government opened fire on the protesters. The only role food has played is that Assad has been accused of keeping it from groups he doesn't like.

Yeah, but largely from the standpoint that you're just flat wrong, similar to how I'd be bothered if you made the wrong play call in a goal line situation (just with higher stakes).

I don't doubt the existence one iota, it's the cruel/sadistic sense of humor I increasingly take issue with.

(ftr, 'cause tone can get lost when typing on the interwebz, not one ounce of hostility was contained in my answer. It was meant as a very neutral, matter of fact reply to a totally legit question)


Not really. You exterminate those who threaten that accumulation of assets as needed & carry on.


Let's NOT say that. There's simply no reason at all to let that occur. See above. And if it does, well, we kinda brought it on ourselves by allowing it to ever get to that point. There's a name for that point of view (not "fatalistic" but there's a word for it) but I'm too braindead to come up with it at the moment just to be honest.

No. Over a million people migrated in the years leading up to the war due to the most severe drought in Syria in modern times. The cities expanded rapidly and Syria wasn't able to handle it. Lack of food due to drought wasn't the only reason, but it played a role.

Droughts happen all over the world, yet the actual events which triggered the Syrian war don't happen all over the world.

Weather patterns change constantly. Even in the 1800s, the whole "Fertile Crescent" didn't even remotely resemble what it was a few thousand years earlier. And that can be said about any place in the world.

Syrian's government deserves considerable criticism for mismanaging the drought and creating a food crisis, but connecting the war and the protests and the continued violence today to the drought is hard to support.

More simply, Assad is an extremist who has no trouble bombing his own civilians. No amount of rain is going to change him. Obama's policy of appeasement certainly hasn't changed him.

I've upset you. Win. Free advice: Have a Snickers.

And yet there's plenty of research that supports the idea.

Ugh...looks like Mongolia is a possible Civil War zone.

Mongolia in for double whammy: drought now, 'dzud' next - Yahoo News


And the United States got lucky last year...avoided the Civil War even though research showed that Arizona suffered a major drought due to Climate Change. But to be fair, we have President Obama, a huge Climate Change supporter....kind of hard to overthrow him when he believes.

http://www.tucsonnewsnow.com/story/2...t-of-southwest

Mongolia is a disaster environmentally - maybe they're a "low emitter" on a global scale, but Ulaanbaatar is one of the most polluted cities in the world and the causes for that are local.

Curbing Air Pollution in Mongolia’s Capital

Of course, climate change has the potential to really exaggerate local problems.

People can put up with a lot of shit if their bellies are full. But once they are hungry, all bets are off. Not a difficult concept.

Agreed. Syria cannot feed all of it's people. They have over-shot their population limits by at least 20% (4 million people without jobs/food/water on a regular basis out of 23 million total population). If that's a climate issue, then we really need to knuckle down on global population controls, because we can affect that a lot faster than we can affect climate change. So far, we are doing NOTHING with regard to our over-population crisis. And I'm not saying genocide, I'm talking about future controls on pregnancies.

I'm seeing a lot more projections now that global population growth is slowing.

I think the Bill Gates approach is the most realistic one. Vaccines, drinking water, and better health for the poor masses. That seems almost counter-productive, but population growth has pretty much stopped in places where people can reasonably except that their kids are going to live into adulthood. I read that in Thailand, the average family decreased from 6 children to something like 2 in just a decade or two after health standards improved, combined with the promotion of family planning. And the population growth has slowed there as a result.

The best way to reduce the birth rate is to give more education to women. It's a shame that there's too many backwards civilizations that won't even do that.

I don't think it's a problem producing the food to feed as many people as there are in the world today. It's the distribution that's the problem.

That's all good, but I never said the Syrian drought was caused by climate change, just that climate disruptions, which will be more common with climate change, can lead to political destabilization.

As lungs said, when people are hungry they don't put up with stuff.

And the legal support to not be a baby machine if they so choose.

http://www.un.org/esa/population/pub...p2300final.pdf

This report was released 11 years ago. If tracking it, you'd find that today's estimate of 7.3 billion is a little above the medium track (7.25) and well below the high track (7.6). Which doesn't mean the medium track is "right," but that we can assume the world is on a pace to add a billion people every 15-20 years, more or less.

It is also reasonable to suggest that the increase will drop, as every major group has seen reductions in the average annual reproduction rate for a while now. Keep in mind, though, that there is discussion in there that AIDS will remain a factor that makes it tough to estimate life expectancy. So they had to make a lot of guesses. The high track probably assumes any disease is not a long-term factor.

What is the theoretical global limit on population? How will technology affect that number? What happens if we are unable to invent effective sustainable energy sources?

Right now, we're living off an enormous amount of past life and energy. Life forms existed for billions of years, and we live on top of that. Some could argue that we're the ultimate recyclers, because we burn some of that former life and allow it to dissipate through our atmosphere back into space where it came from*. But, in doing so, we create our own crises. We depend on this behavior, and we'll run out of usable past energy at some point. Depending on your political or religious views, we may be altering the climate by doing so, though climate is always in flux regardless of the cause.

Science fiction involving colonization of planets often includes the concept of terraforming. Which is, essentially, taking a garbage truck filled with past life and dumping it on the surface of a rock. That's an interesting idea, but I think we're still hundreds of years from figuring out how to do that. Especially since we're already using the "good parts" of our garbage. We have to assume the laws of physics will always apply and total energy can't change. Depending on this concept to save the human race seems odd.

Also, the amount of freedom in a world may also be subject to some sort of conservation equation - the more people we have in a small area, the more authoritarian the resulting government. That's great if you like government.

What do we do today?

* - it would be interesting to learn more about theories regarding the size of the universe. We have all these stars pumping out enormous amounts of energy and we have all these rocks receiving this energy. Does the universe continually expand? Is there a source of rock? How did it all begin (and, for those of you who are religious and believe in creation, who created that source - and out of what - and what created whatever created that source, and so on).

In other words, if we can figure out the process of converting energy, everything changes. So far, all we really know is that we can create one heck of an explosion when we split an atom. We really are little children when it comes to our knowledge of the universe. But toddlers often learn a lot when they destroy their toys. The problem is, no one has set up our toddler gate.

In the US, I'm okay for increasing the population substantially - either through babies or legal/smart immigration (lets attract other countries' most educated). We have plenty of room and resources to accommodate the increased population and "human capital" is one key to sustaining our leadership.

I'm sorry but ... are you high? We have an excess of population to jobs NOW.

What you suggest might be one of the most absurdly insane things I've ever read.

Well, I think there are a lot of services that could be performed for people who are not getting them now. Healthcare, childcare, education. A ton could be done to improve infrastructure. Unfortunately those who could benefit from those services don't have the means to pay for them, so nobody has to do them.

It gets back around to one of the problems with trickle-down economics (and I would also say, a flat tax). Once you get past a certain point, people just don't need anything else. It's why you get superrich folks buying sports teams. What the heck else can they do with their money? Like, what do the Waltons do after buying some nice cars, maybe a few planes and a couple houses other than sit around in Arkansas or Missouri or wherever else they hang out?

You think this is true for the more educated workforce?

I'm not sure if Powell has the same level of respect as he once did in the GOP but it's reassuring to hear him say that he agreed with the deal.

Colin Powell: Iran Deal Is a 'Pretty Good Deal' - NBC News

My half-assed theory is that the inverted population pyramid that came from the baby boom vs. gen x in the '80s and '90s resulted in a shift towards automating and reducing service jobs, while increasing management & administration jobs to account for the glut of middle-aged educated workers, versus the relative lack of young, inexperienced workers who typically fill service industry jobs. Unfortunately, it's kind of hard to put that genie back in the bottle, as the management & administration sector are also largely the folks defining our industries and (understandably) aren't too keen on designing themselves out of jobs or profits.

It would be nice to see a shift of industry focus away from efficiency & bottom-line profitism, back to something like the more service-focus of the post-WWII era, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

I don't think Powell has a lot of respect for the GOP after what Bush put him through by damaging his reputation and sacrificing his image.

That really isn't how you addressed it though

The LAST thing this country needs is more babies, of pretty much any kind. You'd have to make a very specific case in a specific field of shortage for those "most educated". I mean, we don't exactly have any general shortage I can see of "educated" bodies either, yet jobs for them are in such short supply that you find degreed individuals working basic retail & secretarial/clerical* jobs fairly frequently.

If you want to make a specific case about nuclear biochemical astronomers or something specific then I'd be open to X number of specialized exceptions


*(yes, I know there's probably an updated term for those jobs, I'm just drawing a blank on it atm & don't feel like obsessing to come up with it)

If this were the same Iran deal made by a republican president, the GOP would be loving it and the Democrats would be talking about how terrible it was. That is why we have experts in this (does anyone really believe Trump has the knowledge to assess such a deal). Too bad people would rather listen to Boehner/Cruz instead of people who have actual knowledge about it. #waronintelligence

*No idea whether this actual one is good, I just find it laughable that a bunch of people with limited knowledge of the process and everything are vowing to "tear it up on day 1" with no credible alternative.

Powell's the guy who served GWB and assured the UN that Iraq had and was about to use WMD. He used forged documents that probably wouldn't have even convinced Dan Rather. I'm not sure he has any credibility.

Are Iranian Military Bases Off-Limits to Inspection? | RealClearPolitics

I still don't see any "mission accomplished" in this agreement. We have a system of checks and balances in our governmental structure designed specifically to prevent this kind of back-room deal. Obama went directly to the UN when he should have waited.

Should we believe the Iranian leaders when they say there will be no inspections of any kind? Or should we believe the president who staked his reputation on just getting a deal done, and has already had to back off on most of his promises?

Either way, the activity in the Middle East is increasing, and Iranian officials and leaders are making more "we're going to wipe out Israel" statements than ever before. I'm not sure why we would deal with them in the first place?

Criticizing Powell and then posting a story by Judith Miller is a special kind of irony.

Yeah, there's more to the story than that. Powell was put out there to give the presentation because he was the guy that was the most credible in the administration. He had been trying to get Bush and Cheney to back off, but was frozen out of the decision making process.



This was before Scooter Libby went to prison.


Powell was misled by the facts at the administration was was spouting them, but he was also ever the loyal soldier, ready to do the bidding of the President as if it was his own. In that, you can fault him.

It is, isn't it? But the story is thoroughly sourced. Iranian officials have made these claims - officials who have considerable power within Iran. And Obama and Kerry have gradually walked back many of their promises.

As I recall, the documents Powell brought to the UN were one-source and made ludicrous claims that no one in the CIA could read with a straight face. He may have "taken one for the team," but if he really understood the situation, he probably should have resigned beforehand instead. He knew what would happen after he went before the UN.

Bush was out of control and Congress should never have given him that power. But Powell had an opportunity and he let us all down.

Thanks Hilary and Kerry

I don't know, it reads just like her Iraq work to me. She's reprinting a bunch of info fed to her with a clear ideological goal without providing any contrary information. Reprinting the 24 day thing without pointing out any of the contradictory info calls into question everything else in the piece.

Imagine the piece an Iranian could write with just quotes from GOP hardliners. All of it would be true, but the overall story certainly wouldn't be accurate.

The information Powell was working on was entrenched in our rationale long before GWB took office. President Clinton spoke of these things. Saddam Hussein was working on these things based on what our leaders...both R and D spoke of. It wasn't fabricated as much as it was based on either A.) faulty intel or B.) the reality that was easily erased by Saddam. We got owned in the fiasco.

I don't care about Powell's ideology shift, I have the utmost respect for him and know he wouldn't have given that speech to the UN if he didn't at least believe it was within the realm of possibility. General's of his caliber simply don't just lie down for a lie. It's just not possible. He gave that speech because he wanted to give that speech.

or C.) that Bush and Cheney wanted to go to war so badly and felt like the choice was already made, that they were willing to piecemeal any evidence together so that it looked like they had no other choice in the matter.

Powell did make that choice, but he was also hung out to dry by the administration because he was the thorn in the side of the decision makers. It was convenient for them to pin responsibility on him and then show him the door. Like I said before, he was a loyal soldier. He did what the President wanted and he has said he would do it again, because loyalty is something that he believes in.

Even Obama concedes the 24-day thing.

The difference between the GOP and the Iranian defense minister is that the GOP has no real power as the opposition party to the president. In Iran, the opposition party is very stiff, doesn't talk much, and is buried six feet under the ground.

You can't mention the 24 day thing without acknowledging that 24 days will only happen if we want it to. I think ten or fourteen is the longest delay if we choose to press it.

None of your quotes include the negotiators or Rouhani. Even within Iran there are different factions.

Louis Gohmert is pledging to leave Congress to await a nuclear holocaust if the Iran deal passes. Obama may finally earn that Nobel.

Are you trying to make the case that even Rouhani thinks he can make an agreement without Khomeini's approval? If so, do some research into Rouhani's past statements and activities.

24 is 24. But does it even matter if inspectors aren't allowed into military facilities, period?

That's actually a fair point. He definitely deserve it when he received it (it was more for the American people for rejecting a neoconservative foreign policy ;)), but it may have just been given early. Kerry and Obama deserve a Nobel for this deal.

I'm willing to risk it.

I think it's a little too early to be handing out awards based on this deal.

Having a deal itself, which assuredly prevented warfare (you, know what peace accords are supposed to do), is more than enough.

It's too early to say this prevented war, and I'm not so sure there would've been war without it.

Exclusive photos appear to show grisly effect of ISIS’ mustard gas attacks on Kurds | Fox News

I'm kind of surprised that so many think Obama deserves a Nobel prize (not that it's worth anything but the money that comes with it) for giving Iran everything it needs to build nuclear weapons, while it's promising to use them on a sovereign country - one of our allies.

No one seems to care about that. If Iran/Hezbollah uses nuclear weapons on Israel, the blood is on Obama's hands. I don't think there's anyone even in the Democratic party who would deny that. Every Democrat who supports this crazy deal pretends to have "deep misgivings" about this support.

We still don't know all of the side deals Obama made here, but given what the leaders of Iran say (and it's death for any who oppose them), the side deals indicate that inspectors can't inspect military complexes in any way, shape or form.

Now, obviously we can't trust Khomeini. But if he's lying about the inspections, he loses face with his top people. And the word from Washington backs further away from "anywhere, anytime" every day. My guess is the Democrats who support it just don't want to know what's in it (much like Obamacare).

If it works as well as the ACA, I'll be thrilled.

edit: And as far as the Nobel, I was just trying to make a joke about getting Gohmert out of the Congress.

If the treaty fails, it's guaranteed war, really.

Amen! I think that the ACA is one of the greatest accomplishments the US has done in a long ass time.

Well, we still don't know, because Mr. Executive Order keeps putting off the worst of it (and adding to the debt).

But remember that this celebration for health insurance company executives and their lobbyists doesn't change the affordability of health care - people still have to pay a deductible. And so the burden on emergency rooms (where they can't turn people away who can't or won't pay their bills) has actually gotten worse under this folly.

Health care inflation has dropped (which may or may not have a lot to do with the ACA)

The uninsured rate has dropped dramatically (which is closely related to the ACA)

Projected government medical costs have dropped the past few years (may or may not be ACA related)

The ACA isn't perfect, but a few years in, it looks pretty good.

I guess I feel like I voted Bad-sold us out cause I was considerably more conservative when I voted. Now as some of my viewpoints have changed, I still kind of like he's sold out his liberal constituency as well.

How are you supposed to win a national election when you can't quit fighting amongst yourselves?

http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/28/politi...ows/index.html

I think Republicans/conservatives have tried since 2013 to remove Boehner from this Speakership, don't think this will work either. But by all means keep trying!

Yet, they continue to build emergency rooms like crazy in my area, and some have even started advertising their ER wait times, as like a selling point. Some could argue that the marketing of these ER's to well-off patients is actually causing a major increase in costs instead of the burden of treating the poor who can't pay.

So, this is the free market system taking advantage of the health care insurance industry by building these mini-ERs in neighborhoods across the country so that they can keep their affluent clients happy while charging the exorbitant ER rates to the insurance companies.

Not sure how to fix that beyond really getting a handle on allowable ER costs, which if you start saying "cost control" portends socialism, so we can't have that.

oh it needs fixing.

Better a war that is controlled by someone else rather than the inevitable one that comes after Iran has more nuclear capability.

But with ol' Neville at the helm, we can just sit back now & wait for them to finish up & attack instead.

You know, sacrifice millions of lives so that ... hell, I don't know WHAT this moron was trying to do. Not even Obie can be dumb enough to believe anything that comes from Iran.

By all means let's return to our previous policy of strong stares and threatening growls. That worked so well for North Korea after all.

I don't understand what is stopping Iran from currently developing nukes? I admittedly don't read everything, but what is stopping them from doing it themselves anyway or just buying one from Pakistan or Russia or something. I know there are "crippling" sanctions but it does not seem to stop them from building up their military, fighting proxy wars, and other things. Why is it suddenly Obama's fault if they get a nuke?

Because he's a black Democrat in the White House.

Or we could return to our previous previous policy of making up evidence and military invasion. No lingering issues stem from that at all.

Or maybe he's just a bad president. It's an interesting strategy to cry racism every time someone doesn't agree with you.

It's a good deflection, though. Better than addressing the question of why we're making deals to give money to people who have promised to use it to try and eradicate another country. People who openly fund terrorist groups.

Better to cry racism than to admit that it's looking fairly likely that these "side-deals" that not even the Democrats in the Senate have read are, indeed, what Khomeini claims they are.

It's also interesting that someone apparently isn't allowed to think Obama is a terrible president and, at the same time, think Bush was a terrible president and mishandled the Middle East as well.

Sanctions were a lot better than nothing. Appeasement has led to a worse situation than ever before. No one in the Middle East has a clue what Obama is going to do.

Sanctions and clear statements and actions work. Nation-building and empty words don't work. Bush and Obama created ISIS together, through extraordinary incompetence. If war results, that's the reason.

Ah, America in 2015, when trying to actually fix a problem through diplomacy is seen as worse than killing a bunch of brown people, providing oodles of propaganda for terrorist groups, and screwing up even more a region of the world which was already screwed up...

When did we decide that this deal lets them get nukes? It takes away much of their capability for the length of the deal and even then it's not like we have to allow them to build nukes at that point.

There are other issues, loosening sanctions so they have more money for terrorist activities and such, but I don't see how this makes Iran's obtaining a nuclear weapon more likely. Maybe they try to pursue nuclear weapons outside the deal but that's not something they can easily hide or they would have done so before and this wouldn't matter.

We've been sanctioning them for a decade and they are far closer now than when we started. Try making a deal and if it doesn't work out, military action is just as much available as it has been.

You also did not answer my question, since you seem to believe the blood of the Jews is on Obama's hands...

It doesn't affect their capability at all. It doesn't take anything away. Since the military sites are off-limits (and some of them are quite large) they can continue enrichment and weapons development.

The original goal of the talks and what was agreed to in the end are vastly different sets of parameters. Iran doesn't have to disclose what it has (Obama has admitted this already) and Iran doesn't even have to get rid of what it has already enriched.

The agreement causes harm in three ways.

1. It gives them access to a lot of money. They are continuing to assemble a considerable force in Lebanon (remember, Hezbollah is an Iranian proxy). The money will help them continue with their rocket attacks on Israel and the buildup for the eventual invasion.

2. It eliminates the risk of US force when they get closer to deploying their nuclear weapons. That's why it was so important to get a deal in place that left the military sites off-limits. You can't find a violation if you're not allowed to inspect anything. And you can't attack if you have an agreement and there's no proof it was violated.

3. It allows open dealing with Russia. Since sanctions are gone, Russia can make arms deals. Already, we're seeing Russian and Iranian forces in Syria to bolster Assad. That part of it may be a good thing, because Iran and ISIS are enemies. But Iranian forces on Israel's border with Russian weapons and bases behind them is not a good thing. Russia won't attack Israel or participate in an invasion, but Russia doesn't have any qualms about Iran's promises to eradicate Israel, either.

Hezbollah invading Israel?

Come on.

It takes away their highly enriched uranium and a large percentage of their centrifuges and enriched uranium stockpile.

The money is a valid point.

If we know that they are getting closer, which is a violation of the agreement, we can and will still hit them. The agreement won't stop that if we know they have violated it.

And also a valid concern but nothing to do with Iran going nuclear.

No doubt the deal is far from perfect but that can be said about any solution to this mess.

Bump for Nobody Here, since he must not know this thread exists.

Diplomacy with rattlesnakes works sooooo well.

Well you got your wish as my posts got removed.

Fuch y'all. I'm outta here.

Bye.

Not to mention they agree to give up all of their plutonium and dismantle their plutonium reactor. It bans Iran from building a plutonium reactor for 15 years.

Politifact has a good rundown of the deal.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-me...iran-nuclear-/

So do we trust the administration spin on the deal (as Politifact does) or the ayatollah spin on the deal?

The promise to destroy Israel and actions in Syria and Lebanon seem proof of the latter.

I'm pretty sure whoever has been the Grand Ayatollah since 1979 has been promising the destruction of Israel.

You could just read it yourself

Full text of the Iran nuclear deal - The Washington Post

There are no facts and everyone's spin is of equal validity.

The Iran deal is concentrated postmodernism.

Yes, we've all read that. But there were side-deals related to the implementation which the administration won't reveal. Iran claims they prevent any direct inspection of military sites.

It's hardly the "anywhere, anytime" promise that Obama started with, and the material we're concerned about no longer has to actually leave Iran.

And, yes, Khomeini has often promised to eliminate Israel. But now Iran is doing a better job arming Hezbollah, getting missiles into position in Lebanon, working with Russia to have a stronger defense in Syria, and the rhetoric is becoming more specific.

So it sounds like all Obama has accomplished is to give Iran a lot of money, open access to deals with other countries (this was immediate) and hasn't really stopped their progress toward nuclear weapons while eliminating the opportunity to use force. In other words, if Iran was really interested in using nuclear weapons in the first place, Obama just made it a whole lot easier.

But, if you trust Rouhani, who may be just a figurehead, then this delays, by ten years, something they don't really care about anyway.

Either way, negotiations have resulted in an agreement that offers the United States no gain in return for enormous gain by Iran.

And that's enough time wasted on this argument.

Small quibble, you are only a letter off but Khomeini has been dead since 1989. It's Khameini now.

It sounds like you are saying this is a massive secret conspiracy, yes?

No. Just a president who doesn't want the people of America to know what he agreed to do.

I've seen three or four different spellings of Khomenei. Like Khaddfy. It's hard to work between different alphabets and I don't speak a word of Arabic or Farsi so I don't have an opinion as to which is correct.

The IAEA has agreements with 180 countries, including the U.S. and all of them are secret. No country is going to allow those details to be public. Argue that the Iran deal shouldn't follow international protocol if you like, but stop acting like this is anything out of the ordinary.

That's an easy argument to make in this case. And why Congress voted to require the president to disclose this information. There could have been a private briefing, but there wasn't.

When this was brought up in the FRC, Kerry didn't say a word. He didn't contradict the Iranian claims that Iran will provide all samples when it comes to military sites. Which effectively means that the deal does not do anything to stop Iran from continuing to develop nuclear weapons.

We don't *know* this is in the side-deal, but every indication is that it is in the side-deal.

How do you feel about that?

Actually Congress had a list of documents that didn't include the IAEA agreement. They are arguing now that they didn't know it would exist, but again the IAEA has agreements with 180 countries. Everybody that understands the IAEA knew there would be an agreement.

I trust the great volume of arms control experts that say this is a solid deal.

I'm troubled that so many people have that trust. It's a lot to ask when so much is at stake.

There's nothing wrong with trusting the experts who look at things logically and lawfully. Then when you are done, remember who the leader of Iran is and ask yourself if he is willing to do the same.



http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/10/middle...ars/index.html

He said this this week.

Of course I'm sure his predecessors have said similar things since Israel's creation how many years ago now?

Don't we hope the Iranian regime doesn't exist in 25 years?

Then be honest and admit there's no deal that would satisfy you. It's Bush strong talk or war.

First off, it seems Jim is a bit confused about the soil samples talking point. The "side deal" doesn't deal with the soil samples at "military bases", it just deals with Parchin. There are suspicions that Iran conducted nuclear experiments at Parchin for the purposes of developing a bomb. That is why Parchin is getting special attention, and why the IAEA wants to conduct an investigation at the site. The soil samples that everyone is talking about are specifically to test if there's any evidence that Iran conducted those experiments in the past.

This "side deal" does not, at least as far as the IAEA has said, but they are the ones who called it "a separate arrangement regarding the issue of Parchin", deal with how inspections and investigations will be conducted in accordance with the Iran deal at nuclear facilities or other military bases. I mean, it could. I don't know. But the IAEA are the ones saying it deals with Parchin. The rest might be covered under the first "side deal" that the IAEA calls "Road-map for the Clarification of Past & Present Outstanding Issues regarding Iran's Nuclear Program"

Here's the statement from the IAEA about the first "side deal": IAEA Director General's Statement and Road-map for the Clarification of Past & Present Outstanding Issues regarding Iran's Nuclear Program | International Atomic Energy Agency

And secondly, according to this Reuters article citing two unnamed western diplomats (who could very well be blowing smoke up Reuters' ass), the IAEA will be present when the soil samples are taken.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/...0RB2D420150911

Isn't that a little like me saying, "then be honest and admit that you would only be satisfied if Israel were destroyed?" Iran has supplied Hezbollah with around 100,000 rockets, and it's generally assumed that the next time they launch a full attack, their strategy will involve large numbers of rockets and a land invasion.

I've already written many times that Bush should never have invaded Iraq. So if you're going to put words in my mouth, at least get it partially right.

As for the exact nature of the side-deals, we have Obama backing away from "anywhere, anytime" and the ayatollahs saying no inspections at all. Obama's reactions - forcing Democrats to support it without reading it (sounds familiar) - lead a lot of people to think that it's probably a lot worse than we've been led to believe.

I don't know, when you say 'we', I guess that means you too....so do you hope Iran's regime is gone in 25 years? Are you willing to nuke them to make it disappear? Have you considered the genocide of the Persian people? If you don't want it to go away, is it because you support the genocide of the Israeli people?

You didn't address my point, which is that there doesn't seem to be a realistic deal that you would support. Given that, your choices are tough talk or war.

And Hezbollah invading Israel isn't anything to worry about. The Israelis would crush them in very short order. If you're going to bring up scary what ifs, Iran building a nuke is still the right play.

You haven't addressed my point, which is what should be done about a leadership which calls for the complete extermination of Israel - every man, woman and child.

Of course Hezbollah is a worry. Iran has armed them and trained them, and they could use the rockets and their numbers to take significant territory in the north. Enough to cause chaos.

Remember that Israel is about the size of New Jersey. Hezbollah can't take Tel Aviv, but they could cause significant problems with the same strategies ISIS is using.

I would support a deal that eliminated Iran's nuclear weapons capacity and included a statement that Israel has the right to exist as a sovereign nation. Now that would be worth a Nobel prize.

But this deal does neither. It gives Iran the ability to continue to develop nuclear weapons without any threat of intervention.

We shouldn't be dealing with a government that has declared war on one of our allies.

The world would be better off without religious fanatics of all varieties.

Right, but just like Global Warming, all the liberals want to start in America and all the conservatives want to start outside of America. Or so the game seems to go.

Isn't it easier to change yourself instead of someone else?

The IDF has around three million people available with considerable armor, artillery and air assets. An invasion would indeed cause initial chaos, but soon Hezbollah would be wiped out as a fighting force.

I'm no fan of Iran or its leaders, but if the goal is to reduce the likelihood of a nuke, the choices are diplomacy or war. The sanctions aren't going to hold forever and were only agreed to internationally as a way to force an agreement. In that sense, they worked, but without an agreement U.S. sanctions and tough talk won't do much of anything (see 2000-2008). Actual arms control experts say the deal is solid and provides a good inspections regime. I'm willing to trust them, especially given the other real world alternative.

Even Israeli military experts think a military strike would be disastrous for Israel and largely ineffective. I read somewhere that a best case scenario is a pushback of six months. In exchange for that you'd get all sorts of problems all over the Middle East from an attack on Israel to the closing of the Straits of Hormuz. We would further stretch our military by asking them to attack Iran and maintain operations from Afghanistan to the Mediterranean.

You say we shouldn't be dealing with a government that has declared war on one of our allies, but the other options make Iran more dangerous. We've tried tough talk and the costs of war for us and Israel are going to be very high.

If I'm not mistaken, you aren't changing *yourself*...you are asking others in America to change. Correct?

Hezbollah would act as a terrorist force, not as a force that can occupy cities on a long-term basis. This would be done in concert with a daily barrage of rocket fire. I wouldn't dismiss this as insignificant. Imagine if Hezbollah were in New York and tried this type of attack on New Jersey. Imagine how this would affect the lives of New Jerseyites. And this is what Iran is openly planning.


That's a lot of trust. Especially when the leaders of Iran say otherwise and their actions back that up.


Yes. Not a great idea. Though Iran is more isolated than you might think on this. The Saudis certainly won't join them.


This is a war. Ignoring that won't make it go away.

Appeasement is not a good solution, either. Removing the sanctions without requiring that Iran recognize Israel's sovereignty seems like a terrible idea.

Obama just doesn't command respect in the international community. Look at Putin's response to Obama's warning about the Russian support of Assad. Putin's basically giggling like a schoolgirl. He knows Obama will blink every time. And Putin doesn't want war with the US any more than we want war with Russia.

Initially you were talking about wiping Israel off the map. Hezbollah has zero capability to do that.


We're already close to military operations from Afghanistan to the Mediterranean. Iran would be the last link in that chain. Certainly the Sunni countries wouldn't join Iran, but they won't join us and Israel either.

Now you're just playing word games. You know there's a significant difference between the status quo and what would happen after a strike on Iran.


Which, for better or worse, means no deal is possible. What is your alternative plan?