Wars & Rumors Of War

Left wingnuts are forever trying to play down the distinct possibility that our intelligence estimates of when Iran will cross the nuclear weapons threshold are vastly, complacently overstated.  Ditto the possibility that al Qaeda may in fact have some manner of nuclear weapons capability.  Recall Barack Hussein Obama's "Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, et al are 'tiny countries' that don't pose a 'serious threat'" speech.  As though erring on the side of caution is criminal, but taking whimsical chances with the lives of millions is perfectly okay.

Well, guess what, gentles - things are worse than we thought:

An international smuggling ring that sold bomb-related parts to Libya, Iran and North Korea also managed to acquire blueprints for an advanced nuclear weapon, according to a draft report by a former top U.N. arms inspector that suggests the plans could have been shared secretly with any number of countries or rogue groups.

The drawings, discovered in 2006 on computers owned by Swiss businessmen, included essential details for building a compact nuclear device that could be fitted on a type of ballistic missile used by Iran and more than a dozen developing countries, the report states.

The computer contents — among more than [a tera]byte of data seized — were recently destroyed by Swiss authorities under the supervision of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, which is investigating the now-defunct smuggling ring previously led by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.

But U.N. officials cannot rule out the possibility that the blueprints were shared with others before their discovery, said the report’s author, David Albright, a prominent nuclear weapons expert who spent four years researching the smuggling network.

So.  Not only will Iran have the capability of churning out nukes within as little as two months, but they probably already possess the means of deploying them as soon as they come off the assembly line.

And, evidently, nobody cares.  Nobody realizes, nobody is willing to face the sober fact, that the "international community," but especially Europe, Israel, and the United States, are teetering on the edge of the unthinkable abyss.  All they still are capable of is chest-puffing about yet another round of useless, toothless "sanctions" that will be irrelevant at best, just like all their predecessors (see the twelve years of sanctions that didn't slow down Saddam Hussein's WMD programs one jot or tittle), or at worst will encourage Iran, convinced time is no longer on their side, to strike us like Imperial Japan sixty-seven years ago - only with a much bigger "stick".

As if to pointedly highlight their oceanic contempt for our galloping impotence, Iran bellicosely reiterated - again - the facts of mullahgarchic life:

Iran said on Tuesday uranium enrichment was its “red line” and would continue, despite an enhanced offer of incentives from big powers to stop activity the West fears could yield nuclear bombs…

The incentive package agreed by the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany last month and delivered by Solana is a revised version of one rejected by Iran in 2006…

The incentives package offers Iran the chance to develop a civilian nuclear program with light water reactors — seen as harder to divert into bomb-making than the technology Tehran is now developing — and legally binding fuel supply guarantees.

It also offers trade and other benefits, including the possibility of Iran buying civil aircraft from the West.

You know, I read things like this and the absurdity of it makes me want to gag.  The fact that this morony is putting my life and the lives of my family in potentially mortal danger is something I know intellectually, but even I have difficulty wrapping my mind around the reality of what it would mean in practical terms.  Not, I suspect, unlike those who were beholding world events in 1939, 1940, and 1941.  "Oh, no, the Japs will NEVER attack US; they know better than to commit national suicide."  "C'mon, all Hitler wants is the Sudetenland - he explicitly said so!  If we give it to him, he'll be satisfied and we can maintain the peace."  Almost nobody in the West had any grasp of the possibility that maybe, just maybe, Adolph Hitler DID want to conquer the world and WAS willing to wage total war to do it, and the Japanese WOULD attack us believing that we were (drumroll) soft and would quickly tire of any attempt at resisting their conquest of the Pacific once we encountered the savagery of their warriors and sue for peace instead.

Thus did our grandfathers go from sitting at home listening to our politicians drone about "peace in our time" to flying bomber fleets firebombing German cities and cutting their way across one jungle-covered Pacific island after another within the space of three years.  Thus did sixty million human beings - including, of course, six million Jews - needlessly perish in a planetary conflagration that could so easily have been pre-empted with a little military action applied early enough to make a difference.

Do we learn from this lamentable history?  Of course not.  It's not in human nature to learn from past mistakes.  Why else do they get endlessly repeated?  And so we keep offering the rabid theocrats in Tehran bigger and bigger dollops of appeasement to cease developing nuclear weapons that they see as the ticket to the return of their Messiah and the Global Islamic Caliphate, and they keep telling us to shove it.  A literally vicious cycle that will continue right up until the the nuclear-tipped Shahab-3s and Shahab-5s and 6's fly for Israel, Europe, and the US, respectively.  And, I imagine, the appeasement dollops grow proportionately.

Well, boys and girls, at least one group in this crisis isn't paralyzed by historical amnesia:

A large Israeli military exercise this month may have been aimed at showing Jerusalem's abilities to attack Iranian nuclear facilities.

In a substantial show of force, Israel sent warplanes and other aircraft on a major exercise in the Eastern Mediterranean early this month, Pentagon officials said Friday.

Israel's military refused to confirm or deny that the maneuvers were practice for a strike in Iran....

The big exercise the first week of June was impossible to miss and may have been meant as a show of force as well as a practice on skills needed to execute a long-range strike mission, one U.S. official said.

The New York Times quoted officials Friday as saying that more than 100 Israeli F-16s and F-15s staged the maneuver, flying more than 900 miles, roughly the distance from Israel to Iran's Natanz nuclear enrichment facility, and that the exercise included refueling tankers and helicopters capable of rescuing downed pilots.

You have to love Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov's scolding the Israelis against attacking Iran's nuclear facilities on the grounds that there's "no proof" that the mullahs are building nukes.  That's a hoot considering that his implied threshold of "proof" would be mushroom clouds rising above the atomized remains of Tel Aviv and Haifa - after which he would be quick, I'm sure, to extend Russia's "condolances" for the Second Holocaust that his intereference-running for the mullahs had helped to fruition.

The Jews are not going to sit there like a potted plant and let their enemies gain, mount, and deploy the means of their annihilation against them.  If nothing else, they will ensure that if they do go down, so will the mullahs.

Meanwhile, we were generously given another reminder of Iran's other ability to strike the U.S. homeland, and what, aside from the alleged absence of nuclear ordnance, is holding them back:

Intelligence officials tell ABC News [Hezbollah] has activated suspected “sleeper cells” in Canada and key operatives have been tracked moving outside the group’s Lebanon base to Canada, Europe and Africa…

Suspected Hezbollah operatives have conducted recent surveillance on the Israeli embassy in Ottawa, Canada and on several synagogues in Toronto, according to the officials.

Latin American is also considered a possible target by officials following Hezbollah’s planning…

Officials say the CIA, the NSA, and British and Canadian intelligence agencies began to pick up a steady stream of information - from electronic intercepts, human sources and surveillance - about a possible Hezbollah attack on February 17, just days after the Beirut funeral of Mugniyah where Hezbollah leaders publicly declared they would seek revenge…

[Former CIA intelligence officer Bob] Baer says his Hezbollah contacts told him an attack against the US was unlikely because Iran and Hezbollah did not want to give the Bush Administration an excuse to attack.]

But next year, when the Winnie the Pooh Doctrine is firmly in place?  The sky's the limit, baby.

Thus does Yates' question arise anew: "What rough beast, its hour come round [again], slouches towards Bethlehem to be [re]born?"

The rough beast is on its way.  The Hundred Acre Wood won't know what hit it.