Which some of us, including myself, very much are. I haven't seen this. Thanks for keeping it fresh.

The sooner we wean ourselves from oil (or it runs out), the sooner we can leave the Middle East and let them make peace or blow themselves up. Good riddance.

Ignatius thinks the whole world swoons before tough-guy foreign policy. I'd take this with a huge grain of salt.

So the Iranians who have vast swathes of desert at the extreme edge of the range of Israeli warplanes build a "nuclear reactor" just down the road from Israel. Give me a frigging break, there is as much truth to this as all the other Cheney-sourced claims about a Syrian/North Korean/Iranian/Klingon "nuclear reactor" in Syria.

I don't understand what Iglesias means by "deterrence policy." Is he saying that the Israelis used conventional weapons (in an air strike) to shore up their nuclear deterrent? That would be ironic. I thought nuclear weapons were scary enough to be the source of deterrence. Or perhaps he means by "deterrence policy" something like "the right to dictate that no one else in the region get nuclear weapons." Which would actually echo US policy to some extent. In any case, using that way has little to do with people being frightened of nuclear attack.

Pretty safe to work on the assumption that there's no truth whatever to it.

I wish these "reality" shows weren't so obviously scripted and the audience was a little more discerning.

Sorry, but why would we believe anything Ignatius has to say on this? Hell, he doesn't even bother to source it anonymously, so it could very well, indeed probably is, just his fantasy. I find the idea that Israel didn't know if Assad was a "plausible negotiating partner" to be fairly implausible, absent something more than Ignatius' fevered imagination to go on.

What's up with Britney?

I think the jury is still out on this as the UN has yet to inspect the alleged nuclear facility yet. Otherwise, it's just unsubstantiated Israeli intelligence. The whole effort may have been nothing but a lame attempt by Israel to salve its thoroughly bruised ego after fighting the jumped-up Hezbollah militias to a stalemate. Nothing but face saving.

Unless Iran or Syrian desire to be completely obliterated by Israeli's substantial nukular arsenal, building a few bombs is merely a way to keep regimes hostile to them at bay. They aren't going to launch any first strikes. How long has N. Korea had their bombs, 2-3 years? Seoul's still chugging along last I heard.

Oddly enough, that attack on what CIA analysts called the "Enigma Building" may have helped the peace talks.

Yippee! Then why not bomb enough stuff to guarantee peace, you know? A permanent peace.

I don't know more than Kevin Drum does. However, it seems pretty clear that 1. a nuclear program made little sense for a small country like Syria, acting on its own, 2. both Israel and the United States have good reasons for wanting to separate Syria and Iran, 3. Israel has in addition a pressing need to keep its many enemies in the region from uniting against it and 4. the fact that Damascus no longer has an army in Lebanon looking over Hezbollah's shoulder could well mean that Nasrallah's organization is starting to look less like their client and more like Tehran's to the Syrians.

So there may be nothing to this, but it would be foolish not to explore possibilities.

Interesting rumor. I would not find it odd if the attack on the "Enigma Building" helped the peace talks. Most conflict-ending treaties have been signed after one side defeated the other or when they demonstrated the power to do so. Treaties are often about self-preservation, rather than friendship.

For example, the US and USSR didn't sign a series of treaties because we liked each other. Rather, it was because each realized that the other country could destroy them.

This fits right in with the news I read yesterday that Israel is begging the US to take out Iran's nuclear sites before a new administration takes office. Anybody else see that news? I've forgotten the source.

Here's the source:

CBS News: Israel Prodding US To Attack Iran

The WMD's were spirited off to Syria, weren't they? And Saddam was hiding in Jordan! And foreign fighters were streaming in from Iran, Syria and Jordan combined! Foreign fighters, al Qaeda in Iraq! I heard about it on TV!

You don't need government control of the media, apparently, to accomplish almost perfect saturation of the "information space"... Just have an anonymous military, government, or intelligence source assert something to their media contact, and the schmuck will eagerly print it up on the front page of the NYT, Washington Post or LA Times.

There won't even be any caveats attached, such as, "this information was not independently corroborated"... Neither will reporters do any investigation to see if additional sources can confirm the story.

As consumers, we can just say, "thanks for the stovepipe, government and journalists!"

Here's the source: CBS News: Israel Prodding US To Attack Iran Posted by: nepeta

I'm so tired of Israel. Nothing but a millstone around our neck with regard to foreign policy in the ME.

Shorter "ex-liberal": War is peace!

And, of course, "Ignorance is strength".