Bolton calls for bombing of Iran (1 Viewer)

[steve albino]

[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]http://politics.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,330849397-126365,00.html

Bolton calls for bombing of Iran
[/FONT][FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Ros Taylor
[/FONT][FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Sunday September 30, 2007
[/FONT][FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Guardian Unlimited
[/FONT][FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the United Nations, told Tory delegates today that efforts by the UK and the EU to negotiate with Iran had failed and that he saw no alternative to a pre-emptive strike on suspected nuclear facilities in the country.[/FONT] [FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Mr Bolton, who was addressing a fringe meeting organised by Lord (Michael) Ancram, said that the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was "pushing out" and "is not receiving adequate push-back" from the west. [/FONT]
[FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]"I don't think the use of military force is an attractive option, but I would tell you I don't know what the alternative is.[/FONT]
[FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]"Because life is about choices, I think we have to consider the use of military force. I think we have to look at a limited strike against their nuclear facilities."[/FONT]
[FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]He added that any strike should be followed by an attempt to remove the "source of the problem", Mr Ahmadinejad. [/FONT]
[FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]"If we were to strike Iran it should be accompanied by an effort at regime change ... The US once had the capability to engineer the clandestine overthrow of governments. I wish we could get it back."[/FONT]
[FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]The fact that intelligence about Iran's nuclear activity was partial should not be used as an excuse not to act, Mr Bolton insisted. [/FONT]
[FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]"Intelligence can be wrong in more than one direction." He asked how the British government would respond if terrorists exploded a nuclear device at home. "'It's only Manchester?' ... Responding after they're used is unacceptable."[/FONT]
[FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Mr Bolton, now a fellow at the conservative thinktank the American Enterprise Institute and the author of a forthcoming book called Surrender is Not an Option, was applauded by delegates when he described the UN as "fundamentally irrelevant". [/FONT]
[FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Defending the decision to invade Iraq, he mocked the Foreign Office's "softly softly" approach to Iran's imprisonment of 15 British sailors accused of straying into Iranian waters in April this year. [/FONT]
[FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]They were released after Mr Ahmadinejad announced he was making a "gift" to the British people. "They [Iran] got no response from the UK or the US. If you were the Iranian leader, what conclusion do you draw?"[/FONT]
[FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Mr Bolton said he did not really want "to get into the specifics of your own internal politics here" and made no comment on David Cameron's foreign policy. But he said that Gordon Brown's performance under pressure had not been tested and he hoped that Britain would not withdraw from Iraq.[/FONT]
[FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]"There is too much of a view in Europe that you have passed beyond history," Mr Bolton told delegates. "That everything can be worked out by negotiation ... Democrats or Republicans, we [Americans] don't see it that way."[/FONT]
[FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]However, he praised the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and his forthright criticism of Iran in recent weeks.[/FONT]
[FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Raising the spectre of George Bush's "axis of evil", Mr Bolton said that Kim Jong-il's regime in North Korea was akin to a "prison camp" and that he would "sell anything to anyone". [/FONT]
[FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Those who thought North Korea would give up its nuclear capability voluntarily were wrong, he said. [/FONT]
[FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]The regime had made similar promises during the past decade. Only reunification between North and South Korea could resolve the problem. That could be achieved "if China were to get serious" and cut off fuel supplies to Mr Kim, but the country feared a reunited Korea.[/FONT]
[FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Mr Bolton told an inquiring delegate that he was not and had never been a neoconservative: "I'm not even a Reagan conservative. I'm a [Barry] Goldwater conservative. They [neocons] have somewhat - I would say excessively - Wilsonian views about the benefits of democracy." [/FONT]
[FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]However, the threat to world peace did not come from neoconservatives but from the perception that "we have passed beyond history", he said. [/FONT]
[FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]The meeting was organised by the Global Strategy Forum, of which Lord Ancram is chairman. Earlier this month, the former Conservative deputy leader criticised the direction in which David Cameron was taking the party and for "trashing" its Thatcherite heritage.[/FONT]
[FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007[/FONT]

 

[jane]

I saw the thread title and immediately wondered if, in response to Barry Manilow's refusal to go on The View and debate with the neocon bint, maybe Michael Bolton was trying to win Manilow's lost fans by demanding strikes on Iran. I'd completely forgotten about The Other Bolton, like.

Now I can't get that thought out of my head and I have to wait until I've stopped giggling to read this with the proper sense of gravitas.

Please tell me someone else had the same thought.

 

[Janer]

I thought it was to do with Bolton the football club.
Watched the John Bolton interview on Sky News yesterday morning with Adam Bolton, guy is as right wing as ever.

 

[тхеодоре кацзынски]

I thought it was to do with Bolton the football club.
Watched the John Bolton interview on Sky News yesterday morning with Adam Bolton, guy is as right wing as ever.

which one?if only my poor b.w.f.c. did have a military wing we could knee cap opposing teams and win everything.....as it is-relegation by christmas

 

[Wobbler]

I saw the thread title and immediately wondered if, in response to Barry Manilow's refusal to go on The View and debate with the neocon bint, maybe Michael Bolton was trying to win Manilow's lost fans by demanding strikes on Iran. I'd completely forgotten about The Other Bolton, like.

Now I can't get that thought out of my head and I have to wait until I've stopped giggling to read this with the proper sense of gravitas.

Please tell me someone else had the same thought.

I thought it was to do with Bolton the football club.
Watched the John Bolton interview on Sky News yesterday morning with Adam Bolton, guy is as right wing as ever.

My first thought was of a Northern English town planning on bombing Iran.

 

[killy kill]

Is Boltons opinion relevant anymore after his U.N. debacle?

 

[steve albino]

Is Boltons opinion relevant anymore after his U.N. debacle?

Bolton regularly writes in the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, along with his influential position in the AEI, so I guess it's relevant to some.

I don't think his UN stint changed anyone's opinion about him in the slightest, for good or bad - the people who supported him and his policies before he resigned still support him and his policies. He returned to his old pals the "American Enterprise Institute" immediately after the UN and got stuck in :
"[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][SIZE=-1]Since rejoining AEI, Bolton has continued to advocate the same set of policies he vigorously championed first as the undersecretary of state for arms control and international security affairs, working under then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, and later as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. In op-eds published in a number of high-level media outlets, including the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, Bolton has criticized the United Nations, lambasted U.S. efforts to diplomatically resolve the standoff with North Korea over its nuclear weapons program, and berated the "weak" international response after Iran apprehended several British soldiers for allegedly straying into Iranian waters, which he argued "emboldened" Iran, whose "government today is a theological revolution on the march"
[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][SIZE=-1](Financial Times, April 9, 2007, [/SIZE][/FONT]http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/972)


" Bolton is involved with a broad assortment of conservative think tanks and policy institutes, including the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), Project for the New American Century (PNAC), Institute of East-West Dynamics, National Rifle Association, US Commission on International Religious Freedom, and the Council for National Policy (CNP)."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_R._Bolton)

 

[jane]

Is Boltons opinion relevant anymore after his U.N. debacle?

I wish it weren't, but the problem is, he still ends up in positions where he can make his opinions into action, or use it to block otherwise good and decent actions. In any case, he still has enough influence to make his opinion matter, whether or not it's actually relevant. That's a-scary.



Hi Steve Albino! You hardly ever post your own thoughts, and it's nice when you do.

 

[Shorty]

Eh, bombing nuclear facilities?!

 

[jane]

Eh, bombing nuclear facilities?!

I know, it's like stomping barefoot in a nest of fire ants. Like, not by accident, but as a strategy.

And also those ants are radioactive and explosive.

 

[oh shit]

I know, it's like stomping barefoot in a nest of fire ants. Like, not by accident, but as a strategy.

And also those ants are radioactive and explosive.

bombing a nuclear facility wouldn't trigger a nuclear explosion, it's not like a barrel of gunpowder.

i'm kinda bored of international politics these days.. maybe i'm depressed or something

 

[steve albino]

bombing a nuclear facility wouldn't trigger a nuclear explosion, it's not like a barrel of gunpowder.

Unless you bomb the nuclear facility with nuclear bombs.
At least one of the proposed targets in Iran, "Natanz" is built partially underground and would necessitate the use of "Bunker Busters", which are a type of nuclear weapon designed to penetrate soil and deliver a nuclear warhead to a target.

There's an article here which speculates on the after effects of a nuclear attack:
The Human Costs of Bombing Iran
By Matthew Rothschild
http://progressive.org/node/3268/print


and one here which is quite long and uses the 1981 Israeli Air Force attack against the Iraqi Osirak nuclear reactor located 30 kilometers South of Baghdad as a basis for an attack on Iranian facilities:
http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/week/040812.htm

 

[oh shit]

"If you're bored of international politics, you're bored of death"
- Bernard

 

[Shorty]

bombing a nuclear facility wouldn't trigger a nuclear explosion, it's not like a barrel of gunpowder.

Yeah I know, but wouldn't it be the exact same as a dirty bomb as well as there possibly being some other unforseen circumstances?

 

[oh shit]

the dirty bomb idea is one that many physicists have expressed scepticism over, in terms of how destructive it would actually be. if you bomb a hard water processing plant no radioactive material would be involved, but the capability to refine uranium would be removed.
if you blew up a refinery i suppose a lot of unrefined uranium might be scattered, and a small amount of whatever had been refined, but it would spread over a relatively small area (presumably not near any major population centre), it wouldn't be anything like chernobyl for example.
but then again, i'm only speculating based on reports i read 18 months ago when i was last studying. and i must confess that i've never blown up a uranium processing plant, much as i'd probably enjoy it.