Bush on WW III

Keith Olberman, seen here, does an excellent job of deconstructing the Bush position on Iran, but also exposes a deep misconception that Bush is threatening World War III. Quite the contrary. What Bush does appear to be suggesting, however, is that if Iran were to acquire the means necessary, in the form of technical knowledge, to configure a nuclear weapon, Iran would use it. But when asked to comment on Israel's attack on an Iraqi nuclear facility in 1981, a provocative act that Saddam long resented, culminating in a counterattack aimed at Israel during the first Gulf War, with then Defense Secretary Cheney pleading for restraint from Israel, Bush declined, the suggestion being that the mere possession of such a weapon in the hands of Iran would provoke Israel, with the possibility of a World War III endgame scenario resulting with major powers entering the equation in some explicit fashion.

Recently, Israel has sought exemption from the NPT or nonproliferation treaty that governs the behavior of states which possess nuclear WOMDs so that it can begin to import more atomic weapons-grade material and which places into context not only the Israeli bombing of Saddam Hussein's nuclear facility in 1981, but the question posed to the President about it.

Take note as well, take note always, of Vladimir Putin, whom the Economist recently reported, a fact largely unbeknownst to most Americans, may have led the Russian coup to ovethrow Mikhail Gorbachev, in 1991, the day after he resigned from Russian intelligence service he later ran under Boris Yeltsin. It was just a couple of years ago that Putin seemed to support a plan for Russia to secure enriched uranium produced by Iranian reactors built by Russia in Bashehr, only to see that plan not prevail under pressure from the International Community, a response to fear of Vladimir's possibly expansionist intent. European Union members fear the Vladimir wishes to control much of the EU's oil and gas sector in a fashion that would be largely monopolistic.

But what was Vladimir planning anyhow ? To enrich uranium produced in Iran and send it to Israel ?

Utterly clever and nothing short of classic 007 - exactly to be expected from one of Russia's great former-spies. Also take note of the fact that the Ayatollah axed Larijani, Iran's key nuclear negotitator that day after Vladimir's historic visit with the Ayatollah. Apparently the Ayatollah wasn't going to fall for it possibly believing that Larijani had. Still, Russia insists on the Bashehr reactor proceeding as planned under whatever business arrangement had been crafted.

One of the major powers which might appear to be aligned against a bombing campaign directed against Iran, Japan, which recently forced its president to resign, possibly amid public pressure resulting from Japan's position on the war, does a great deal of business with Iran. There had been an outcry in Japan for the Japanese government to cease refueling Naval Warships in the Persian Gulf, ships that would be used to bomb Iran, which appears to be what Bush has been supporting as documented in Bob Woodward's State of Denial. In one scene, Bush asks Jay Garner whether he wants to " do Iran." The question, strategically, notwithstanding the ever complex diplomatic calculus that is that of the Middle East, is what effect bombing Iran would bear upon the stabilization of Iraq, which has long appeared to be the Pentagon's modus prima. It also appears, from the recent testimony of General Patraeus that the Pentagon believes Iran to be supplying Iraqi insurgents led by Maqtada al-Sadr, with conventional explosives and IEDS, in an effort to implicate Iran in a fashion similar to the manner in which Saddam had been implicated, to no avail, as WOMDs were never found, even as a broad swath of the American public seemed to believe otherwise for quite a period of time, but in the traumatic aftermath of 9/11, where suseptibility to irrationality would obviously be largely enhanced.