I am tired. Tired of being considered a "warmonger" simply because I believe that since we toppled Saddam it is our obligation and responsibility to now help Iraq stand on its own two feet and be the democratic society that 12 million people in Iraq voted for.
Tired of liberal defeatists determining that because it is "hard" and "expensive" it is not worth finishing a job we started, keeping the promises we made.
Tired of seeing our soldiers talk to us and seeing part of our population say, by words and actions that they do not care what our soldiers, who are in Iraq fighting and dying for us, have to say.
Tired of seeing the liberals criticize our fine military because the job they have before them hasn't been accomplished quick enough for their liking.
Tired of people that cannot understand what the word honor means because they have either fogotten what it meant or they never knew to begin with.
Especially tired of seeing people sit on their asses watching television news and determining that they know more than our military and our soldiers on the ground in Iraq.
Hey, I wish that the Iraqi's could stand on their own now and we could bring our soldiers home right this very second, knowing that Iraq could stand, sustain and defend itself.
Wishes are not facts and acting like spoiled little children, stomping our feet because things aren't exactly like we want them will get us nowhere.
Which brings me to the next issue I am tired of.... Iran.
The Saudi's have every reason to step in and stop that lunatic Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Israel will be the first country hit when Ahmadinejad realizes his nuclear ambitions, they too have every reason to step in and deal with it. He doesn't just call for Israel to be wiped off the map, but he also hails the chorus "Death to America", which brings this right into OUR laps.
Together the countries in the Middle East, along with the US could stop this madman, but what are we doing? Everyone is sitting on their hands waiting for the other country to DO SOMETHING, while the UN bickers over how strong sanctions are to be and do we honestly believe ANY sanctions are going to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons? Especially sanctions that are so watered down because of weak kneed countries like Russia and China refusing to take any "meaningful" actions?
Yeah, thats accomplishing a whole lot. In the meantime, Ahmadinejad continues on his merry way towards nuclear power and weapons.
I am tired, war weary and I am not even in the middle east fighting....how must our military, our administration, our pentagon officials feel? Yet the continue to fight, to believe and to actively work toward success....another word many seem to have forgotton the meaning of. Is it SO much to ask us to help them with a little moral support? It is too much for some... not for me.
Commentary has an excellent article on Iran and our military options.
To a greater or lesser extent, all of these recommendations fly in the face of reality. Despite Iran’s richly developed repertoire of denials, deceptions, and dissimulations, there is ample evidence that it has no intention whatsoever of relinquishing its aim of becoming a nuclear power. Moreover, this aim may be achievable not within a decade (as Senator Biden fancies) but within the next two to three years. In September, the House Intelligence Committee reported that Iran may have already succeeded in enriching uranium; some intelligence analysts believe that it may already have access to fissionable nuclear material, courtesy of North Korea. If that is so, no diplomacy in the world is going to prevent it from acquiring a bomb.
But neither are nuclear weapons the only threat posed by the Islamic Republic. While the international community has been preoccupied with this issue, the regime in Tehran has been taking steady steps to achieve hegemony over one of the world’s most sensitive and economically critical regions, and control over the world’s most precious resource. It is doing so, moreover, entirely through conventional means.
To put it briefly, the Islamic Republic has its hand on the throttle of the world’s economic engine: the stretch of ocean at the mouth of the Persian Gulf known as the Straits of Hormuz, which are only 21 miles wide at their narrowest point. Through this waterway, every day, pass roughly 40 percent of the world’s crude oil, including two-thirds of the oil from Saudi Arabia. By 2025, according to Energy Department estimates, fully 60 percent of the world’s oil exports will be moved through this vital chokepoint.
The Straits border on Iran and Oman, with the two lanes of traffic that are used specifically by oil tankers being theoretically protected by international agreement. Since 9/11, a multinational force comprising ships from the U.S., Japan, six European countries, and Pakistan have patrolled outside the Straits, in Omani waters, to make sure they stay open. But this is largely a token force. Meanwhile, the world’s access to Saudi, Qatari, Kuwaiti, and Iraqi oil and gas, as well as other petroleum products from the United Arab Emirates, depends on free passage through the Hormuz Straits.
The Tehran regime has made no secret of its desire to gain control of the Straits as part of its larger strategy of turning the Gulf into an Iranian lake. Indeed, in a preemptive move, it has begun to threaten a cut-off of tanker traffic if the UN should be foolish enough to impose sanctions in connection with the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program. “We have the power to halt oil supply,” a senior Iranian official warned the European Union last January, “down to the last drop.”
In April of this year, as if to drive the point home, Iranian armed forces staged elaborate war games in the Gulf, test-firing a series of new anti-ship missiles capable of devastating any tanker or unwary warship. In the boast of one Iranian admiral, April’s “Holy Prophet war games” showed what could be expected by anyone daring to violate Iran’s interests in the Gulf. A further demonstration of resolve occurred in August, when Iran fired on and then occupied a Rumanian-owned oil platform ostensibly in a dispute over ownership rights; in truth, the action was intended to show Western companies—including Halliburton, which had won a contract for constructing facilities in the Gulf—exactly which power is in charge there.
A 30-page document said to issue from the Strategic Studies Center of the Iranian Navy (NDAJA), and drawn up in September or October of last year, features a contingency plan for closing the Hormuz Straits through a combination of anti-ship missiles, coastal artillery, and submarine attacks. The plan calls for the use of Chinese-made mines, Chinese-built missile boats, and more than 1,000 explosive-packed suicide motor boats to decimate any U.S. invasion force before it can so much as enter the Gulf. Iran’s missile units, manned by the regime’s Revolutionary Guards, would be under instruction to take out more than 100 targets around the Gulf rim, including Saudi production and export centers.
The authenticity of the NDAJA document has been vouched for by at least two defectors from Iranian intelligence. Of course, it may not be authentic at all. And military contingency plans are just that—contingency plans; the file cabinets of defense ministries around the world are full of them. Nor do all analysts agree that the Straits of Hormuz can be effectively mined in the first place. Nevertheless, even the threat of mines or suicide boats would likely be enough to induce Lloyds of London to suspend insurance of ships passing through the Straits, causing tanker traffic to cease, oil markets to rise precipitously, and Asian and European economies to reel.
Something like this very nearly happened in 1987 during the Iran-Iraq war, when only direct U.S. intervention kept the Straits open and the world’s oil flowing. For the United States is hardly the only country with a stake in keeping the Gulf and Straits free of Iranian control. Every country in Western Europe and Asia, including those that complain most bitterly about American policy in the Middle East, depends on the steady maintenance of the global economic order that runs on Middle Eastern oil.
But—and herein lies a fruitful irony—so does Iran itself. Almost 90 percent of the mullahs’ oil assets are located either in or near the Gulf. So is the nuclear reactor that Russia is building for Iran at Bushehr. Virtually every Iranian well or production platform depends on access to the Gulf if Iran’s oil is to reach buyers. Hence, the same Straits by means of which Iran intends to lever itself into a position of global power present the West with its own point of leverage to reduce Iran’s power—and to keep it reduced for at least as long as the country’s political institutions remain unprepared to enter the modern world.
Which brings us to the military option, read the rest here.
Iran must be dealt with and at this point I do not care who does it....whoever it is had better do it soon. Before Iran has a nuclear bomb to bomb Israel with, before Iran has the nuclear technology to sell to a group like al-Qaeda to bring here and attack us on our own soil, before Iran gets strong enough to bring about World World III.
It is in everyones interest to stop Iran, but who is going to step up to the plate?
Others discussing this:
Blackfive.
Hugh Hewitt.
Jules Crittenden.
Sister Toldjah.
Hot Air.