Peace activists will love this one. Sorry its so long. Its an
interesting perspective though. Can't say it with less words.

The case for bombing Iran
The Ottawa Citizen ^ | June 04, 2007 | David Harris

Posted on 06/04/2007 4:35:20 AM PDT by fanfan

When the United States strikes Iran -- as it will -- the result will be
a disaster, but a disaster that cannot be avoided.

Today, Iran's radical Islamist military, security and intelligence
machine reflects the extremism of its history and entrenched masters. It
has made Iran an engine of global instability and menace. For Iran today
is on the verge of grasping the nuclear club, even as it remains an
ungovernable influence in the international community.

Iran's extremist and uncontrollable nature has been well defined through
action. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's apocalyptic fixations
make the country's nuclear capacity, including Bushehr nuclear power
plant, a risk to the existence of Canada and the entire world.

* * * * * * * *

Start with reports of early post-revolutionary Iran. Massacres of
Baha'is and other minorities. Razor-blade removal of lipsticked lips.
Thumbtacks affixing veils to reluctant women. Adolescent gays hanged
from construction cranes. Human waves of nine-year-olds attacking Iraqi
forces.

The performance abroad has been as shocking.

For years, Iranian dissidents around the world have been hunted down and
butchered by joint teams from Iran's foreign intelligence service and
the country's other virulent creation, Hezbollah. By the late 1990s,
German prosecutors stated that the highest Iranian officials authorized
assassinations abroad through a "Committee for Special Affairs."

The Germans went on to prove that the Islamic Republic murdered people
in its notorious "Mykonos" operation in Berlin. South American
investigators fix the mullahs with responsibility for a mass-casualty
bombing in Argentina. And, of course, writer Salman Rushdie lives under
the multimillion-dollar bounty offered by a quasi-governmental Iranian
foundation.

Under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's regime, Iran's religious
supremacists call for the destruction of Jews, Christians, Israel, the
United States, the West. No surprise, considering founder Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini's helpful elaboration of the "11 things which are
impure" -- everything from "urine, excrement," "the sweat of the
excrement-eating camel," to "dogs, pigs, (and) non-Muslim men and
women."

So hatreds like anti-Semitism blend comfortably with the regime's racist
threats to capture "a nice bunch of blue-eyed blond-haired officers" and
"feed them to our fighting ****s." And this, before the recent detention
of British naval service personnel.

Unfortunately, such virulence is nothing compared to the frightening
nuclear implications of this regime's delusional and apocalyptic
fixations. Mr. Ahmadinejad is convinced a green halo hovered above his
head while he addressed the United Nations -- and that his words
paralysed all delegates for the duration of his speech. He assures
anyone who will listen that he is Allah's handyman.

In this spirit, Mr. Ahmadinejad writes letters to the Twelfth Imam, who
is said to have inhabited a well for the past few centuries. The
president believes he can bring back the long-lost imam -- the Mahdi --
by precipitating the apocalypse, something his doctrine tells him will
trigger a Second Coming, and paradise. Mojtaba Samare Hashemi, Mr.
Ahmadinejad's eminence grise and suitably fanatic former Islamic
Revolutionary Guards Corps intelligence agent, helps his boss place
fellow Mahdi-cultists in security, defence and other powerful positions.

All of this means that an Iranian bomb would be under control of nuclear
triggermen who regards atomic annihilation as an incentive, rather than
a deterrent. In short order, Canada and the rest of the world would face
the mullahs' diktat.

The alternative? Nuclear catastrophe through either Shahab missiles, or
warheads smuggled into our countries by sympathetic terrorists. This is
why the United States and its allies have no choice but to act
militarily against Iranian nuclear facilities.

But the price will be steep and long lasting.

* * * * * * * *

After the attack, Iran's Hezbollah agents, its foreign-intelligence
sleepers -- known in Farsi as "submarines" -- and suicide-corps
infiltrators will likely go into action throughout the West. President
Ahmadinejad has told us as much. The suicide corps alone is so
aggressive that a commander of Iran's regular armed forces has
complained about its uncontrollable nature -- if not about its ultimate
aims and purpose.

With or without a nuclear warhead, the atomic program's longstanding
nature means Iranians must hold vast stocks of radiological material.
This is the feedstock of dirty bombs whose contamination can bar use of
target zones for generations. As the clock ticks down to the inevitable
airstrikes, all countries must have civil defence plans ready to do what
they can against the radiological threat -- and chemical and biological
ones, too.

Political leadership, security intelligence and our armed forces must be
aggressive in preparing our defence. Pressure must be put on Germany,
Russia and other of Iran's commercial, technological and military
suppliers to embargo the atomic ayatollahs. Russia's shameless exports
of anti-defence missiles to the mullahs, and similar behaviour by China,
must draw economic penalties.

At a time when Iran is installing sleeper agents and combatants abroad,
only those Iranians demonstrably fleeing the regime can be allowed to
enter Canada.

Above all, citizens of the west must be realistic. Retribution inflicted
upon us by Mr. Ahmadinejad and other Islamic extremists -- including
disruptive oil prices -- must not cause us to buy enemy propagandists'
continuing attempts to divide us from the United States and other
allies. We must steadfastly recognize that the cost of attacks on Iran
is the price we must pay to forestall the advent of a new form of
slavery -- and many millions of nuclear dead, besides.

David Harris is a lawyer, senior fellow for national security at the
Canadian Coalition for Democracies (CCD) (www.canadiancoalition.com),
and former Canadian Security Intelligence Service chief of strategic
planning. He is counsel to the CCD, which is intervening in the Air
India Inquiry.

Bush did it

Isreal will do it ... Then ?

Not much interest in this article it seems. I wonder if the reason is
because the information about the Iranian regime and its behavior over
the years is too far outside the mental image people have created in
their minds that they just do not want to consider the details.

I really find it difficult that so many people would simply say give
them the nuke and don't worry about it. There are decent people there,
but the decent people do not run the country.
Furthermore, most of the people there were born after the ouster of the
Shaw so they have been educated in the extremist system.