At the risk of making this more political and personal than is generally welcome here.....


>I dont think Iran's economy is all that weak.

When you can't buy squat on the open market that might have military purposes, any heavy machinery or machine tools and most raw materials have to be homemade or smuggled in. Thier foreign bank accounts are frozen as a result of this and their thumbing their nose to the IAEA. And thier domestic market sucks- thier laws radically restrict legal importation of consumer and commercial goods, putting them in about the same place Cuba is. I don't care how much oil they are sitting on, when the money isn't going around and around inside your borders, and the money you are getting from outside your borders has the black market markup, you aren't healthy.

And Russians are mostly paying in credit and rubles, not Euros, not Dollars.

That being said, I never brought up thier economy.

>* The Brits may very well have been in Iran's territorial

By internationally recognized treaty, the information that the Iranians provided puts them comfortably within Iraqi waters. By all rights, the skipper of the British frigate could have openned fire as per the UN order that authorizes Operation Sea Dragon and those forces that are carrying it out, as the IRGC-N vessels were OUT of thier waters and were interfering with an inspection authorized and mandated by international and Iraqi law.

>Why are there no reports that the US is planning to attack N. >Korea's nuclear capability? They already have nukes, and have

Uhm, that's just because you've not been listening. Such plans do exist, and have existed for over 30 years when Mr. Kim's dad started working on nukes.

Look, I'm about to probably pee in people's cornflakes, but I'll bet any sum of money you'd care to match that somewhere in the bowels of the Defense Department there are plans for targeting places like London, Berlin, Paris and Rihyad with nuclear weapons. Contingency plans are written up, reviewed at a regular interval to be updated, and then put back into the files. And they exist. Big deal. Contingency planning is what most of us do here.

If you want to make hay out of this, then it should be about the news media talking about it like it is a surprise, or the fact that the average person is surprised when it should be obvious.

>Meanwhile, N. Korea is lobbing missiles into the Sea of Japan,
>and could possibly hit targets on our west coast.

North Korea is at least making a pretense of negotiation. Iran isn't. Negotiation looks better on Sheep TV than targeting information does because to the average peon war is a "bad thing" and that's all their little brains can manage. As I said, but will restate a little more clearly, if you don't think we've got plans to reduce Korea a lot of mountains and collection of parking lots despite it being a given that the Japanese will protest the fall out, you're not paying attention.

>I dont want to sound like I'm in Iran's corner here, but, as
>with all political moves made by our government, we have to ask

As opposed to Iran's economic interests and political moves?

>Heroin production in Afghanistan has exploded since we took >over, largely because the CIA uses drug money to fund arms sales

We've been hearing that crock of crap for 40 years in reference to operations on three continents. To anyone who makes that claim, I invite them to bring forth evidence that is capable of passing the requirements for a court of law. And not once have any of the whiners ever been able to trace the CIA to black market sales. Yes, heroine WAS purchased from the hill peoples of South East Asian, and it was sold to European pharma companies. And guess what Skippy, that information has been reported, as per US law, to intelligence committees of the house and senate. Just like the Kennedys and Shrub, too many people watch too many movies while not having enough of a clue.