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Message: <blockquote data-quote="John Roberts" data-source="post: 49207" data-attributes="member: 126">Re: running commentary on middle east policy and news.I appreciate your conviction to your personal opinion, but it is still opinion."There never was a good war or a bad peace." Benjamin Franklin, while even he made exceptions. It is impossible to accurately speculate what the world might look like if WWII was not fought and won by the right side, while the winners always get to write the history, that war seemed worth fighting in hindsight. Who exactly is talking about war with Iran? Besides Iran! I am surely repeating myself but the west's intentions are just to stop the nuclear weapons program, not invade the country. [irony] Since Iran has been building hardened facilities for years, even the West's most powerful conventional bunker busters may be inadequate to penetrate the barrier. A small tactical nuclear weapon could be used as the ultimate bunker buster... now that's irony!  An underground burst, would not be as dirty as an air or surface blast, but Iran has probably collocated their facilities among populous areas so never a good option. [/irony]excuse me I don't do youtube. Tell me "your" arguments or paraphrase his if you don't have your own.There are many who would disagree. Like the Shia and Kurd Iraqis who were the actual majority there but oppressed under Saddam. He used poison gas against his own people (Kurds), among other atrocities.  The primary beneficiary of reopening and upgrading Iraq's oil industry is the Iraqi people and hopefully the world. Many in the US wanted to believe the popular myth that we invaded to take the oil for ourself, or US oil companies. Right now there are internal disputes in Iraq over profit sharing from early oil contracts the Kurds cut with international oil companies before the central government was fully established. The Kurds think they should be allowed to cut their own oil deals, the central government in Baghdad doesn't agree.   Whether the Kurds, Sunni, and Shia can work together long term still stands to be seen, but it is mostly outside actors that want them to fail (like Iran who would love to take over southern Iraq for itself) and has fought at least one war with Iraq in the past.  We need to separate wishful thinking from practical solutions. That genie can't be put back into the bottle. If we continue to talk and apply insufficient measures, Iran will inch into the nuclear weapons club, and I don't buy their claims of peaceful intent. North Korea is reopening nuclear "talks" and we can always hope the kid is less crazy than his dad. Time will tell how far that nut fell from the family tree. We can always hope for more rational dealings. The people of North Korea have suffered for far too long. Similar to the German reunification, South Korea could do a lot of good for the North Korean people given the chance.   JR</blockquote>

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