It seems that I’m seeing this from Bush more and more as he exhibits this exasperation toward his questioners when they challenge the administration’s view of things. He poses the "you either agree with our approach or you’re just contributing to what we say will happen if you don’t let us do what we think will prevent it". His whole body language shouts this.
From Joe Conason:
"We’ve got a leader in Iran who has announced that he wants to destroy Israel," he blathered. "So I’ve told people that, if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon."
Sorry, but the Iranian leadership and many other unsavory figures around the world cannot be prevented from "having the knowledge" needed to build a nuclear weapon, since, as Matthew Yglesias has noted, the scientific and engineering information is commonly available.
What the Iranians don’t have yet is the industrial capacity to make enough weapons-grade enriched uranium for that purpose and then to transform that material into a bomb. What they do have, unfortunately, is the means to achieve that end eventually — and thanks in part to the irresponsible policies of the Bush administration, they also have both a motive and an excuse.
Not to mention that the U.S. remains as the only country to have actually used nuclear weapons on people, and cities to boot. People become indignant and spew forth the "theories" about how millions more would have died if they hadn’t. So we had our "strategic reasons"; but who wouldn’t? Justifications are no proof. They are just that. Justifications advanced for the purpose of carrying out our own strategies. After having read such things as Zinn’s A People’s History, James Carroll’s House of War, and various Noam Chomsky pieces, and before that, the various peace and non-violence Christian leaders, and compared it to American history, the "nation" status of people in this land of ours is anything BUT Christian. It’s long past time American Christians wake up to this.
