This certainly raises the stakes, and puts more pressure, on President Asswipe of Iran.

Unanimous United Nations sanctions against Iran.

He's toast. It's only a matter of time.

My Way News - Security Council Approves Iran Sanctions

He is only doing what the puppet master that sits behind says to do. These religious cultists believe they are going to usher in the 5th Imam.

Jefferson, if I could kindly ask, not for any defense of Ahmadinejad, but rather for the quality of the debate, that you refrain from calling him "President Asswhipe". It's quite juvenile, and in fact, it only hampers your own arguments. This is more of my asking that you refrain from other and all juvenile name deviations that you like to do to those who you do not like.

Anyway, as for the topic. I understand the concern of uranium enrichment in Iran. But I'm not sure that sanctions are the best way of approaching it. In fact, it usually backfires. If it's anything we can learn from regimes like Cuba, North Korea, and especially Iraq, is that sanctions only strengthen a dictator's grip on the populace. Sanctions only hurt those who we are trying to help in the first place. It starves them, and many die while the dictator is safe in his palace of riches. It makes the populace more dependent upon the government. Then the government might "help" them a little bit of a time to help further his facade of lies that he is a benevolent leader helping the people as best he can against the "evil US Empire" that would deny food and trade to them.

First of all, I will continue to call him "President Asswipe" because it is both what he is, and because it's what I feel like doing. And quite frankly, I couldn't care less whether you like it or not. Your opinion as to what "name calling" does or does not do to a debate is irrelevant.

Second, I agree - in part - with your assertion that United Nations sanctions may not be the best way to approach this.
- The United Nations is a joke, a sham organization. What they say means virtually nothing. Not only is it a thoroughly corrupt organization, it is nutless and spineless. How many years did Saddam Hussein "give the bird" to the United Nations? Furthermore, all United Nations sanctions have EVER done is hurt the common populace while the dictator continues to get even richer.
- I think a better way to deal wtih President Asswipe of Iran is to simply stall for time. Clearly, his days are numbered. Iran is supposedly a democracy but what it really is is a theocracy. The conundrum President Asswipe is facing is that he absolutely cannot be "hard-line conservative Muslim" enough for the idiot clerics, yet at the same time survive in a modern world. If he is "contained" for long enough, he'll no longer be any kind of threat. The reason is that either the Iranian moderates, or the conservatives, will either vote him out or kill him.
- Personally, I think the United States should take the following stance toward President Asswipe: We simply say, "You can say whatever you want to say, but if you do anything with nuclear weapons, Tehran will cease to exist within 24-hours of said action."

President Asswipe can play in his own little pen, so long as he doesn't get out of it.

I kind of agree with you here. But I would say take it a step further. That is, we need to use the opportunity we have to undermine his own foundation. His popularity in Iran is lessening. I think this surely is our opportunity, and to use military action, or sanctions would be to lose this opportunity and be counter-productive. Continuing on the ideology of neo-conservative "pre-emptive warfare" will only substantiate what he says, and you'll watch an Iranian nation be rallied with unanimous support under the Anti-American rhetoric coming out of Ahmadinejad, and perhaps even usher them back into a total theocratic dictatorship. That is not what we need.

I think the best thing we can do is undermine his rhetoric, and he along with the theocracy will be absolved. Democracy will rise organically out of the ruins of theocracy. If it is anything we must learn from our mistakes with the dealings of Al-Qaeda and Iraq, it surely must be the affirmation of at least that violence breeds violence.

Plus, there surely is enough time for this transformation to take place before they have the capacity to develop nuclear weapons. And plus, considering the Israeli-Palestinian issue seems to be at the heart of it, I think it needs to be absolved, and you will notice good things just falling into place.

Okay, cool. However...
1. How, exactly, do we go about undermining his foundation?
2. I'm not talking about "pre-emptive" military action. I think you know that.
3. We really have no idea whatever how close Iran is to nuclear capabilities.
4. There's no guarantee that Iran will find a better leader to rise up out of the ashes. The middle-East has a LONG history of having IDIOTS in leadership.

Iran has to change its course. The course is set by the unelected clerics and especially the Supreme Leader who are not elected. As long as Iran is being run by nutty muslim clerics, they are headed for destruction.

Allow me to use an example. Right after 9/11, the tactics of the attack, and indeed the attack itself was pointedly repudiated by the vast majority of the Islamic community, and indeed even most of the radical Muslim clerics! Even some of Osama Bin Laden's followers left his leadership after the attack, and I remember reading about at least one who then worked to gather intelligence for the United States. The idea behind this was that they thought the attack on innocent civilians directly violated Muslim law of war. That Mohammad himself forbade the killing of children, women, cattle, and trees. In fact, torture, mutilation of dead bodies, plundering and looting, and 'killing the enemy by setting them ablaze' are all forbidden! In fact, according to Islam, Osama Bin Laden doesn't even have the authority to issue a fatwa.

However, instead of utilizing this initial rejection, George W. Bush and his set of self-described neo-conservative advisers thought to put their ideology into practice. As a result, radical Islam rallied behind anti-American rhetoric, and even especially when it comes to Iraq, many moderate Muslims rallied behind this rhetoric and the terror threat grew substantially rather than lessened. Now anti-American terrorism doesn't just encompass radical Islamic terrorism, but also anti-Imperialist terrorism, anti-American terrorism, and Iraqi national terrorism among others.

And Bush wasn't alone. Even President Clinton's actions helped flame the threat of terrorism by his military actions. I mean, if half the pharmaceutical production abilities of the US were wiped out by bombings, I don't think we're going to believe in much what the bombers say, nor follow their lead. In fact I would be correct in saying that it would lead to war.

Many Iranians are denouncing the rhetoric of Ahmadinejad; we need to use this opportunity! We need to denounce the failed policy of neo-conservatism and neo-Imperialism (which many of the original authors of neo-conservatism are now calling on the Bush administration to do). We need to take a non-violent stance, using the threat of military action only as a last resort rather than one of our first cards to play. The answer to your question is in fact a lot more processed than what I have just said, and I don't feel like writing a book. But it's not difficult to do.

Essentially we need to stop bragging we're the best country on the Earth, and start acting like it.

Then what are you talking about? I thought you recommended that we bomb their alleged nuclear sites.

Thus, there is no justifiable reason for military action. Nor is there really that much of a reason for sanctions. There is no tangible evidence whatsoever that Iran is in fact perusing nuclear weapons. It's just a hunch. I'm not saying that the hunch is invalid, I'm just saying that acting on this hunch is invalid.

Perhaps if we worked to eliminate the possible motives for a nuclear Iran, rather than working toward the myopic goal of a non-nuclear Iran, we wouldn't have anything to worry about in the first place.

Then it seems as if we have more in common with them than we thought!

I would agree with this. But the way to help achieve this is what partly Jefferson has said, and what I have said. The people of Iran want change. Aggressive action is not the answer.

I think undermining the clerics in any way we can will help. The people have to see that as long as they keep these people as their leaders, their country is headed for disaster.