The ever credulous American public has been played the fool in Iraq and then Afghanistan so why not Iran? Disregarding all the strategic and operational challenges of starting a war with Iran I would just like to know how we intend to pay for it? We put the last two wars on the tab and the bartender is signaling he is ready to cut us off. Maybe the ‘fiscally un-conservative’ Republican neocons are thinking of a bruising war surtax on the 1%? Curious minds want to know?

Indeed if sanctions on Iran's oil exports so far from breaking OPEC should actually strengthen Saudi Arabia's hands (given that it has promised if not undertaken) to make up any supply short-fall. It seems unlikely that the Saudis should actually want to break OPEC.

Anyway, is there any real differnces between the Clintonistas/Obaamites on the one hand and the Buchbucks and the Romnians on the other when it comes to Iran? Isn't the desired end-state a regime change. Of course, there may be differences on methods and timing but surely not on the final result.

Interestingly, for now, the accent is on exports as opposed to Iranians imports of refined products. It remains to be seen where Europe's supplies are this time next year. Unless, that is, the Obamits have been promising regime change in Tehran and fat contracts for all in 2012.

....on Iran are likely to have little impact. With their new-found friendly border they can now launder their exports through Basra with little difficulty.

As a possible silver lining on an otherwise dark cloud, at least an attack on Iran (the real strategic target of OIF) would allow for lessons learned to be learned all over again whilst simultaneously re-ignoring the real lessons.

See themt? No...look again, in the darkness. They're out there. The Neo-Cons...moving in the shadows, like the Orcs, but with good suits and a degree from Yale. They climb walls and plot and they've got Romney.

Geesh, Tom give it a rest. If you want to do preemptive conspiracy theories use AIPAC. That one is a bit more plausible. They could be the Urak-hai.

Romney’s Advisors Are Leftist Elites

http://chasvoice.blogspot.com/2011/10/romneys-advisors-are-leftist-elites.html

I'd expect this crap from a political flack. From a polisci grad student -- wow, don't show your adviser.

Look, I'm no fan of Romney's bellicose campaign rhetoric and it's easy to find examples of it. And I see one or two advisors on that list who've said patently insane things about Iran. I actually see one or two who've been more cautious, too, though.

Now, some real polisci writer -- Drezner or someone -- might dig up a few of those examples. Some silly kid on the other hand might tell me, OOOOOH, Romney's campaign closet has six of those evil PNAC guys! Jesus, even Kerry picked up some former Bush advisers.

Look, agreed, Romney has been more hawkish-sounding on Iran than Obama (but, not a whole lot, actually). That's about it. If you want to look at some text and critique it and then say, why is Romney using the guy who wrote _this_ as an advisor? then do it. But this piece o' crap is an insult to this generally good weblog.

Media accounts suggest that nobody really listened all that closely to what national director of intelligence James Clapper told the Senate select committee on intelligence during his latest public appraisal of worldwide threat.

One thing he made clear was his view was that the United States, by years of much-repeated threats, was driving Iran crazy.

He also made clear -- and this is the part widely picked up -- that Iran is probably closer to being able to do severe harm to the United States.

I defer to his expert opinion. His picture calls back to mind the good old days when people used to visit mental institutions for the fun of goading the violent patients. Not so funny when done to technologically capable entire nations, rather than a few afflicted people safely locked up in places surrounded by high walls.

Talk of war - joining the chest-beating for a tussle with Iran - and his tongue-slips about the poor are going to damage if not kill Romney's chances in November.

if Romney gets the GOP nomination, like most candidates before him, he'll have to move to the center to be elected. Right now independents and moderate Republicans are looking closely at him. Ultra conservative, older white males are fine with the war-boy talk. Others are not. Polls show Americans left and right are sick of war, and as the economy improves, foreign policy could be a a major issue in this November's elections.

Obama has finally gained some credibility as commander in chief after digging out from under the shadows of Gates, Mullen and Petraeus. He went for the surge in Afghanistan, knowing there was no reason to remain there, but finally stood up to the generals last year. He made some points with the growing number of taxpayers who want to see smaller government and military. Romney needs to heed this.

A negative Romney post every day or so?

For example:"If you recall, this was the same group of policy "experts" that advocated the war in Iraq with confidential reasons to bust OPEC by privatizing Iraq's oil infrastructure, removing the Saudis' ability to set prices, and flooring the price of crude.

Clearly this never came to pass and Iraq has remained a member of OPEC. However, although the neo-conservatives lost in their war with the State Department and oil industry to privatize Iraq, "

"One entity may be powerful enough to oppose such grand plans (and sadly it isn't the American voters): Big Oil. They shut down the plan to privatize Iraq in 2003 and may be able to do the same thing in Iran if there were an attempt to do so."

FACT: just google to find hundreds of stories about privatized Iraqi oil

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/5701252/BP-wins-biggest-Iraq-oil-contract.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/23/business/energy-environment/exxon-mobil-and-iraq-clash-over-payment.html?pagewanted=all

Then there are other common lies:

For example, the world is not divided over the issue of attacking Iran. The world is opposed, except some in Israel and some of the mobsters who run the US government.

And there is no proof Iran is developing nuclear weapons, just some suspect things.

Whoops, I clicked the wrong link and ran into a Jan 31st article on this same FP website which details how Exxon-Mobile is running Iraqi oil ops
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/01/31/iraq_oil_crude_awakening

if you vote for obama you are voting for a nuclear iran...is that the choice?

I choose romney.

http://www.jpost.com/IranianThreat/News/Article.aspx?id=256316

and by the way ricks, its not the medias job to try to steer elections or anything else. The media has really become the most evil institution in american politics. far worse than any military industrial complex....

The chances of us going to war -under Obama or Romney- is very likely. Iran has shown itself to not be interested in dialogue, but aggression. Look at how hard Obama criticized George W. Bush for being too "assertive," to now saying all options are on the table in his State of the Union address.

I don't think it makes a difference, honestly. Iran is increasing the likelihood of war itself, not Obama, not Romney.

Three Middle East Myths Exploded
First it was the myth about linkage between Iran and Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking.

According to the logic, without progress on the Palestinian front, it would be impossible to mobilize Arab countries to face the Iranian nuclear threat.

The notion had shelf life, sustained by some diplomats and the commentariat until it was blown out of the water by the WikiLeaks revelations.

Of course, it was no secret that Arab leaders feared Iran’s growing power and made not the slightest connection between the two issues. Anyone who met with an Arab official from Riyadh to Rabat heard the same dread about the looming prospect of a nuclear-armed Shiite theocracy in Tehran.

But in today’s world, facts don’t necessarily have any claim on fiction, until they become so incontrovertible that there’s no easy way around them.

And that’s just what WikiLeaks proved.

Lo and behold, the cables revealed that from Saudi Arabia to Bahrain, from the United Arab Emirates to Egypt, Arab leaders were imploring the United States to stiffen its spine and confront the Iranians. Linkage to the Palestinian question? Not even close. No mention whatsoever.

To the contrary, several Arab countries have looked to Israel, with or without a peace agreement, as a stealth ally in the face-off with Iran.

Another myth was about settlement-building in eastern Jerusalem.

According to that one, the peace process was going to wither on the vine and die because Israel indicated its intention to continue construction within Jewish neighborhoods.

Israel was criticized, pilloried, and pummeled for its actions, accused not only of being an obstacle to peace, but the obstacle. The reality on the ground seemed not to matter. The world was led to believe that the very future of the Middle East hinged on Israel’s alleged misbehavior.

Israel attempted to explain that both sides understood there would be border adjustments in a peace accord reflecting demographic realities on the ground, but this mattered not a whit. And it had even less success when it reminded the world that settlements, certainly an issue for negotiations, was by no means the only one – and certainly not a sufficient explanation for more than six decades of overwhelming Arab refusal to come to terms with Israel’s very right to exist.

Then came PaliLeaks, and the myth was blown out of the water.

The documents showed there was indeed tacit agreement on certain land swaps, including, yes, Jewish areas of eastern Jerusalem. The papers showed that the gap between the two sides was less than imagined, but, sadly, the uproar over the leaked documents proved that the Palestinian Authority has failed even to attempt to prepare its population for the concessions needed for an end of conflict and lasting peace.

And last it was the myth loudly stated by Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan that the root of all problems in the Middle East lies with Israel’s intransigence.

To accept the Turkish leader’s premise means throwing truth to the wind. Even a cursory study of the Arab world reveals deep-rooted problems having nothing to do with Israel and everything to do with political, economic, and social stasis. But that would have spoiled the appealing narrative.

After all, it is much more reassuring for the Erdogans of the world to lift responsibility from Arab shoulders and place it squarely on Israel’s! And for the Israel-bashers, of whom there is no shortage, anything suggesting Israeli culpability is greeted with endless expressions of glee and gratitude.

Who needs critical-thinking skills when criticism of Israel is so much more effortless and satisfying?

Yet this myth, too, has been exposed in recent weeks for all the world to see.

The streets of Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen filled with crowds rising up against domestic repression, the absence of opportunity, and the culture of cronyism and corruption.

Though none of the “after-the-fact experts” foresaw it, why, Erdogan aside, should that have come as a surprise?

All it took was a casual reading of the UN Arab Human Development Report, compiled by Arab scholars and published regularly by the world body, and other relevant material. I draw below from an article I wrote 13 months ago in The Huffington Postentitled “It’s not about Israel.”

They [the report’s authors] have spoken of three overarching explanatory factors for the region's unsatisfactory condition: the knowledge deficit, the gender deficit and the freedom deficit.

Unless these three areas are addressed in a sustained manner, the Middle East, which ought to be one of the world's most dynamic regions, is likely to continue suffering from instability, violence and fundamentalism, irrespective of what happens on the Israeli-Palestinian front.

Consider some of the important findings in recent Arab Human Development Reports and related studies:

• The total number of books translated into Arabic in the last 1,000 years is fewer than those translated into Spanish in one year.

• Greece -- with a population of fewer than 11 million -- translates five times as many books from abroad into Greek annually as the 22 Arab countries combined, with a total population of more than 300 million, translate into Arabic.

• According to a Council on Foreign Relations report, "In the 1950s, per-capita income in Egypt was similar to South Korea, whereas Egypt's per-capita income today is less than 20 percent of South Korea's. Saudi Arabia had a higher gross domestic product than Taiwan in the 1950s; today, it is about 50 percent of Taiwan's."

As Dr. A.B. Zahlan, a Palestinian physicist, has noted: "A regressive political culture is at the root of the Arab world's failure to fund scientific research or to sustain a vibrant, innovative community of scientists." He further asserted that "Egypt, in 1950, had more engineers than all of China." That is hardly the case today.

The UN Human Development Report reveals that only two Egyptians per million people were granted patents, compared to 30 in Greece and 35 in Israel (for Syria, the figure was zero).

Similarly, the adult literacy rate for women aged 15 and older was 43.6 percent in Egypt and 74 percent in Syria, while for the world's top 20 countries it was nearly 100 percent.

And finally, according to Freedom House rankings, no Arab country in the Middle East is listed as "free." Each is described as “partly free” at best, “not free” at worst.

The sad truth is that it is precisely political oppression, intellectual suffocation, and gender discrimination that explain, far more than any other factor, the chronic difficulties of the Middle East.

There exist no overnight or over-the-counter remedies for these maladies that would allow the region to unleash its vast potential, but one thing is clear: they, not the straw man of Israel, are at the heart of the problem.

It would be illusory to think otherwise.

The illusions, or myths, prevailed until the throngs in the Arab streets shattered them.

Like bowling pins, the myths keep falling. It remains to be seen whether they’ll be replaced by new ones, or, at long last, by a dose of reality.

Romney gives no sign of having an understanding of history, especially of the Middle East.

Romeny would be another dupe of warmongering neocons in the style of G W Bush.