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[quote=TheManWithAUsername][quote=jsteele][quote=TheManWithAUsername]I can see that you're just dying to argue with someone who advocates for invading Iran. It's a big world - go find that special someone. I'm not him, and all your pretending won't make it so.[/quote]
I hesitated to enter a discussion with you because I have see how you have responded to others in the past. You really act like any disagreement is some sort of personal insult. You write paragraph after paragraph without really saying anything, but rather simply acting irritated that someone bothered to object to what you wrote.[/quote]
Amazing. Look back at the beginning of our exchange, specifically the last paragraph of your 13:43 post, and tell me who started the shit here. Find me something before that point that fits your characterization of me. I even tried to pull us out in my next post by calling you on it, but you had to keep the BS going.

[quote=jsteele]But, let me make a few more points to further clarify my position.[/quote]
"You're a dick, and it's really beneath me to engage with you, but I'm going to do it anyway." Nice way to hedge your bets - if you win the argument, you win, and if you lose, it's because I'm an unreasonable jerk who never really says anything. You've found an awful lot to respond to in all my meaningless babble.

[quote=jsteele]1) While Ahmadinejad has made some idiotic statements, the statement most widely attributed to him -- that he would like to destroy Israel -- he, in fact, never made.[/quote]
I read the pieces, which regard two particular incidents. Are you saying that the many quotes attributed to him are all inaccurate? Here's a bunch:
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2009/04/questions-about-ahmadinejad-apos-s-famous-quote/9872/

If that's what you're saying, I'm not equipped to judge the translations and not up for the major research project of checking the context of every one of those. But the first question would be whether you actually think they're all false or distorted.

[quote=jsteele]2) There is no reason to believe that Iran behaves any more irrationally then any other country. While you perceive Iran as innately hostile to the US, the facts are that it is the US that has marshaled military forces along Iran's border, it is the US that has shot a Iranian civilian airliner out of the sky killing all aboard, it is the US that flies drone missions over Iran in violation of international law, it is the US that has invaded and occupied Iran's neighbors, and it is the US whose leading politicians constantly make bellicose threats to attack Iran. To the extent that Iran in a threat to the US, one must rightly consider whether that is a cause or an effect.[/quote]
I would trace back our responsibility for the hostility further back than that. As with most countries, I see some of it as a natural reaction to our behavior and some of it as internally generated; I'd say the same thing about our hostility to others. I'd rather we work toward peace. But I support the position that nuclear weapons are in a class by themselves (or at least a very small class), and outside of normal negotiation.

[quote=jsteele]3) You support the assassination of Iranian scientists because you "believe there is a significant danger that Iran will do something terrible with a nuclear weapon." But, let me ask you this:
 
 a) what evidence do you have that Iran is developing a nuclear weapon? Here is Leon Panetta as recently as last month: "Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No."

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/01/09/panetta-admits-iran-not-developing-nukes/[/quote]
I never said they were. I support assassination, etc. to interfere with a nuclear program. To the degree that there's no program, that position of mine is obviously irrelevant. I obviously don't support the indiscriminate assassination of all physicists or similar.

If your point is that the development of nuclear power is very different than the development of nuclear weapons (per the article), I appreciate that but I'd rather take action now. I don't believe that Iran would develop the technology and then decline to work on the weapon.
 
[quote=jsteele]b) what evidence do you have that killing a small number of scientists will, in fact, prevent or delay a nuclear weapon from being developed (f one were even being developed)? I am not sure that either of us has evidence either way, but I think its reasonable to suggest that those who support killing civilians should have a higher bar to meet.[/quote]
As you seem to acknowledge, that's unprovable either way. I don't see why you would question that the death of scientists working on a program would delay that program. If they wouldn't be missed, why would they be on the project in the first place?

[quote=jsteele]c) what evidence do you have Iran would behave differently than any other country that has nuclear weapons? If you are going to go back to your list of quotations -- most of which did not say what you seem to believe they said -- please provide a source for those quotes so that they can be fairly evaluated.[/quote]
I don't see where you established that most of the quotes I gave meant something different.

Regardless, as I said, I believe that they support terrorism, that they abhor Israel, and that they hate us somewhat less. That's what makes them distinct, though unfortunately not unique.

I obviously don't have access to the intelligence regarding their support for terrorism, and we apparently disagree on our government's trustworthiness on that point. I'm shocked if you'll disagree that they have expressed extreme hostility to Israel, but sorry, I'm not going to go over every single anti-Israel quote to explore it's reliability.

We're doing what we can in forming opinions. If the phone call were mine to make, I'd be more careful with the assassination decision, and the good news is that I'd presumably have  access to much better information, along with the time to consider it all.

I appreciate that you think the bar should be higher when murder is considered. In this disagreement and in our last, you have seemed to take the position that one should not support such action, even as an armchair statesman, unless one has perfect certainty. One of my points in both of these disagreements has been that we casually support all kinds of policies that can have far worse impact.

[quote=jsteele]"Several administrations have made this claim over decades, citing multiple specific instances."

I cannot read this without a feeling of deja vu. This sounds exactly like the sort of thing that supporters of the Iraq invasion repeated ad nauseum about Iraq's WMD program. I'll remind you that that program turned out not to exist.[/quote]
Personally, I actually don't remember that kind of statement at all.

I think it's perfectly legitimate to doubt our government to a far greater degree than I do here. We're all making our very difficult judgment calls on their trustworthiness on different issues; trusting them on some particular issues doesn't necessarily make me someone a rube.

[quote=jsteele]Now, let me posit another theory. What if the hostility between the US and Iran has nothing to do with nuclear weapons....So, what if the US policy to prevent Iran from achieving the sort of influence of which it might be capable is to simply "bitch slap" Iran periodically?[/quote]
That's a perfectly reasonable theory. I didn't say that our government's motivations are all pure, etc. But just because some or all of the reasons are bad doesn't mean that the action is bad. There's a good argument that the North didn't care about slavery, but I'm nonetheless glad they ended it.

Re your theory and its bases, we're not uniquely moral, but that doesn't mean we're totally amoral. I think there are several world governments morally superior to ours, but there are many, many more that are morally inferior. So I think our motivations are mixed in many areas.

Again, you seem to be treating me like I'm Sean Hannity. I don't believe that we were created by God to benevolently rule the world with the sword and bible. But I think it's equally absurd to say that governments don't differ in morality or that we're relatively immoral, if either is your position.[/quote]

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