yeah.. i remember the british whining about the evil mis-treatment of the captives.... meanwhile they are playing ping pong and eating steak.
But they had to wear those snarky suits. At least the Iranians could have sprung for Saville Row. These were Brits after all.
Does the following occur to anybody? The Iranians kidnap a few British sailors, and the price of oil goes up. The Iranians stage a war between Hezbollah and Israel, and the price of oil goes up. The Iranians keep sabre-rattling about their right to make nukes, and the price of oil goes up. Ahmadinejad acts like 20 kinds of lunatic and fanatic, and the price of oil goes up. He arms Iraqi militias, and the price of oil goes up. In the meantime, Ahmadinejad and the mullahs and every oil-rich sheikh go laughing all the way to the bank. Ya got the wrong conspiracy theory, guys. Bush can do nothing to Iran, he's fresh out of troops. And the Iranians know it.
There's no reason the troops have to stay where they are. I would expect that Special Ops troops are in Iran right now. Plus, Bush has no interest in invading Iran. Airpower can cause massive damage and raise the cost of Iran's meddling.
why do you think they are so desperate to pass amnesty.. the military is salivating thinking about recruiting all those amigos. they crash the economy and paco aint got no choice..... they let him anchor baby in all his relatives... now they got even more prospective recruits.
Air power doesn't cut it. Their bomb-making facilities are hardened and underground, bombing an above-ground functioning reactor would cause a disaster that would make Chernobyl look like two kids fighting, and there ain't nothing else to bomb in Iran except a lot of slums. If he couldn't handle Iraq or Afghanistan without sending the troops (or even with sending the troops), then what's he going to do to Iran? Nothing. The Iranians know it, and that's why they behave like that. A little more "unrest in the Middle East" and oil hits $100 and that buys a lot of Rolls Royces for the Saudi royals. Who are therefore quiet as little mice even though they're Sunnis and Wahhabis and hate the Iranians' guts. It's all nothing but business, guys.
Just because a target is hardened and undeground does not make it invulnerable. There are plenty of targets that are not undeground, like their gasoline refinery, their navy, their air force, their army bases, their roads, their utilities, etc. Our military may be incompetent against insurgents, but they are extremely effective against another organized military. We are in a bit of a bind here, but it is not because we lack the ability to deal terrible blows to Iran. We don't want to alienate the considerable portion of the Iranian population that does not support their government. At the same time, we can't just stand by and let them kill our troops. It is very conceivable that the Iranians are trying to instigate an attack from us to shore up their domestic popularity. They should be careful because sometimes you get what you wish for.
Oh, puhleeze. Sure, we're going to bomb their refineries and send oil up tp $100. We're not even thinking about talking about considering oil sanctions, let alone bombing their oil industry back to the stone age, for the simple reason that we need the stuff and they know it. And if we send in the troops and defeat their army, then we've got yet another insurgency on our hands. And the insurgents don't give a shit what the majority thinks. They will be the ones to blow the refineries and the oil wells and create another Chernobyl, because they don't care who lives or dies. In fact the more people that die, regardless of who they are, the better those assholes feel. Hey, guess what: it's a complicated, multilateral world out there, and it takes some guy who got better than Cs in college to deal with it. Best thing to do with Ahmadinejad is ignore him. He's a pain in the ass, that's all, like Gadaffi was a pain in the ass. Even if he gets nukes, he's still just a pain in the ass, So load up on the Preparation H and get on with life.