Pierce, Pierce, Pierce -- in post 14, you show us you don't understand that Iraq is a campaign, a theater, in the overall war, which for convenience rather than pedantic precision we call the War on Terror.

Much of it is a civil war within Islam about what its shape is to be in the 21st century. However, it does involve our interests strongly also.

If it's against a not-democracy, war's justifiable. As to whether it's automatically justified, I'd have to say, "Er." But do keep in mind that all of our major foreign-policy problems come out of the not-democracies. The particular trouble spots are still likeliest in the Non-Integrating Gap nations. Expect the shooting there, and expect we'll be doing some of it -- at some pretty loathesome outfits, too.

In Iraq, we neither rushed nor hesitated, and we took down an organized regional troublemaker before he could aspire to Hitlerian-scale conquests. That in consequence of this wise and timely action, we are dealing with Sevareid's Law, well, we just have to struggle through it.

You are on the right track here in the sense of control of the military. The otherside of the coin is that the military is poorly controlled by the central government. There is a Autocratic side to it, the Imams, and there is the pseudo democratic side, Ahmandejad. The third bit is the military who is controlled by neither directly. That is where the problem is. Look at the recent clash with the US Navy or the taking of British hostages, it would not surprise me if the more radical elements of the military took unilateral action without approval from either of the other two parts of the government. This is what happened when the students and radical elements took the US Embassy, it was a unilateral action which the govenrment ultimately had to go along with.

On a side note I have actually no problem with the US Navy blowing those patrol craft out of the water the next time that happens.

That makes sense.

With that, the question of which side gets the nuclear bomb pops up. The Revolutionary Guard would probably not be my first guess, hopefully.

Another good question. One that nations are wondering as well. One thing that we need to keep in mind here is that it is not in the interest of any of the other Arab nations for Iran to have the bomb. Even those with a rudimentary understanding realize that Persians are not Arabs. There is no love lost between the two. Religion is another divider.

Since the boats "didn't exist", blowing them out of the water would "never happen".

Yea, I'm all for that as well.

Mr. Ambassador, you lost another submarine? (Red Dawn)

LOL...yea, exactly.

Wasn't that Hunt For Red October?

Yea.

Yes - I'm really bad at that - Its cuz of my misspent youth.