[piercehawkeye45]

Originally Posted by Adak

1) When Iran says that they'll sweep Israel off the map, I never ACTUALLY thought they'd use a broom to do it.

I don't believe anyone can say just WHAT Iran might do with nuclear weapons. We aren't even sure that they WILL make them.

I purposely didn't make an absolute statement about Iranian intentions. We don't know what they are thinking but we can infer it through how they act on other issues.

) Obviously, there would be a substantial ground component to a war with Iran. The enrichment facilities are below ground, and our "bunker buster" bombs may not be enough to destroy them. I'm sure they will have added military security around and at those sites, to help fend off any attack, and protect their big investment in those sites.

After Afghanistan and Iran? I really don't think there is a ground plan to our (possible) attack against Iran. Foreign policy circles seem to believe it would be limited to bombing, computer viruses, and containment. I don't think any US politician could convince the US of a ground attack against Iran. We would certainly lose too many soldiers.

3) From history, we can be certain that the Iranian leadership would propagandize any attack on their country. All political leaders will do that - and set the stage for more hatred for whomever the attackers are.

This is true but not what I was getting at. We don't know the Iranian response but they could possibly attack oil lanes and step up their support of terrorism against Israel and the US. We need to take these consequences into consideration before attacking a country solely on speculation.

Since the real (their dollar), lost a lot of value today on the monetary markets, it's possible that the sanctions will, at last, have the effect we wanted.

That is my hope. The country is really hurting and it seems that many Iranians are blaming their regime.

Let's stick with Iran in this thread. Yak about Pakistan in another thread.

I disagree. You initially stated that we should care about Iran getting the bomb because of their support of terrorism. Iran does support terrorism but so does Pakistan, arguably to an even greater degree. However, Pakistan would never gives their nuclear weapons to the terrorists the ISI trains. I don't see any reason that Iran would act any differently. It isn't in their interests.

However, it should be noted that Pakistan's nuclear weapon gives them an umbrella for their support of terrorism and there have been cases where Pakistani nuclear scientists were selling information to other countries (Libya). This is one reason why it is against US interests for Iran to get the bomb.

Unfortunately, generators are a well-researched piece of equipment. We've improved them, (and windmills for sure), but not nearly enough to bring them into the forefront of our nation's energy supply.

You are arguing against a delusional belief that wind and solar are silver bullets for our energy problem, not the reality of its potential. I don't believe that wind and solar will ever make up more than 50% of our energy sector but I do see a very positive use for them. Solar power is currently being used on the microscale with a decent degree of success. This will expand exponentially as technology improves.

To summarize, just because wind and solar will not completely solve our energy problem doesn't mean they can't be effective tools in a larger, multi-pronged solution for our energy problem.