Doug Ross @ Journal

The Iran Factor

There is one issue in this election that overrides every other in importance.

Experts believe that Iran will have the capability of building nuclear weapons (and possibly delivering them into Israel via missile attack) within six to thirty months. This effort has continued, and will continue, despite efforts at peacemaking, economic incentives, threatened boycotts, and other mechanisms of appeasement. Iran has already told us this.

To place any acceleration of this work at Bush's feet is not only disengenuous, it is provably false. The A.Q. Kahn nuclear parts network (Islamabad to Tehran to Pyongyang) grew and thrived under Clinton's watch, even though the ex-President knew what was occurring! The network, of course, was exposed and smashed under Bush's watch.

North Korea's research and development of nukes occurred only after Clinton (through Madeline Albright) was deluded into signing an agreement that would limit their Plutonium production. Only now do we know what North Korea was doing during the Clinton years: they were building nuclear weapons.

Do we want Iran to have nuclear weapons? Uhmm, that would be "no". Why? The US State Department calls the Islamic Republic of Iran the world's "most active state sponsor of terrorism." Iran continues to provide funding, weapons, training, and sanctuary to Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Hamas and other groups based in the Middle East and around the world. It has been linked to numerous attacks on civilians in Israel and the Khobar Towers truck bombing, which killed 19 US servicemen. In fact, it has an unblemished history of sponsoring terrorism.

Thus, the only question that matters is this:

Does John Kerry have the courage to act unilaterally to destroy Iran's nuclear weapons capability?

We know that Bush has the courage to do so. We know that Europe will leave it to the Americans (or Israelis) while trying to make a buck -- or a Euro -- off the deal. Kerry's record of equivocation is, at best, unsettling. And his vacuous two-decade Senate career proves, quite simply, that he is unprepared to deal with any strategic military and intelligence issue of significance.

Kerry would almost certainly attempt to appease Iran, with an international community, and he would disavow a preemptive attack. Why do I make this assumption? Because he has already told us this.

The results would likely be the following.

Iran would finish building nuclear weapons. It would then use nuclear weapons, either by feeding them to proxies (terrorist organizations such as those described above) or by launching an attack against Israel to meet its stated goal of destroying the Jewish state. Iran's history is not mysterious. It is consistent and long-standing: they will use any and all means to attack innocent civilians using increasingly powerful means. The results of such an attack would truly be catastrophic.

How would Israel respond to such an attack? With its nuclear submarines, perhaps? How would the U.S. Government respond to, say, the vaporization of lower Manhattan through the detonation of an Iran-sponsored nuclear weapon? The U.S. would respond in kind. The American people would demand it (don't believe it? Think about what has happened just since 9/11).

I therefore believe that a John Kerry presidency could very well lead to nothing less than a full-scale, nuclear world war. A vote for John Kerry may very well represent a vote for the end of civilization.

Alarmist? I don't think so. I would welcome countervailing opinions, provided they are substantiated (I took the time to substantiate my opinions... so you can too :-).