That is largely thanks to just throwing gobs and gobs of money at the people who were fighting the civil war. Why go hunt down shia when you can sit home, smoke the hukka and get paid?
Keep in mind that Iran's reform movement is still largely pro-theocracy, they are just not keen and the guys running things right now.
democracy fosters peace
I am actually reading a great book about how Pakistan's A.Q. Kahn distributed nuclear technology to Iraq, Iran and North Korea. He was not working real hard on a nuclear program when we invaded because he would rather spend what limited resources he had coming in on himself.
yes but the oil for food was a scam and he tried to kill Bush Senior after he wasnt pres anymore, if we gave him time he would have plotted and got it from what we know about his past actions and personality we could not ignore this probability
I am not so sure about that. The leadership in Iraq knew how badly we kicked their ass in Kuwait and the Israelis destroyed the Osorac reactor once. A lot of people said Pakistan was making an "islamic bomb" to share but in the end they never actually gave up a whole bomb.
but they did end up sharing it just like you said with Iraq Iran and NK, north korea has the bomb thanks to pakistan
That depends on which Arabs get it. There is not a government in the middle east today dumb enough to use a nuclear weapon on a nation that not only has it's own but also allied with the largest nuclear power on the planet? When these firebrands get to leadership positions they realize they are a hell of a lot better off skimming oil money and living like a king than going down in a blaze of glory.
if i had a nuke and gave it to alqueda and they blow up isreal. Who would get the blame? Exactly man, any arab nation would not be stupid enough to have a return address on it. but is very easy for a suposed traiter to hand off matirial and have it untracable to any one nation
Even Israel knows that Iran won't attack them the second they get a nuke. Iran had one of the last natural cases of smallpox recorded in history and you can bet your ass they are saving it for a rainy day. I had a guy that was a member of the revolutionary guard brag to me that they are one of the only nations in the world who still gives the slightly dangerous live smallpox vaccine. They do this not only to have heard immunity in their cities (no one under the age of like 50 in the US has ANY immunity) but also so they have the vaccine infrastructure that can quickly be converted to grow virus.
interensting
They really do have a good reason to seek WMDs though. In the book I am reading they talk about how during the Iran/Iraq war Iran started winning and Saddam used poison gas. Iran went to the UN pointing out the violation and the international community basically said "so"? Saddam wanted to destroy them, not to take back a little land, not to conquer some cities, he wanted to occupy the whole nation.
yes i agree and sadly we gave saddam the the poison. if i was iranin i would demand my right for my country to have nukes. but i aint iranian
Tehran is going to exhert some major control on the new Iraqi government and they have already said that Israeli planes over their airspace would be considered an act of war.
yes i agree, iran and Iraq will end up being best buddies, but way more so if they get democracy
Pakistan is not really in any danger, their military created the Taliban but they are still much stronger. Look at what they did in Swat, tell all the civilians to leave or die and then clear and hold. After the area is secure you call in the civilians, form militias and teach people to protect themselves.
yes but there is a great deal of problems over there, and there will be more battles to fight even if they won this battle
The Pakistani Taliban is now sandwiched between the Afghan taliban and American forces to the north and Pakistani army to the south and east. It also came out recently that Blackwater is working in the NWFP with Pakistani forces to clear that area.
nice i didnt know that
All America needs to do is start using drones better (killing less civilians) and I think we will easily defeat them.
