The Damned Beard And Other Idiots

As I watched Wolf Blitzer interview Condi Rice yesterday, I grew angrier and angrier. Of all the terrible policies this administration has foisted upon the American people, negotiating with Iran is not one of them, yet this is the time The Beard decides to get tough with the Secretary of State.

Over at MSNBC, retired CIA analyst Bob Baer was even more hawkish claiming that Iran would definitely use nuclear weapons on Israel if they acquired them. However, even Chris Mathews was skeptical of Baer's claims that Iran might use a dirty bomb on Israel even if they couldn't produce a full blown bomb. To this claim Mathews retorted, "what would that kill, like twenty people."

Whether the media likes it or not, the administration is right to reverse course on Iran and enter directly into negotiations, although I'm pretty sure this crew will screw it up. Iran is years away from producing nuclear weapons and even if they acquired them, they would never use them in a first strike capability.

What a lot of people, especially on the right, seem to be unable to understand is that domestic politics work pretty much the same in every country in the world, and if they would watch the Bush machine politic objectively they would see Ahmadinejad is using the same playbook with little editing. It's all just dog whistle politics with some scare tactics thrown in.

Iran's problem is that for whatever dumb reason, Iran, the second largest producer of oil in the world, never bothered to build any refining capacity. The result of which is that they must import 95% of their gasoline. Isolating themselves from the rest of the world would simply result in their society breaking down with people taking to the streets.

What this means to us is that we don't need to use military force to break their resolve. Hell, we can even let them sell their oil if we simply cut of other countries from delivering gasoline to them. Like us, they can't survive without it.

So, mainstream media, shut up and at least let the administration try to get at least one thing right.