Would Iran have abandoned their nuclear research if we were only in Afghanistan (which borders Iran?)

What would Saddam be doing all this time while Iran gleefully refines fissionables? What would he conclude from the U.N.'s impotence in stopping the mullahs?

And what would Israel be doing all this time? Iranian mullahs have gone on record supporting an atomic attack on their nation regardless of the retaliation.

This is really just going into alternate universes, which makes great fantasy and SciFi, but not good anything else.

I can say this: With the US in Iraq we have an alienated and hostile Europe who is unlikely to agree if we told them the sky was blue, an isolated US that is up its eyebrows in Iraq with no clear end in sight, and an Israel sitting there getting itchy trigger fingers.

Its not much of a stretch to think that we would have a much more under-controll afghanistan if we hadn't diverted averything including the kitchen sink to Iraq. We wouldn't have a hostile Europe and a hostile world. We could very credibly use the threat of invasion through sea and through Afghanistan as the 'Stick' to back an effort between Europe, Russia and America to get Iran to seriously give up their nuclear ambitions.

And we do know right now: its a soggy flimsy stick and a rotten anemic carrot.

Saddam spent 11 years nicely checked and in a bottle, occassionally pissing and whining and shooting at an allied plane. He was "in a box", as THIS adminstration repeatedly said before 9/11. "Not a credible threat" as Powell and Rice both put it.

"Sorry, but I'm not seeing a lot of future stability in the "no invasion of Iraq" status quo, either. So maybe five years from now we're looking at thousands of troops in Iran instead, insurgents pouring in from Iraq, and all the same "quagmire" posts here with just the last letter of the nation changed."

Hahaha. This is actually kind of funny-sad. You don't even see it.

The difference, Tom, is that we would be attacking a credible enemy, not jousting fantasies. Mind you, I'm not saying that we should invade Iran, I am saying its a lot more reasonable than doing Iraq, and I AM saying is that because we broke our stick in Iraq, we have no chance to stop Iran from going nuclear because we have NOTHING to threaten them with. The cubbard is bare. Furthermore, because we went after the non credible threat we aided the credible threat, practically paving the road for them to heat up their nuke program and make a end-run for the bomb.

All of the above does not require silly little fantasy worlds where you can assume anything to be true. Its demonstrably true because its what happened in fact

Davin L.