"I'm sorry to keep coming at you like this, but I'm trying to get you to see some of the inconsistencies of your position.

Nonsense, Tom. You say there is a contradiction but you don't point it out. You just really don't want to conceed the point but can't articulate why I am wrong, which is not the same thing as my position being inconsistent.



Part of your thesis is that, by using up our ground forces in Iraq, we have screwed up being able to effectively threaten Iran. I submit there are more ways than ground troops to apply pressure to a nation, if that's our purpose."

Iran has been preparing to have its nuke facilities stuck by air power since Israel bombed the Iraqi nuclear effort. It is highly unlikely that bombing them is going to halt their ambitions. Furthermore, strikes on their infrastructure arte going to solidify the nation behind the clerics and against the enemy, and will only serve to further the political power of the totalitarian clerics. These are precisely the points that you have not yet addressed.

Please, by all means, what exactly do you think can be done? Drop Magic Yeti Power-ranger paratroopers to eat up the Mullahs and the Nuke facilities?? What is the 'magic' faery dust option, and if I don't see it, a person that is relatively well read up on our military arsenal and its substantial capabilities, why do you think it will give the Mullahs pause?

"You can make a very plausible case that actually attacking Iran might play into the hands of the Islamists. But, if that were the case, I fail to see how an air attack would have any different political effect than a ground troop invasion."

Because a ground invasion means the removal of the mullahs from power, their likely execution, or imprisonment. Peppering them with airstrikes means furthering their ambitions, giving them hundreds of martyrs and making them look like the good guy. ALSO, ensuring that what few Iranians that didn't want 'The Bomb' would be then clamoring for it.

So if your position is 'ground troops are not needed, just large bombing campaigns', then why didn't you advocate for this in our last two wars? Afghanistan and Iraq?

"Conversely, if the threat of ground troops (supposedly not tied up in Iraq under your ideal circumstances) would be useful in attaining our goals in Iran, I fail to see why other military means would not be equally effective."

Because, for the 50th time, which you have not addressed, which you blissfully ignore:
1) The Nuclear facilities and program in general are quite likely hardened against airstrike, thus rendering it a useless direct action.
2) Strikes on the infrastructure will only politically crystalize Iran behind the Mullahs, not dethrone them, thus rendering airstrike a useless indirect action.

Short of assassination, which won't work here becasue the mullahs are multidinous and many, not a single nut like Saddam.

We have nothing credible. Thus we have no 'Stick'.

You have never dealt with any of these points in your numerous rejoinders. While I think this had been one of our most interesting discussions in years, I am very close to done with it if you refuse to move beyond rhetorical fluff and actually deal with the truth of the premises or the validity of the conclusion.

Davin :.