The right is to speak Tom, not necessarily to be taken seriously. When my wife and I fight, we both have full rights to say anything we want regardless of whether it makes any sense. It's all bargaining in the end. It's much like going into Mexico and bartering with the shopkeepers. You'd be out of you flipping mind to offer what you believed the product was worth. You lowball the guy and then go back in forth in rhetoric until you both find something you can agree on.

It's the same with international rhetoric. Countries scold other countries when they haven't a leg to stand on because that's where you start your bargaining. Imagine if some country like Iran, who has major idealogical difference with our culture and huge politcal forces internally that are in bitter battle for control over leadership, were to go the US and, instead of pretending to come from a position of strength and a bit of crazy, were to instead say "Oh, America. We really don't like anything you're doing in the Mideast but we so trust you to be the good guys. We've seen all the Westerns and you always wear the white hat. Therefore, pretty please try to not mess in our internal affairs." The leader would be chopped to pieces by the Islamic fundamentalists in Iran and the military hawks within our own country would be salivating at the chance to bully their way in, seeing the country as an easy cakewalk.

Of course that's a silly exaggeration but the concepts are sound. World leaders don't begin their mosh pit adventures by playing weak. They do the same things that couples do when they fight. They go for the jugglars and hope that the makeup sex will be great.

I'm not asking you to give credibility to everything some despotic ruler slanders the US with, just that you don't stop listening because you don't like the source. Within every piece of bluster is some tiny semblance of truth and true negotiation taking place. I don't know if you never get into fights with your wife but the next time it gets dicey (my wife's of Scottish descent), tell her she has no right to say the cruel things she just said and see how far that gets you.

Art