Quote:

the G-man said:

Iran may just been caught red-handed shipping high-tech IEDs into Iraq :

Quote:

U.S. military and intelligence officials tell ABC News that they have caught shipments of deadly new bombs at the Iran-Iraq border.

They are a very nasty piece of business, capable of penetrating U.S. troops' strongest armor.

What the United States says links them to Iran are tell-tale manufacturing signatures — certain types of machine-shop welds and material indicating they are built by the same bomb factory.

"The signature is the same because they are exactly the same in production," says explosives expert Kevin Berry. "So it's the same make and model."
U.S. officials say roadside bomb attacks against American forces in Iraq have become much more deadly as more and more of the Iran-designed and Iran-produced bombs have been smuggled in from the country since last October.

"I think the evidence is strong that the Iranian government is making these IEDs, and the Iranian government is sending them across the border and they are killing U.S. troops once they get there," says Richard Clarke, former White House counterterrorism chief and an ABC News consultant. "I think it's very hard to escape the conclusion that, in all probability, the Iranian government is knowingly killing U.S. troops."




I am not an expert on international law, but I think it likely that, when a nation chooses to participate in warfare against another nation, that participation is nothing less conscious and calculated than a formal declaration of war.

If these munitions can be tied to the Iranian government—and the article seems to strongly suggest just that—then we have the clear legal and moral justification to disrupt Iran’s nuke program, if not its entire government.



Quote:

magicjay38 said:
I believe you can sell arms to anyone you want. The DuPonts made a fortune selling gun powder to both sides during World War I. More recently the Soviets didn't pitch a bitch about the USA supplying arms to Afghan rebels in their war in the region. BTW, are we at war in Iraq? When did that bill go through Congress? I'm sure I'd have heard something about it. You can't have it both ways.

And you claim to be a capitalist.



I thought this was a particularly witty response on your part to G-man's argument , MagicJay.

You make some great points, that the U.S. does sell arms to nations across the globe, including rogue nations.
As you say, we supplied and trained the Afghans against the Russians.
We supplied and trained the earliest Al Qaida in the Afghan war.

We armed and supported Saddam Hussein for a long time, and arguably inadvertantly (until 1990) helped to make him a threat to his neighbors.

So while we do have the rationalization to attack Iran, for creating a threat to our military in Iraq, it can certainly be rationalized that other nations have the same justification to attack the U.S.
If you read Pat Buchanan's views on the U.S. and "avoiding foreign entanglements", you might find yourself in surprising agreement with him, and his views of the Bush administration's foreign policy.

And of Clinton's and Bush Sr.'s foreign policy that preceded it.