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I don't know. While I agree that the above is worrying, I think I'd be a lot more alarmed if there wasn't something like this out in the public domain - what else after all, was the Bush government ever going to be doing ? And while, ok, the neo-cons could just be getting started, there's been none of the really inflammatory rhetoric ( links with Bin Laden, regime change necessary, 'most evil man in history' etc, ) that led up to the Iraq war involved in this so far; it doesn't as yet feel like a conflict that's being 'sold' to the US public.
That could change obviously, but at the moment I'd still think the worst case scenario would be a series of 'surgical' air strikes against suspected Iranian nuclear facilities by the US or, more likely, Israel, followed by a vocal protest from the Iranian government but not an awful lot else, because how else, realistically, are they going to respond ? Anything more forceful would put the basic fabric of Iranian society at risk, so while none of that's pleasant, I can't see a full-scale ground war developing here, at least in the short term, although, pretty clearly, the kind of US bullishness overt in that strategy is only storing up problems for the region's, and also America's, and, well everyone else's future.
On the other hand, if it turns out I'm wrong about this and Bush does decide to go all 'shock'n'awe' on the Iranians, Syrians and whoever else he feels like in the next four years, what does anyone think will be the UK's reaction, assuming, as seems virtually certain, that Blair will still be holding, if somewhat more tenuously than he's used to, the 'reins of power' at the time ?
( Sorry about all the quote marks incidentally - it's just in the context, they're so *hard* to resist... ) |
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