o0xst!
09-12-2007, 05:19 PM
Heres a nice ctrl-c ctrl-v from a blogdeal I wrote after attending this fancy Iran related lecture at the Columbia Club in nyc
December 24, 2006 - Sunday
Gary Sick lecture....
I had an oppurtunity to talk with Gary Sick (served on the National Security Council under Presidents Ford, Carter, and Reagan.), pretty much the leading scholar on Iran in America a couple weeks ago. He spoke at the Columbia University Club in nyc and here is what he said essentially:
When I asked him if another Osirak was possible (after he declared with tons of rationale why we wont attack Iran) he said no. Reason being Osirak was ONE site, and Israel could easily take it out and disable Iraqs nuclear ambitions. Iran has their work spread out over several hundred UNDERGROUND sites. He went on to say that hitting Osirak turned out to actually not be such a great thing in that the lesson it taught Iraq was that they had to spread out their sites if they had nuclear ambitions, and in turn this is the lesson Iran learned from that action...also he said that if Israel wanted to bomb sites, they'd have to have the United States approval to fly over airspace in Saudi Arabia or Iraq or Turkey...and therefore a lot of the cleanup from such an action would be our responsibility, and that doesnt make much sense for us in that if we don't want to go to war with Iran then we don't want to be involved with something like this.
Sick met with Ahmadinejad and his handlers the week prior when he was at the UN, and told stories of how he flies all over the country speaking to huge groups in small towns..basically ranting and raving about how things are going to be better...with little backing on why. Then he flys off and leaves several of his people behind and they hand out money to the people.....this garners support but little or none from the people that matter and run things in Iran, who really dislike him and see what he is doing and has done as erasing 15+ years of positave work the country has done to look a little better in the eyes of the world in general.
Sick stated that we are "responsible" for Iran becoming a regional power now, primarily by eliminating all of their enemies. Taking out the taliban, taking out Hussein, installing a shia government in Iraq. He wasn't saying "oh this is bad we did this now look..." he was merely stating what happened and why Iran and Ahmadinejad are in the spotlight they are now.
One noteworthy statement he made, and he was very serious when he said this was that their nuclear power ambitions for strictly non-weaponry (energy) reasons are not as crazy as they seem...Iran has built more dams than any one in the world..building tons of wind generated energy devices so they are pretty serious about energy ambition whatnots....
...90 countries enrich uranium and there are 300,000 nuclear weapons in the world...
...Sick stated that Ahmadinejad was no doubt elected, and that fraud wasn't very likely...
...Ahmadinejad is no economist, knows absolutly nothing of the economy...
....Ahmadinejad constantly quotes khomeni so the people ABOVE him who really RUN THE COUNTRY can not question him.
....Ahmadinejad recenty went to Indonesia and was treated like a rockstar...the anti-America, anti-Israel slop was very popular with them...
..Sick said 3 yrs ago he would have said military clash with Iran was possible (for the US) but with the Iraq situation no way.
....Iran is larg and more nationalistic than Iraq, and Ahmadinejad would probably become much more popular if an invasion would occur..he'd probably be in power for awhile. His exact words were "...if you like this regime, hope we go to war with them because itll probably be around 20 years as the people rally around him"
...Iran is 5-10 yrs away from a nuclear weapon if they indeed are building one
...an attack on Iran would kick out IAEA advisors...."now we have no hope but to build a nuclear weapon" would immediatly be Irans thinking.
http://www.myemospace.com/nyc/3/gsk.jpg __________________
December 24, 2006 - Sunday
Gary Sick lecture....
I had an oppurtunity to talk with Gary Sick (served on the National Security Council under Presidents Ford, Carter, and Reagan.), pretty much the leading scholar on Iran in America a couple weeks ago. He spoke at the Columbia University Club in nyc and here is what he said essentially:
When I asked him if another Osirak was possible (after he declared with tons of rationale why we wont attack Iran) he said no. Reason being Osirak was ONE site, and Israel could easily take it out and disable Iraqs nuclear ambitions. Iran has their work spread out over several hundred UNDERGROUND sites. He went on to say that hitting Osirak turned out to actually not be such a great thing in that the lesson it taught Iraq was that they had to spread out their sites if they had nuclear ambitions, and in turn this is the lesson Iran learned from that action...also he said that if Israel wanted to bomb sites, they'd have to have the United States approval to fly over airspace in Saudi Arabia or Iraq or Turkey...and therefore a lot of the cleanup from such an action would be our responsibility, and that doesnt make much sense for us in that if we don't want to go to war with Iran then we don't want to be involved with something like this.
Sick met with Ahmadinejad and his handlers the week prior when he was at the UN, and told stories of how he flies all over the country speaking to huge groups in small towns..basically ranting and raving about how things are going to be better...with little backing on why. Then he flys off and leaves several of his people behind and they hand out money to the people.....this garners support but little or none from the people that matter and run things in Iran, who really dislike him and see what he is doing and has done as erasing 15+ years of positave work the country has done to look a little better in the eyes of the world in general.
Sick stated that we are "responsible" for Iran becoming a regional power now, primarily by eliminating all of their enemies. Taking out the taliban, taking out Hussein, installing a shia government in Iraq. He wasn't saying "oh this is bad we did this now look..." he was merely stating what happened and why Iran and Ahmadinejad are in the spotlight they are now.
One noteworthy statement he made, and he was very serious when he said this was that their nuclear power ambitions for strictly non-weaponry (energy) reasons are not as crazy as they seem...Iran has built more dams than any one in the world..building tons of wind generated energy devices so they are pretty serious about energy ambition whatnots....
...90 countries enrich uranium and there are 300,000 nuclear weapons in the world...
...Sick stated that Ahmadinejad was no doubt elected, and that fraud wasn't very likely...
...Ahmadinejad is no economist, knows absolutly nothing of the economy...
....Ahmadinejad constantly quotes khomeni so the people ABOVE him who really RUN THE COUNTRY can not question him.
....Ahmadinejad recenty went to Indonesia and was treated like a rockstar...the anti-America, anti-Israel slop was very popular with them...
..Sick said 3 yrs ago he would have said military clash with Iran was possible (for the US) but with the Iraq situation no way.
....Iran is larg and more nationalistic than Iraq, and Ahmadinejad would probably become much more popular if an invasion would occur..he'd probably be in power for awhile. His exact words were "...if you like this regime, hope we go to war with them because itll probably be around 20 years as the people rally around him"
...Iran is 5-10 yrs away from a nuclear weapon if they indeed are building one
...an attack on Iran would kick out IAEA advisors...."now we have no hope but to build a nuclear weapon" would immediatly be Irans thinking.
http://www.myemospace.com/nyc/3/gsk.jpg __________________