I’ve said this before but it bears repeating here: The first question at the first debate between McCain and Obama should be how they’d improve upon the west’s current offer…

I answered this question on the thread that you link to in this sentence, and nobody made any substantive response. The answer on how the US can improve upon its offer is to start complying with the NPT. To do this, it would have to do the following:

1) Comply with Article IV.1 and allow Iran to develop their nuclear energy program instead of continually asking Iran to give up their inalienable right.
2) Comply with Article IV.2 and cease from hindering Iran’s cooperation with other states in an effort to further their nuclea energy program.
3) Comply with Article VI and disarm their nuclear weapons
4) Comply with assurances made before the signing of the NPT that no nuclear weapon state will ever use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear state. (Presently this option is “on the table”).

If the US ever decided to honor the treaty it signed, the issue would be over.

dave742 on July 5, 2008 at 11:47 PM

Johan Klaus:
I said nothing about my opinion about whether or not Iran was developing nuclear weapons. All I said was that the US should honer treaties that they sign.
As for your question, I do not believe that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, but not because they say so. The IAEA has spent over 2,000 hours inspecting Iran, including environmental testing. It would be impossible to develop nuclear weapons under this type of inspection. If the IAEA was allowed to inspect Israel, for example, guess how many hours it would take them to find evidence of a nuclear weapons program. Less than one. Know why? Because they have one.

dave742 on July 6, 2008 at 12:08 AM

Johan Klaus:

“What were 500 tons of yellow cake uranium still doing at the nuclear research center of Al—Tuwaitha in Iraq when American tanks rolled into Bagdhad.” –American Thinker

The audacity of your “American Thinker” is un-f**king believable. The article takes a situation where American crimes cause the suffering of thousands of Iraqis and they do what? They blame the IAEA! How clever of Rick Moran! Here is what happened:
The IAEA told the US that the twin complexes at Tuwaitha were “at the top of the list” (washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/12/AR2006061200918_4.html) of nuclear sites requiring protection of U.S. and British forces when entering Baghdad. “The administration knew full well what was stored at Tuwaitha” (accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-8186898_ITM) before the war started. So what did the US do when entering Baghdad? They left Tuwaitha unguarded and open to looters while they sent teams out to look for WMD, who instead of finding WMD were instead finding vacuum cleaners. (See same WaPo article linked to above). “The Tuwaitha story makes a mockery of the administration’s vaunted concern with weapons of mass destruction. The U.S. military hastened to secure the Ministry of Oil in Baghdad from looters. But Iraq’s main nuclear facility was apparently not important enough to get similar protection.” (Philadelphia Inquirer article above). Even when the US Army found what had happened at Tuwaitha, they were ordered to “leave at once.” (WaPo article above). So what was the result of the US leaving Tuwaitha unguarded when they knew full well what was there? The looters, not knowing what was in the blue barrels, dumped the nuclear waste on the ground and used the barrels(csmonitor.com/2003/0710/p07s02-woiq.html) for drinking water and storing food. (telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/1429779/Villagers-suffer-radiation
-sickness-after-looting-nuclear-power-plants.html) “It may take years to determine the health effects from the radiation poisoning that occurred here before American military forces arrived to seal off this nuclear complex.” (query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C01E0D81439F93BA35755C0A9659C8B63)
Once the damage had been done, the US finally realized that they had to call the IAEA to handle the situation, even though they resisted as long as possible and tried as best as they could to keep it a secret:
“The administration didn’t want to let inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency back into Iraq. U.S. officials finally recognized, however, that they needed the help of the IAEA, which has been monitoring Tuwaitha for years and is best prepared to assess how much uranium is missing.
But the United States is trying to keep the IAEA mission totally under wraps.
The inspectors are kept isolated in the Rashid Hotel and are not allowed to speak to the press. Nor did U.S. officials permit them to bring a press officer from their Vienna headquarters. When I try to drive toward Location C, where the IAEA team is working on a limited two-week assignment, I am stopped by Sgt. Steven Collier. Standing in front of a tank, he tells me his superiors ‘don’t want nobody here right now. They don’t tell us why.’” (Philadelphia Inquirer article above)
(See also the NYTimes article above: “Yet continuing reports of lax security here and the discovery that villagers were bathing from contaminated barrels from uranium storage facilities appear to have prompted American officials to relent and allow narrowly defined access for international inspectors, who examined and sealed this facility more than a decade ago.)
And what did the US do when they found out that Iraqis were getting sick, and probably getting cancer, from the barrels they were using for food and water? The generous Americans offered the Iraqis $3 a barrel to return them to the Americans, when the market price for the barrels was $15. (See CS Monitor article above). How generous! I guess Americans don’t considered the lives of Iraqis worth more than $3. Why do they hate us?
So who took care of the problem? Those Greenpeace bastards! They exchanged over 100 contaminated barrels for clean ones. (See CSMonitor link).

profitsbeard:

Everybody together now… -1…2…3…. let’s all give up our nuclear weapons!

It is possible to disarm and have the process be monitored. Even if the US followed the NPT unilaterally and disarmed, how would that be any different than asking the 100-plus non-nuclear weapon countries to live in a world where some countries have nuclear weapons and they don’t? Why must they do this, but the US doesn’t have to, even though they promised to? I know, the US is special because everyone is out to get us because they “hate our freedoms”. Regardless, disarming can be verified. And if the US thinks the prospect of disarming is impossible, then why the hell did they sign a treaty promising to do so? Why did they sign a treaty knowing full well they would not honor it? Is this the same nation that Iran should trust to honor whatever agreement it makes to stop enriching uranium? Would it make any sense for Iran to make an agreement to stop enriching uranium because the US promised to supply it with uranium, even though the US continually signs treaties it has no intention of honoring? I don’t think Iran is that stupid, which is why they are reserving their inalienable right to enrich uranium themselves.

dave742 on July 6, 2008 at 8:37 AM