A Clear and Present Danger - Iraq, Iran

Yogi Berra, Hall of Fame catcher for the New York Yankees, 10-time World Series champion, successful business man and inspiration for the Yogi Bear cartoon character, was noted for making comments that were “mindbottling” (Blades of Glory). Berra was known for such classics as, “It’s not over ‘tll the fat lady sings,” “If you come to a fork in the road take it,” “If the world was perfect, it wouldn’t be,” and others. One of my favorites is, “It’s deja vu all over again.”

clipped from www.washingtonpost.com Iran has doubled its capacity to enrich uranium in the past two months but remains far from the technological know-how the Bush administration fears and the capabilities that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently claimed, according to an official letter written by a senior U.N. nuclear inspector yesterday. The letter to Iranian officials from Olli Heinonen, a deputy director general at the International Atomic Energy Agency, confirmed that, in a visit earlier this week, inspectors saw eight separate lines — or “cascades” — with 164 centrifuges each operating at a nuclear enrichment facility in the town of Natanz and that “some uranium is being fed into those cascades.” A copy of the letter was made available to The Washington Post. clipped from news.bbc.co.uk The West suspects Iran of seeking atomic weapons, a charge Iran denies. Speaking in Saudi Arabia last week, Mr ElBaradei said Iran would need thousands of centrifuges, but had only hundreds operating at present.

A kindred spirit minus the kindness of heart to Yogi (at least with respect to public speaking is none other than the President Bumbler W. No one ever accused George W. Bush of being a great public speaker or even being an effective communicator. Still, we are at this Iran nuclear moment and it is a place we’ve all been before.

We were warned that Iraq posed an imminent threat to the United States. We’ve been told that Iran, too, poses an imminent threat to the United States. In both instances, the International Atomic Energy Agency has DENIED that claim. The first bald-faced lie has resulted in the deaths of no less than 650,000 Iraqis.

Yogi could never imagine that much blood on his hands.  Perhaps the mainstream media can have a moment of Total Recall and reject this new lie because the likely outcomes of sustaining this new line in the sand are simply untenable.

(Natanz 2002)